ASUS has shown off a number of new Zenbook laptops that feature Intel Meteor Lake and AMD Hawk Point CPUs. In addition to a refreshed 13″ model and a 14″ model with a new housing, ASUS is releasing the Zenbook Duo. That is a laptop with two identical 14″ OLED screens.
ASUS calls the Zenbook Duo the world’s first dual-screen 14″ laptop, but Lenovo already showed the Yoga Book 9 last year, a device with two 13.3″ OLED screens that are connected together. ASUS itself has also had laptops with two screens for some time, for example the Zenbook Pro Duo, but on that laptop the second screen is relatively small. ASUS also has a Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which features a foldable OLED screen that extends across both parts of the device.
Both OLED screens of the ZenBook Duo have a resolution of 2880×1800 pixels and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The displays are touch sensitive and suitable for an active stylus, the ASUS Pen 2.0. The bottom screen part contains an integrated kickstand to place the two screens vertically on the desk.
The Zenbook Duo cannot be folded into a tablet, like the Yoga Book 9. There are more differences: with Lenovo the kickstand is a separate part. Instead of a small keyboard that only covers part of the screen, like on the Lenovo laptop, the Zenbook Duo has a keyboard area the size of the bottom part of the screen, so that a touchpad can also fit on it. This can be placed over the bottom screen, but can also be used separately from the device. When paired with the device, the Bluetooth keyboard automatically charges via a pogo pin connector.
The 1.35kg Zenbook Duo is powered by an Intel Core Ultra CPU from the Meteor Lake series, with up to 32GB Lpddr5x memory and an SSD up to 2TB. The 75Wh battery should guarantee a working time of up to 15 hours. The device has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 5Gbit/s USB-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port and a headphone jack. You can log in via an infrared camera with facial recognition.
In its presentation prior to CES, ASUS mentioned a price of USD 1,499 for the Zenbook Duo, a lot cheaper than the Lenovo Yoga Book 9. The device should be available here in the Benelux from March, but the configurations and euro prices are not yet known .
Other new Zenbooks: Zenbook 14 OLED, Zenbook S 13
In addition to the Zenbook Duo, ASUS showed more new Zenbooks during the CES, of which no prices and availability for the Benelux are yet known. ASUS had previously announced a refreshed variant of the Zenbook S 13 and a new Zenbook 14 OLED with Intel Meteor Lake processor. A Zenbook 14 OLED with an AMD processor from the Ryzen 8040 series, also called Hawk Point, will also be added at CES.
Both Zenbook 14 OLED laptops have the same 14″ OLED screen with 2880×1800 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate, a 75Wh battery, and a Full HD webcam with facial recognition and a privacy slider. ASUS talks about two USB 4 ports, with Thunderbolt 4 on the Intel model, a USB-A port, an HDMI2.1 port with HDMI2.0 bandwidth and a headphone jack. The AMD variant has a maximum of 16GB instead of 32GB of memory, but can be used just like the Intel model can be equipped with a 1TB SSD.