Anyone that has to do a lot of work – or even gaming – on a computer knows the virtue of having multiple displays. After all, it makes multitasking easier, without having to rely on alt-tab going to the right window. That’s kind of what the Asus Zenbook Duo is looking to capitalize on, and unlike some of the half-baked designs seen on this laptop line in the past, Asus has actually nailed the formula this time around.
In a nutshell, the Asus Zenbook Duo is just like any other thin-and-light laptop. It’s powered by Intel’s new Panther Lake CPU – specifically the Core Ultra X9 388H – which is powerful, but not the kind of desktop-class performance you’d expect in a heavier workstation or gaming laptop. Still, because of the improvements Intel has made with this generation of mobile processors, this laptop is actually capable of gaming at decent quality settings with a high-ish frame rate.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone looking for a strictly gaming laptop. But if you’re a creative person that wants something thin, light, and able to do some gaming on the side – while having a whole second display attached – the Asus Zenbook Duo has a lot to love. That is, if you can get past the $2,299 price tag.
Design and Features
The ZenBook Duo is ostensibly a ‘thin and light’ laptop, but it’s not actually that thin when everything is folded up, measuring about 0.9 inches thick at its thickest point. But when you consider that thickness is two displays, a keyboard and a whole system, it’s actually impressive that Asus was able to fit it into such a thin package.
The extra display also makes the Zenbook Duo a little heavier than it’d otherwise be, coming in at 1.65kg, or 3.63 lb, with everything included. That’s much lighter than something like the Razer Blade, but considering it’s not packing the same kind of hardware, that’s only to be expected.
When the laptop is first opened, it looks like pretty much any other 14-inch laptop. There’s a lovely 16:10 OLED display, and a keyboard. But when I glanced at the side of the laptop I could immediately tell that the keyboard can be removed, just by the difference in tone between the keyboard and the rest of the chassis. The difference is subtle, but it’s just enough that they look like two separate pieces.
However, it’s not immediately clear how the keyboard should be removed. I mean, in theory, it’s not complicated, because it’s just magnetic, but the first time I opened the device I found myself gingerly pulling up on the keyboard in random places making sure I was removing it from the right place. It would have been nice if Asus added a little grip of some kind to the top-right corner of the keyboard, just to make pulling the keyboard off the bottom display a little easier – even if it’s not that complicated.
The keyboard itself attaches magnetically to a set of POGO pins at the bottom of the second display. This serves two purposes: it connects the keyboard to the PC without relying on Bluetooth, and also keeps it charged wirelessly.
When you pull the keyboard off of the bottom display, the PC should automatically enable the second screen, and the keyboard itself will automatically switch to Bluetooth mode. The only time it didn’t do this for me was in the middle of testing, and I was very upset until I figured out that I had disabled Bluetooth for the battery test. Every other time, though, it just worked.
Due to how thin it needs to be, the keyboard doesn’t sport the deepest travel. It’s just a chiclet keyboard at the end of the day, but it’s comfortable enough to type on. However, what’s really annoying is the gestures Asus built into the trackpad. For years now, Asus has had a fascination with making its trackpads as feature-packed as possible, but what actually ends up happening is that my palm is constantly turning up or down the brightness as I’m typing. This is a feature you can thankfully disable in the MyAsus app, but it annoys me every time. What’s wild is that when the feature is disabled, the trackpad actually has excellent palm rejection. Make it make sense.
On the left side of the laptop, the ZenBook Duo sports an HDMI cable, a Thunderbolt 5 port and a headphone jack (they still make those). The keyboard also has a USB-C port on its left side, but that’s just there for charging the keyboard. On the right, you’ll find the power button, another Thunderbolt port and a singular USB-A port for legacy peripherals.
Around the back, there’s a kickstand. That seems weird at first glance, but it’s actually necessary to use the Zenbook Duo in dual-display mode. It works excellently when the displays are sitting horizontal, but for some reason the kickstand only covers the center of the device, which means if you want to turn the device sideways – which would be great for working on documents or coding – you have to kind of angle the displays in a weird book configuration. And even then, it’s not very stable.
A Second Display?
Having a second display is always going to be useful – that’s why portable monitors exist in the first place – but having one built into the laptop is a compelling idea. This isn’t the first time Asus has made a device like this, with the ZenBook Pro Duo UX581 debuting way back at Computex 2019. However, that laptop looks a lot different than the new 2026 model.
On that previous model, the second display was cut in half and placed above the keyboard deck. This immediately limited its usefulness, as you couldn’t put full-sized apps on it. Plus, this was around the same time that Asus was experimenting with the Screenpad concept, which embedded the numpad into the touchpad – and it’s never really been executed on properly.
In 2024, though, Asus debuted the Zenbook Duo with a full second display, which made it a much more usable device. Now, the company has followed that up with a more refined Zenbook Duo for 2026. For the first time in the 7 years since I saw that first ZenBook Pro Duo at Computex 2019, I’m sold on the concept.
Critically, the Zenbook Duo simply works like a normal laptop in its one-screen-configuration. The second display is only there when I need it, meaning I don’t have to sacrifice a comfortable keyboard like on the original models. And then when I do want to whip out that second display, it’s incredibly useful.
It was really when I sat down to write this review that it started to click for me. I put the laptop in its dual screen mode with Asus’ review guide on the second display, while typing on the top as normal. You see, I do most of my writing on a laptop, and I’ve gotten very good at using touchpad gestures to swap between multiple displays to look at reference material. That’s just how I’m used to working these days, but this laptop makes it so much easier to reference or access a second document or other source of information.
With the Zenbook Duo, I have Google Docs open on the top display with the reference materials right below it. And, because they’re both touch displays, I can just scroll through documents with the touch screen. It feels incredibly natural.
It doesn’t hurt that they’re both gorgeous displays, either. In my colorimeter tests, both displays hit 100% of the RGB and P3 color gamuts, making pretty much any content spring to life. This is also great for photo and video editing, as I can be sure that the edits I’m making are accurate without having to second guess anything.
You can also just remove the keyboard and summon an on-screen keyboard on the second display by using a gesture by pressing four fingers from both of your hands on the screen at the same time. You can even shrink the on-screen keyboard by pressing those same fingers on the screen, and dragging them down. With the latter, it is almost like the Zenbook Duos of old, even! However, actually typing this way is a nightmare, so I wouldn’t recommend it as anything more than a party trick.
Even though I’m not the biggest fan of the physical keyboard and trackpad, the Zenbook Duo is quickly becoming one of my favorite laptops to work on. Even if I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for gaming.
Performance
The Zenbook Duo that Asus sent for review is powered by an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. And even though it doesn’t have a discrete graphics chip, the integrated Intel Arc B390 is no slouch.
Intel spent the months leading up to CES bragging about how good Panther Lake – the architecture behind the 388H – is at gaming. So I did what any sensible tech reviewer would do and ran it through the same testing regimen as any other gaming laptop. And while it definitely does struggle at its native resolution of 1800p, at 1200p you’ll be able to play pretty much anything, as long as you stay away from the highest quality settings.
Our standard benchmark suite for gaming laptops tests all the games at their max quality settings, and as such, the integrated graphics in the Zenbook Duo do start to struggle. In Cyberpunk 2077, on the Ray Tracing Ultra preset at 1200p, this laptop gets 29 fps – not great. However, turn the settings down to the High preset and it gets 65 fps – and that’s before frame generation.
Oh, yeah, Panther Lake’s integrated GPU supports up to 4x multi-frame generation, just like DLSS or FSR Redstone. With frame generation enabled, Cyberpunk on the High preset goes up to 103 fps at 2x FG and 165 fps at 4x FG. Those numbers look good, but keep in mind that it also comes with a slight increase in latency, going from around 39-42ms without frame gen to 55-72ms with frame gen maxed out.
Compare that to the Lenovo Legion Go 2 – also powered by a mobile-class integrated GPU – which gets 37 fps at 1200p with the same settings. The two processors aren’t directly compatible, as the Legion Go 2’s Z2 Extreme tops out at 35W, compared to about 54W for the ZenBook Duo, but it’s close enough that I’m really looking forward to seeing how this architecture does in a handheld gaming PC.
Gaming performance does really suffer when you play games at the native 1800p resolution, though. For instance, in Cyberpunk, the frame rate drops to 21 fps with the Ray Tracing Ultra preset and XeSS set to the performance setting. And, in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition, the framerate goes from 20 fps with the Extreme Preset at 1200p all the way to a measly 13 fps at 1800p.
Even with the new Panther Lake architecture, the Zenbook Duo is clearly still not a gaming laptop, but it does have good enough gaming performance that you should be able to play some games in your downtime.
Battery Life
When a laptop really wants you to work all day on it, it actually has to last most of the day. After all, you don’t want to be in the middle of an important project only to have it die on you halfway through. Luckily, the Zenbook Duo does last quite a while on battery.
In the Procyon Office Productivity Battery benchmark, the ZenBook Duo lasts a whopping 17 hours and 35 minutes on battery, which makes it one of the longest lasting laptops we’ve tested by a lot – though admittedly we almost never review this class of laptop at IGN. The battery puts the Zenbook Duo in the same class as the MacBook Air. Only, Apple’s laptops don’t have a second screen attached to them.
Even outside of the tests, in the week or so I’ve spent with the Zenbook Duo, I never had to rush to plug it in, with it sitting on my desk for a couple of days of intermittent use before needing to charge. This is definitely the type of laptop I’d like to take with me to an event like CES, where its creative chops and long battery life would help me out immensely.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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