[REVIEW] ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED – Dual Display Gotten Even Better

The ASUS Zenbook Duo 14 is quite a controversial laptop that I have ever reviewed. There’s love and hate but, it is one of its kind that offers a dual-screen system in a standard laptop form factor. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a unique and well implement design for content creators.

ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED

This year, ASUS released a further improved Zenbook Duo, the ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED which has all the bells and whistles for content creators. It also adopted the new Active Aerodynamic System (AAS) Ultra used on the ASUS Zenbook Pro 16X OLED and some other ASUS ROG Zephyrus gaming laptops.

ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED UX8402 Specification
  • Processor: Intel 12th Gen Core i7-12700H
  • Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti Laptop 4GB GDDR6 GPU
  • Primary Display: 14.5″ 2.8K (2,880 x 1,800) 16:10 120Hz OLED Touch Display, 550 nits, 100% DCI-P3, PANTONE, VESA Display HDR500 True Black & Corning Gorilla Glass Protection
  • Secondary Display: 12.7″ 2.8K (2,880 x 864) 120Hz IPS Touch Display, 500 nits
  • Memory: 16GB of LPDDR5 4,800MHz RAM
  • Storage: 512GB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
  • Ports: 2x Thunderbolt 4, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB A 3.2 Gen2, 3.5mm Audio Port & microSD Express 7.2 Card Reader, DC-in
  • Connectivity: Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E & Bluetooth 5.2
  • Battery: 76Wh 4-cell Li-ion Battery with 150W Adapter
  • Dimension: 32.35 x 22.47 x 1.79 cm @ 1.7kg / 3.75lbs
  • Price: RM 8,999 (Shopee)

Design

In alignment with ASUS’s new design, the ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED adopted a more minimalist’s back cover with the new ASUS monogram and an etch of the ASUS Zenbook logo at the bottom.

Active Aerodynamic System Ultra (AAS Ultra)

Featuring the new Active Aerodynamic System Ultra technology that lifts the ScreenPad Plus when open. The new AAS Ultra would lift the ScreenPad Plus at a higher 12 degrees angle (compared to 7 degrees on the Zenbook 14 Duo). It doesn’t only improve the viewing angle when operating the secondary screen, but it also provides better airflow to the internal to create a better thermal performance.

By having a working secondary display, the keyboard & trackpad are now cramped side by side. The trackpad is now narrower, and you need to take some time to adjust to the new layout.

The all-metal construction laptop is well-built with no flexing or bending and even meets MIL-STD H810 military-grade standard despite having so many moving parts and not forgetting it’s a dual display laptop.

It has an IR camera that supports Windows Hello for quick login in any lighting situation.

Ports & Connectivity

With the new hinge design, some of the ports have relocated to the rear. There is a DC-in and an HDMI 2.1 FRL port which make perfect sense if you plan to hook this laptop to a desk with an external monitor while having clean cable management. Just not sure why the microSD card reader is placed alongside, and it’s not easy to insert.

On the right side, there is a USB A 3.2 Gen 2 and two Thunderbolt 4.0 ports that support Display and Power Delivery. There’s a 3.5mm audio combo port on the left. It is equipped with the latest Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.

Displays

There’s a significant upgrade to the dual display. Aside from getting the inky black and vibrate ASUS OLED panel for the main display, the resolution and refresh rate have bumped up to 2.8K resolution and a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

The 16:10 primary display is also slightly bigger at 14.5″ and brighter at 550 nits peak brightness. On paper, it produces a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, VESA Certified Display HDR TrueBlack 500, PANTONE Validated, and SGS Eye Care Display.

The ScreenPad Plus is brighter too at 500 nits peak brightness and updated to ScreenXpert 3. It feels snappier and the windows resize feature made it easier to position between the two displays.

ASUS includes a functional Control Panel that enables intuitive control with Dial, Button, Slider, and Scroll on the ScreenPad Plus, integrated over compatible applications like Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effect, Lightroom Classic, and Illustrator. This result in seamless cross-screen operation for better creative workflow.

Performance

The review unit I received comes with Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake Core i7-12700H coupled with 16GB of LPDDR5 4,800MHz memory and 512GB M.2 NVMe Gen 4.0 storage. It is equipped with NVIDIA RTX 3050Ti Laptop 4GB GDDR6 discrete graphics card that carries the NVIDIA RTX Studio badge.

With the advancement made to the cooling solution, the ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED can deliver a pretty impressive synthetic performance benchmark test result;

From my personal experience using it as a video editing PC, it can handle 4K footages with simple color-grading and motion effects. As it comes with only 16GB of memory, I did encounter some lags when I applied more advanced motion graphics effects and videos on the editing timeline.

With the NVIDIA Cuda acceleration, the rendering and exporting are pretty swift. The fans’ noise is noticeable, especially under a heavy workload but not to the extent of being uncomfortable to work on as the AAS Ultra does its job pretty well.

Battery

The ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is packed with a decent 76Whr battery capacity which was more of a mixed bag. I’m getting around 4 hours on video editing and have both screens on.

In casual use when I don’t need the second screen, I can turn it off easily with a hotkey on the keyboard above the trackpad. With that, I could extend additional 2 – 3 hours.

Currently, I’m using an Apple mac mini for all my creative works. Here are three reasons I might be switching back to Windows after using this laptop for over 2 weeks now;

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ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED Review
  • Design
  • Build
  • Displays
  • Features
  • Performance
  • Battery Life
4.3

Verdict

This iteration of the Zenbook Duo has a brilliant OLED display, and the latest hardware including the Intel 12th Gen processor, LPDDR5, and PCIe Gen 4 to match any creator laptops out there.

ASUS may not have many or any competitors in this dual-screen system laptop, they further improvised what could have been fixed to make it practical for creative professionals.