The dual-screen Asus ZenBook Duo takes over where the gorgeous Asus ZenBook Pro Duo left off: Yes, with another pair of screens, but in a more compact and presumably less expensive design.
While the ZenBook Pro Duo was a 15-inch device, the new Asus ZenBook Duo launched at CES shrinks that down to a 14-inch form factor. That refers to the top screen, of course; the secondary ScreenPad Plus is a 12.6-inch full width auxiliary touchscreen that you can use as a secondary display. We don’t know the exact dimensions of either screen, but the Pro Duo’s secondary screen offered a screen ratio of 32:9—we presume that’s been left in place.
Other specs have changed somewhat significantly, too. Since the Pro Duo’s launch last year, Intel has moved on to its 10th-generation parts, and the ZenBook Duo sports a 10th-gen Core i7 processor. The most pronounced change, however, is with the GPU: Asus included a GeForce RTX 2060 with the original Pro Duo, but its successor features a much cheaper, less powerful, but cooler Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU. It also includes up to 16GB of RAM and up to a terabyte of SSD storage.
Asus hasn’t released full specifications for the Asus ZenBook Duo; for whatever reason, the device didn’t even appear on its website at press time. (Microsoft blogged about the new Asus device, revealing its specs to the world.) We don’t know what Asus will charge for the ZenBook Duo, or when it will ship, either.
The fact that Asus is shipping a second generation of the dual-screen ZenBook is a good sign, though. We’ve seen other impressive dual-screen devices like the Omen X 2S, but couldn’t help wondering whether they would be the PC industry’s equivalent of 3D TVs: a flash-in-the-pan gimmick. This suggests they won’t be.