The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Dual Screen Laptop: A Review of its Thermal Performance and Features

Generally, this mode would be better for games, but you know it might vary per game, so you should just test it out both modes. Show good thermal results, so it doesn't really matter if you're on a CPU only stress test, ASUS does allow the CPU to draw a crazy amount of power going up to 90 watts, which is an insane amount for a mobile CPU and obviously without much power being used, the CPU does get hot and the fans need to work more. But it still keeps it under control in performance mode. The CPU can still use up to 70 watts but at only 84 degrees Celsius, it just shows how well the whole thermal design works in this laptop.

If you prefer silence, the silent profile shows a good balance as well. You get good performance, solid thermals, and a heavily reduced fan speed, which is excellent for those who value quiet operation. Again, excellent thermal result, and I would say it's so refreshing to finally see a laptop with multiple profiles that actually work like they are supposed to and all make sense to actually use. Do keep in mind that while those numbers are great, the laptop does produce a lot of heat that needs to go somewhere, and it pushes most of that on the sides of the laptop. So if you have your mouse hand close to the back right side of the laptop, you will definitely feel the hot air blowing against it. Personally, I don't mind that at all; my hands are always cold, and I guess I would love this in the winter but it is there, and it is just something that you need to know and consider based on personal preference.

Let's look at the internals. It's easy to reach the fans to clean them and to replace the battery, which is a great feature for those who want to upgrade or maintain their laptop themselves. However, for some reason, half of the memory is soldered on the back side, and only one DIMM can be replaced. The Wi-Fi chip is also soldered as well, but since it's a Wi-Fi six chip, you don't really need to replace it. I would say having an option to do so is always better in my opinion.

You have two NVMe SSD slots, which is great for those who want to upgrade or add more storage capacity. However, with this particular configuration that comes with two one-terabyte SSDs, upgrading just means replacing one or both drives. I did find it a bit even though ASUS put two SSDs in RAID; the overall performance in PC Mark was actually quite disappointing. I guess they went for really high peak read and write performance but in my opinion, PC Mark just gives a better indication of real-world performance.

So, another possible downside of this laptop is a lack of a webcam. Now, I know that some of you might consider it a good thing from a privacy point of view, but with this current crisis and so many people actually relying on online meetings, a webcam would probably have been a good thing. On the other hand, the speakers are actually done pretty well, and the audio coming out of this machine is just great; it has good volume, it has good detail, and it has decent bass, which makes it more than enough for gaming, watching videos, or listening to music.

In many ways, I would say that the Zephyr does is actually pretty straightforward. It's just a really good laptop with really high-end specs that offers a second display that gives you more workspace and therefore makes you more productive in so many ways. It is really well-built, it performs well, especially when it comes to thermals, and it has a comfortable keyboard and a great display to work with.

Now, the main downsides that I see here are the limited upgradeability, the lack of a webcam, and a pretty low-end battery life. As I've said before, it just feels like it's more of a desktop replacement than a really portable laptop. Now, of course, the real main issue here would be the price; I think a lot of people will benefit from having an extra screen but having to spend around 4,000 or 4,500 euros puts this laptop out of reach for most creators and most gamers.

Don't get me wrong; I understand that this took a lot of work and it took a lot of engineering from the ASUS team, and it's clearly really well thought out. But that doesn't make it any more accessible to everyone. So, it's a fantastic laptop but basically only for those of you who have so much money to spend that you just don't care how much this costs, and for the rest of us, I guess we will just have to wait for another year or two for this dual-screen concept to make its way down to the mid-range segment.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso this is probably one of the coolest laptops that you can buy today the asus rog zephyrus duo like the zenbook pro duo from last year this zephyrus duo comes with a second display that is built into the base of the laptop but aces definitely made some improvements to that dual screen concept this time around now this 15-inch laptop also comes with some pretty impressive specs it has an eight core intel core i9 10 and 980 hk processor 32 gigabytes of ram an rtx 2080 super max q gpu and two one terabyte ssds in raid configuration now for the display you can either get a 4k 100 adobe rgb 60hz panel or a 1080p srgb 300hz panel i have the 4k version here now of course all of the above makes it one of the most expensive laptops on the market as well this top spec configuration will cost you around 4 600 euros here in the netherlands and while i cannot really see any for sale in the us right now i assume it should be around 4 000 us dollars as well now in some regions you can actually find slightly cheaper lower spec version with an rtx 2070 super instead but still it is so much money for a laptop so let's see how it performs what are the upsides what are the downsides and if you should consider this as your next device let's go this video is brought to you by corsair and their k95 rgb platinum xt mechanical keyboard the new k95 features a beautiful aluminum design cherry mx switches dedicated media buttons with an extra row for dedicated macro keys extra durable pbt caps and a very comfortable and soft wrist rest check it out using the links in the description below at first glance the zephyrus duo looks like a pretty standard 15-inch rog laptop it is well built with a lot of metal there isn't that much flex anywhere and it has a nice dark gray color that doesn't easily show a lot of fingerprints at 2.4 kilos it is a little bit heavier than usual but it's not a super thick laptop that makes you suspect that there are two screens in there or stops you from just easily carrying it around in a backpack but when you open it up it becomes something completely different as the second 14 inch touch display covering about half of the bottom part of the laptop pops up now the fact that it lifts up is a big improvement over the pro duo from last year as the viewing angle is now much more pleasant in my opinion and the lifting panel itself is actually exceptionally well built there is almost no flex in it after it lifts up and considering it's a touch screen that really gives this laptop a proper premium feel when using it it also helps to cool down the laptop but i'll talk about those results a bit later now obviously the main benefit is having a lot more screen space than you would have on a typical laptop and as most of you know having more workspace is just objectively better you can use it as a second screen while working keeping your research open for example on one screen while you work on the other and it's not bad for gaming either as you can you know keep discord open on the small screen or just google parts of the game that you are stuck on it is just such a nice and such a useful feature to have but having the second screen does mean that the keyboard had to be moved front and the touchpad to the side of the laptop i personally don't mind the keyboard position much i had no problems getting used to it right away even though you kind of do have to sit a little bit further away from your laptop than usual the keys feel pretty typical too there's not too much travel there's a nice tactile feedback and asus does include a wrist rest as well for a bit more of an ergonomic position if you like and it does feel a bit more comfortable when using it the touchpad is a bit different though the fact that it's smaller does limit the usability a little bit and the position on the right side makes it really harder to swap between the keyboard and the touchpad quickly so i would say it's more for incidental use the touchpad itself does work well but this laptop just benefits from using a mouse instead i do like that they kept the feature where you can turn your touchpad into a numpad as i personally use numpad all the time when it comes to connections uh power and audio go into the left you get two usb 3 type a ports and a usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port with tandable support on the right side and on the back there is ethernet connection a usb 3.2 gen 2 type a port and an hdmi 2.0 b port that will support 4k 60hz monitors so nothing crazy but probably enough for most users i do wish that the power connection was further to the back or behind the display as well but i do like that at least your usb mouse and network cable are completely out of your way in terms of cpu performance the eight core intel core i9 does a really good job in both single and multi-core performance it's the kind of cpu that can do anything you want and then again if all you need is cpu performance there are much cheaper options out there that can do just as well as for the gpu performance the rtx 2080 super max q does do a great job depending on the setting in the software it can run up to 105 watts which is a bit more than most gaming laptops and as a result of that this zephyrus duo ends up really high in the game performance charts so if you're mostly considering this zephyrus duo for gaming do get the one that has a 1080p 300hz display instead now you can still play some lighter games on 4k but most games you will want to run on 1080p and you'll want the high refresh rates and response times that 300hz display has to offer especially for faster games if you're serious about creative work though the 4k panel that i have right here is actually really nice and those extra pixels do help a lot it offers full srgb and full adobe rgb coverage decent contrast and a pretty okay 363 nits of brightness the display is calibrated to adobe rgb though which is a nice touch but unfortunately an accurate srgb profile is lacking resulting in some larger delta e values than i would like to see when testing the more popular srgb color space even out of the box it's more than capable of doing video photo or graphics work but a proper srgb mode would be a great option to add the second screen offers pretty good performance out of the box as well the contrast is a little bit lower than usual but as a second supportive display it is definitely more than fine one of the weaker aspects of this laptop is actually its battery life even though there is a pretty large 90 watt hour battery in there and even with a second display disabled battery life is just not great at all two hours 30 minutes in the pc mark a productivity benchmark isn't great and neither is 3 hours and 42 minutes of only watching netflix now you will get a little bit more around four to four and a half hours of light use but that's pretty much nothing compared to most modern laptops on the market currently combined with its weight and the touchpad position that favors a mouse it just feels more like a desktop replacement that you can you know just put out somewhere with a mouse and a charger instead of a very mobile workstation in my opinion on the other hand the thermal performance of this laptop is just great now most high spec laptops i tested recently struggled to keep the cpu below 90 degrees celsius but this zephyrus duo has no problems with that gaming in the default performance mode shows really comfortable cpu and gpu thermals combined with pretty good clock speeds and not too much noise actually 44.9 decibels is definitely audible but it's still quieter than most gaming laptops currently if you game in turbo mode there is an interesting shift of power away from the cpu towards the gpu when a game asks for it so generally this mode would be better for games but you know it might vary per game so you should just test it out both modes show good thermal results so it doesn't really matter if you're on a cpu only stress test asus does allow the cpu to draw a crazy amount of power going up to 90 watts which is an insane amount for a mobile cpu and obviously without much power being used the cpu does get hot and the fans need to work more but it still keeps it under control in performance mode the cpu can still use up to 70 watts but at only 84 degrees celsius it just shows how well the whole thermal design works in this laptop if you prefer silence the silent profile shows a good balance as well you get good performance solid thermals and a heavily reduced fan speed so again excellent thermal result and i would say it's so refreshing to finally see a laptop with multiple profiles that actually work like they are supposed to and all make sense to actually use do keep in mind that while those numbers are great the laptop does produce a lot of heat that needs to go somewhere and it pushes most of that on the sides of the laptop so if you have your mouse hand close to the back right side of the laptop you will definitely feel the hot air blowing against it i personally don't mind that at all my hands are always cold and i guess i would love this in the winter but it is there and it is just something that you need to know and you know consider based on personal preference let's look at the internals it's easy to reach the fans to clean them and to replace the battery but for some reason half of the memory is soldered on the back side and only one dimm can be replaced the wi-fi chip is soldered as well but since it is a wi-fi six chip you don't really need to replace it but i would say having an option to do so is always better in my opinion and you have two nvme ssd slots but with this particular configuration that comes with two one terabyte ssds upgrading just means replacing one or both drives i did find it all that even though asus put two ssds in raid the overall performance in pc mark was actually quite disappointing i guess they went for really high peak read and write performance but in my opinion pcmark just gives a better indication of real work performance so you might be better off just reformatting each drive individually instead if you you know if you want to bother another possible downside of this laptop and pretty much most recent rog laptops is a lack of a webcam now i know that some of you might consider it a good thing from a privacy point of view but with this current crisis and so many people actually relying on online meetings a webcam would probably have been a good thing but the speakers are actually done pretty well and the audio coming out of this machine is just great it has good volume it has good detail it has decent bass so it's more than enough for gaming for watching videos or for listening to music and i think that covers everything now in many ways i would say the zephyrs do is actually pretty straightforward it's just a really good laptop with really high-end specs that offers a second display that gives you more workspace and therefore makes you more productive in so many ways it is really well built it performs well especially when it comes to thermals and it has a comfortable keyboard and a great display to work with now i would say the main downsides that i see here are the limited upgradeability the lack of a webcam and a pretty low end battery life and as i've said before it just feels like it's more of a desktop replacement than a really portable laptop now of course the real main issue here would be the price i think a lot of people will benefit from having an extra screen but having to spend around 4 000 or 4 500 euros puts this laptop out of reach for most creators and most gamers now don't get me wrong i understand that this took a lot of work and it took a lot of engineering from the asus team and it's a clearly really well thought out machine but that doesn't make it any more accessible to everyone so it's a fantastic laptop but basically only for those of you that have so much money to spend that you just don't care how much this costs and for the rest of us i guess we will just have to wait for another year or two for this dual screen concept to make its way down to the mid-range segment i said now i guess that's it for today let me know in the comments down below what do you think about this laptop and if dual screen is something that you would go for and don't forget to give me a like and click that subscribe button to never miss an upload bye guys see you the next one youso this is probably one of the coolest laptops that you can buy today the asus rog zephyrus duo like the zenbook pro duo from last year this zephyrus duo comes with a second display that is built into the base of the laptop but aces definitely made some improvements to that dual screen concept this time around now this 15-inch laptop also comes with some pretty impressive specs it has an eight core intel core i9 10 and 980 hk processor 32 gigabytes of ram an rtx 2080 super max q gpu and two one terabyte ssds in raid configuration now for the display you can either get a 4k 100 adobe rgb 60hz panel or a 1080p srgb 300hz panel i have the 4k version here now of course all of the above makes it one of the most expensive laptops on the market as well this top spec configuration will cost you around 4 600 euros here in the netherlands and while i cannot really see any for sale in the us right now i assume it should be around 4 000 us dollars as well now in some regions you can actually find slightly cheaper lower spec version with an rtx 2070 super instead but still it is so much money for a laptop so let's see how it performs what are the upsides what are the downsides and if you should consider this as your next device let's go this video is brought to you by corsair and their k95 rgb platinum xt mechanical keyboard the new k95 features a beautiful aluminum design cherry mx switches dedicated media buttons with an extra row for dedicated macro keys extra durable pbt caps and a very comfortable and soft wrist rest check it out using the links in the description below at first glance the zephyrus duo looks like a pretty standard 15-inch rog laptop it is well built with a lot of metal there isn't that much flex anywhere and it has a nice dark gray color that doesn't easily show a lot of fingerprints at 2.4 kilos it is a little bit heavier than usual but it's not a super thick laptop that makes you suspect that there are two screens in there or stops you from just easily carrying it around in a backpack but when you open it up it becomes something completely different as the second 14 inch touch display covering about half of the bottom part of the laptop pops up now the fact that it lifts up is a big improvement over the pro duo from last year as the viewing angle is now much more pleasant in my opinion and the lifting panel itself is actually exceptionally well built there is almost no flex in it after it lifts up and considering it's a touch screen that really gives this laptop a proper premium feel when using it it also helps to cool down the laptop but i'll talk about those results a bit later now obviously the main benefit is having a lot more screen space than you would have on a typical laptop and as most of you know having more workspace is just objectively better you can use it as a second screen while working keeping your research open for example on one screen while you work on the other and it's not bad for gaming either as you can you know keep discord open on the small screen or just google parts of the game that you are stuck on it is just such a nice and such a useful feature to have but having the second screen does mean that the keyboard had to be moved front and the touchpad to the side of the laptop i personally don't mind the keyboard position much i had no problems getting used to it right away even though you kind of do have to sit a little bit further away from your laptop than usual the keys feel pretty typical too there's not too much travel there's a nice tactile feedback and asus does include a wrist rest as well for a bit more of an ergonomic position if you like and it does feel a bit more comfortable when using it the touchpad is a bit different though the fact that it's smaller does limit the usability a little bit and the position on the right side makes it really harder to swap between the keyboard and the touchpad quickly so i would say it's more for incidental use the touchpad itself does work well but this laptop just benefits from using a mouse instead i do like that they kept the feature where you can turn your touchpad into a numpad as i personally use numpad all the time when it comes to connections uh power and audio go into the left you get two usb 3 type a ports and a usb 3.2 gen 2 type c port with tandable support on the right side and on the back there is ethernet connection a usb 3.2 gen 2 type a port and an hdmi 2.0 b port that will support 4k 60hz monitors so nothing crazy but probably enough for most users i do wish that the power connection was further to the back or behind the display as well but i do like that at least your usb mouse and network cable are completely out of your way in terms of cpu performance the eight core intel core i9 does a really good job in both single and multi-core performance it's the kind of cpu that can do anything you want and then again if all you need is cpu performance there are much cheaper options out there that can do just as well as for the gpu performance the rtx 2080 super max q does do a great job depending on the setting in the software it can run up to 105 watts which is a bit more than most gaming laptops and as a result of that this zephyrus duo ends up really high in the game performance charts so if you're mostly considering this zephyrus duo for gaming do get the one that has a 1080p 300hz display instead now you can still play some lighter games on 4k but most games you will want to run on 1080p and you'll want the high refresh rates and response times that 300hz display has to offer especially for faster games if you're serious about creative work though the 4k panel that i have right here is actually really nice and those extra pixels do help a lot it offers full srgb and full adobe rgb coverage decent contrast and a pretty okay 363 nits of brightness the display is calibrated to adobe rgb though which is a nice touch but unfortunately an accurate srgb profile is lacking resulting in some larger delta e values than i would like to see when testing the more popular srgb color space even out of the box it's more than capable of doing video photo or graphics work but a proper srgb mode would be a great option to add the second screen offers pretty good performance out of the box as well the contrast is a little bit lower than usual but as a second supportive display it is definitely more than fine one of the weaker aspects of this laptop is actually its battery life even though there is a pretty large 90 watt hour battery in there and even with a second display disabled battery life is just not great at all two hours 30 minutes in the pc mark a productivity benchmark isn't great and neither is 3 hours and 42 minutes of only watching netflix now you will get a little bit more around four to four and a half hours of light use but that's pretty much nothing compared to most modern laptops on the market currently combined with its weight and the touchpad position that favors a mouse it just feels more like a desktop replacement that you can you know just put out somewhere with a mouse and a charger instead of a very mobile workstation in my opinion on the other hand the thermal performance of this laptop is just great now most high spec laptops i tested recently struggled to keep the cpu below 90 degrees celsius but this zephyrus duo has no problems with that gaming in the default performance mode shows really comfortable cpu and gpu thermals combined with pretty good clock speeds and not too much noise actually 44.9 decibels is definitely audible but it's still quieter than most gaming laptops currently if you game in turbo mode there is an interesting shift of power away from the cpu towards the gpu when a game asks for it so generally this mode would be better for games but you know it might vary per game so you should just test it out both modes show good thermal results so it doesn't really matter if you're on a cpu only stress test asus does allow the cpu to draw a crazy amount of power going up to 90 watts which is an insane amount for a mobile cpu and obviously without much power being used the cpu does get hot and the fans need to work more but it still keeps it under control in performance mode the cpu can still use up to 70 watts but at only 84 degrees celsius it just shows how well the whole thermal design works in this laptop if you prefer silence the silent profile shows a good balance as well you get good performance solid thermals and a heavily reduced fan speed so again excellent thermal result and i would say it's so refreshing to finally see a laptop with multiple profiles that actually work like they are supposed to and all make sense to actually use do keep in mind that while those numbers are great the laptop does produce a lot of heat that needs to go somewhere and it pushes most of that on the sides of the laptop so if you have your mouse hand close to the back right side of the laptop you will definitely feel the hot air blowing against it i personally don't mind that at all my hands are always cold and i guess i would love this in the winter but it is there and it is just something that you need to know and you know consider based on personal preference let's look at the internals it's easy to reach the fans to clean them and to replace the battery but for some reason half of the memory is soldered on the back side and only one dimm can be replaced the wi-fi chip is soldered as well but since it is a wi-fi six chip you don't really need to replace it but i would say having an option to do so is always better in my opinion and you have two nvme ssd slots but with this particular configuration that comes with two one terabyte ssds upgrading just means replacing one or both drives i did find it all that even though asus put two ssds in raid the overall performance in pc mark was actually quite disappointing i guess they went for really high peak read and write performance but in my opinion pcmark just gives a better indication of real work performance so you might be better off just reformatting each drive individually instead if you you know if you want to bother another possible downside of this laptop and pretty much most recent rog laptops is a lack of a webcam now i know that some of you might consider it a good thing from a privacy point of view but with this current crisis and so many people actually relying on online meetings a webcam would probably have been a good thing but the speakers are actually done pretty well and the audio coming out of this machine is just great it has good volume it has good detail it has decent bass so it's more than enough for gaming for watching videos or for listening to music and i think that covers everything now in many ways i would say the zephyrs do is actually pretty straightforward it's just a really good laptop with really high-end specs that offers a second display that gives you more workspace and therefore makes you more productive in so many ways it is really well built it performs well especially when it comes to thermals and it has a comfortable keyboard and a great display to work with now i would say the main downsides that i see here are the limited upgradeability the lack of a webcam and a pretty low end battery life and as i've said before it just feels like it's more of a desktop replacement than a really portable laptop now of course the real main issue here would be the price i think a lot of people will benefit from having an extra screen but having to spend around 4 000 or 4 500 euros puts this laptop out of reach for most creators and most gamers now don't get me wrong i understand that this took a lot of work and it took a lot of engineering from the asus team and it's a clearly really well thought out machine but that doesn't make it any more accessible to everyone so it's a fantastic laptop but basically only for those of you that have so much money to spend that you just don't care how much this costs and for the rest of us i guess we will just have to wait for another year or two for this dual screen concept to make its way down to the mid-range segment i said now i guess that's it for today let me know in the comments down below what do you think about this laptop and if dual screen is something that you would go for and don't forget to give me a like and click that subscribe button to never miss an upload bye guys see you the next one you\n"