Sometimes, a piece of technology landed on my lap and immediately wowed me. This rarely happens, but when it does, I know I’m in for a treat almost immediately. That’s exactly how the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 felt and impressed me the first time I unpacked and flipped open the laptop, and that’s because this isn’t just an ordinary gaming laptop. Do not. It’s a beautifully designed product that happens to go the extra mile when it comes to a work monitor.
The Zephyrus Duo gets its name from the dual-monitor display service it offers. It’s not dual monitors because you have two screens side-by-side, instead you have a 16-inch traditional laptop screen that delivers visuals in QHD (2K) quality and up to 165Hz, which is supported by a smaller touchscreen The display matches, which is angled below the main display and above the keyboard. This screen, called the screen pad, can be used to operate apps and other functions with your fingers or with a cursor within its boundaries. It’s a very interesting concept that will immediately catch your eye and make you revel in its design, even though the actual use of the Screenpad will tell a different story. I say this because I realized in my testing of this laptop that the Screenpad is more of a novelty than a truly useful feature. However, that’s not to say it’s not as cool.
Since the Zephyrus Duo is a gaming laptop, you’re probably less concerned with the interesting novelties it offers and more interested in how you know it’s… actually playing video games. I’m happy to say that this laptop is an absolute monster in this regard, despite the hardware that powers the review unit I’ve been testing. Under the hood, this Zephyrus Duo has an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU, along with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and 64GB of DDR6 RAM. Essentially, you’ll be able to play most games on the market today at the highest graphics settings and still get frame rates over 80, even when talking about the most demanding games.
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I know this because I’ve tested Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Life is Strange: True Colors, and more, and each game is able to deliver great visuals that really take advantage of a QHD monitor, yet still run incredibly smooth, frame rates Or there is no degradation in performance, even during task processing. Happening. Whether you’re galloping down the golden coastline of Baja California in Forza, navigating the strangest and most colorful psyche in Psychonauts, or exploring the vibrant town of Haven Springs in Life is Strange, Zephyrus Duo does is a laptop that can do it all.
Some laptops can offer similar performance at the cost of generating a lot of noise and heat, and the Zephyrus Duo manages to do it well too. Yes, the fans aren’t quite as quiet as the impressive cooling system in the Sirex Scar 17, and likewise, you don’t get an icy device like a plus-sized gadget. But as you can tell from this wording, the Zephyrus Duo isn’t as big or as thick as the Stryx Scar 17, so you can’t expect a similar level of performance here. That’s not to say it’s bad at staying cool and quiet, because it really isn’t.
Also, the battery does take a bit of a hit when gaming at high quality, which means you’ll need to plug it in if you want to do long gaming sessions. For simple word processing, browsing the web, or other typical laptop tasks, the battery is far more powerful and can last quite a while without draining it.
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Considering all the hardware and features the Zephyrus Duo has to offer, you should realize that this is a very heavy laptop, even if it’s very small in proportion when you consider other gaming laptops on the market. Again, I might just be picky, but I’m not a huge fan of keyboard and mousepad placement, which are placed on the edge of the Zephyrus Duo since there’s almost no unused space on this laptop’s body. You could argue that the lack of negative space on the body is a positive, but I like to have a little space to rest my palms when using the trackpad, which this device doesn’t have. The trackpad is also very small, not allowing you much room to move around on it.
But while I had a few hiccups with the Zephyrus Duo 16, for the most part, this laptop shines with its quality and excellent performance. It’s a truly great gadget that’s powerful, efficient, and has a look that makes other gaming laptops look substandard. The pitfall of having such impressive positives is that buying one will cost you an arm and a leg, but if you have the cash to spend and don’t want to skimp on quality, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this device.