There are always many good gaming laptops out there, but few that stand out and are borderline outlandish. The first ZenBook Duo notebook from Asus received critical acclaim for incorporating a second display as elegantly as possible, without requiring users to completely remap muscle memory with a new keyboard layout. The gaming laptops should also have incorporated this design, but many questions remained.
Key Specifications
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE is powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX eight-core CPU, along with a 16GB GDDR6 graphics card.
With the 4K display option, the 15.6-inch IPS screen is claimed to feature 120 frames per second, a 3ms response time, and AMD FreeSync support. 14.1-inch screen size, 4K resolution, 60Hz refresh rate, and 25ms response time are its features. Additionally, the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE offers 48GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a maximum level that the company offers. Additionally, SKUs with stock configurations come with 32GB of RAM. Featuring NVMe SSDs with 1TB each, you’ll get 2TB of super-fast storage through PCIe 3.0 and RAID0.
Design And Ergonomics
ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE doesn’t seem as wild as its competitors, but that may be partly because we have become accustomed to the dual-screen layout Asus has been advertising for a while now. The effect is bonkers, especially when the lights are dimmed. The fact that this keyboard has RGB LED lighting on each key, a virtual numeric pad, and two screens make it quite a treat.
From the outside, the Zephyrus Duo 15 SE seems like a simple laptop, but it is surprisingly complex inside. You don’t notice anything special about it before you open it. The lid and the base are both thick, but thanks to the notch in the front, it’s easy to find the right side without looking, and it can be opened quite easily. In terms of the overall layout, the USB ports and audio combo ports are all easy to reach – something that helps creatives. The ergonomics end there, though.
Most of this is due to the incredibly cramped keyboard and trackpad, which had to be so due to the second display above it. Once you get acquainted with it, you start wondering if it would have been wiser to make the above display narrower or smaller and to expand the keyboard to take advantage of the additional space. After all, it’s a gaming laptop that’s also very good at what it does, so why not make sure users have enough ammunition? You need to completely remap your muscle memory to use the Zephyrus Duo 15 SE, so you will need some time to adjust once you switch back to a typical laptop.
Display
The display can be configured to give you customized toggles when, for example, you use Adobe or Autodesk’s creative suites. With its toggles, DaVinci’s resolve color correction suite reminds me of the physical joysticks and knobs on its physical hardware for professional post-production setups for movies.
Asus ScreenPad Plus has succeeded in replacing the physical toggles used by professional creative artists with an elegant substitute. Purist film editors are likely to disagree. Nevertheless, the second display won’t have much meaning for those who don’t regularly use Blackmagic, Adobe, DaVinci, and similar creative services.
Gamers are not exempt from this rule. In addition to this, Asus allows gamers to map performance trackers and benchmarks to the second display, which provides a live monitor of their Zephyrus Duo 15 SE. Unless you are testing the performance of the laptop, it is not exactly something you would do every day. You can open your e-mail on the second display as you game, too, but that isn’t an everyday occurrence.
The displays are of high quality. Additionally, the response times for the 4K panel are significantly improved, now being three milliseconds. There’s no ghosting or lag, which makes it great for gaming and heavy Photoshop and Corel tasks. The only complaint is that there is slight uneven backlighting of the display, which becomes obvious in the dark. But you may not need both. In my capacity as a video editor or producer, I can still make sense of the second display, but not quite as a gamer.
Performance
The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE offers monstrous performance. Among the most powerful gaming laptops on the market, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX is an absolute powerhouse on the mobile front. In conjunction with 48 GB RAM, a fast 2 TB SSD drive, and a GPU of 16 GB GDDR6, this computer is sufficient for most performance requirements.
The Zephyrus Duo 15 SE scored 7,100 points on average on PCMark 10, which places it squarely in the upper echelon of gaming laptops. Across a range of 4K titles, esports titles such as CS: GO render around 120fps, while graphically demanding ones such as Forza Horizon 4 maintain about 65fps. ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE’s overall performance was consistent with 100fps frame rates at 4K resolution in Ultra graphics when playing FIFA 21.
Although we did not render 4K timelines on the laptop, it looks like you would get as good of a performance as you would get from a laptop. It has smooth control over the secondary display as well as some screen tears due to the higher response time, but it is not due to the low performance. As a result of a large amount of memory, along with the SSD storage, heavy-duty video tasks with multi-tab browser loads rarely produce any stuttering.
Keyboard And Trackpad
Although the performance is impressive, the keyboard and trackpad combination appears to be a disappointment. If you play for long hours, you will have aching hands due to the cramped design of the layout, and you will not get a place to rest your palms. For editing video and producing, a mouse and the second display’s input will suffice, but this is neither convenient nor ideal for gaming.
There are also a few issues with input quality, and the trackpad is too small and awkwardly positioned. This design has rounded edges but too protruding corners, which makes for a difficult ergonomics problem. In this respect, the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE falls squarely under the desktop replacement category, not a full-blown laptop – you will need external peripherals to use the full potential of the laptop.
Connectivity
Overall, the ports have been arranged in a way that is in line with how you might arrange your desk. You can also connect a larger external storage device via the USB-A 3.2 Gen2 port on the rear if you wish. It further enhances the ability to replace the desktop. On the left is the single USB-C port, and the general layout and range of features at hand are best described as accurate.
We needed a full-size card slot, however. Once you update your home router to Wi-Fi 6, the Zephyrus Duo 15 SE will enable multi-gigabit internet connectivity. With future software updates, Asus says the laptop may be upgraded to support Bluetooth 5.1 as well.
Battery Life
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE gaming on the battery is not something you can relish, as your laptop will likely die within just over an hour. In non-gaming and non-graphic intensive tasks, the battery can last a little less than five hours on average, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected, the laptop’s primary screen at 50 percent brightness, and the second display at 25 percent brightness. Such a scenario would be a typical workday for this laptop.
If you are interested in gaming on the go or video editing, expect your battery to last three hours at best. Its 280W power brick tops it off, which feels as imposing as the beast it is. Using a high-wattage USB-C power adapter, you can charge the laptop using USB Power Delivery. If you do, however, it will only run at a slower speed, and even at a slower speed, it won’t run fully. As a result, carrying a power brick becomes rather essential, further emphasizing its desktop replacement status.
You Can’t Dislike It, But Can You Justify It?
It all comes with a hefty price tag of Rs 2,99,990. A computer like the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE is overkill for anyone who isn’t a hardcore creative professional or gamer. Most of the time, I couldn’t quantify how much use it had in my everyday workflows, but if you do a lot of writing, you won’t look at it anyway. Even within its performance bracket, it is also more expensive even though you get two OLED displays.
Therefore, is the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE worth buying? The target audience for this laptop is at the extremity of the consumer band. They can choose from the Alienware m15 R6, the MSI GE76 Raider, and even the ROG Strix Scar 15 from ASUS.
The two laptops mentioned above aren’t exactly as innovative as the Zephyrus Duo 15 SE, however, they are certainly more functional, offering good performance and a better-spaced keyboard. This should only be your choice if you want a nicer desktop, have external keyboards and mice to connect, and don’t have to move the enormous power cord around a lot.
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Edited by Anupama Roy
