The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is a creator’s dream machine

In the past few months, it felt like the only innovation happened in the smartphone space. Or perhaps we can attribute that to the breakneck speed that industry is taking. But the mobile phone space isn’t the only industry pushing forward. ASUS at Computex 2019 in Taiwan is making its own moves in the laptop space. And it’s brought its best tech into its latest flagship model—the ZenBook Pro Duo.

At last year’s Computex, ASUS showed off the ZenBook Pro, a laptop that featured a secondary screen on the touchpad. ASUS called this the ScreenPad. The Taiwanese company builds on this idea with the ZenBook Pro Duo. It supersizes the idea and places the ScreenPad Plus right underneath the display, giving you an extra 14-inch full-width 4K secondary screen.

The main screen is impressive enough with a 15.6-inch 4K UHD OLED touchscreen panel with 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, 100:000:1 contrast ratio, 100% DCI-P3 coverage, and 89% screen-to-body ratio. But add the ScreenPad Plus and it becomes an entirely different machine. It feels like the closest we can get to a foldable screen on a laptop right now. The ScreenPad Plus has a resolution of 3,840 x 1,100, 32:9 aspect ratio, and some sort of matte film covering the screen.

This approach at creating the next-generation ScreenPad makes a lot more sense to us. The first version felt too restrictive and small. This one really allows for an extended display for creatives who need more screen to work with while they’re mobile. It works for everything from graphic design work, video editing, music creation, as well as game streaming.

The ScreenPad Plus also offers ScreenXpert software, which offers apps, tools, and utilities built to get the most out of the ScreenPad Plus. One of the more useful features is Task Group. It allows you to save a group of apps/tasks that will launch at the same time when you call up said group. For the video editor, for example, you can have a browser and file manager open at the bottom, while your video editing software is open on the main display. Now, if you’d rather see more of one specific program or window, that’s possible, too. You can have a window take up both screens. ASUS claims this will be particularly useful for work like coding, graphic design, video editing or rendering, and the like.

The ScreenPad Plus can have up to three programs open side by side. And the App Switcher will let you easily switch the apps that are on the ScreenPad with the one on the main display. ASUS is working with developers like Corel to optimize adaptive ScreenPad tools. But you can also use any Windows app with the ScreenPad Plus without any optimization.

Aside from bringing the ScreenPad to this laptop, ASUS also ported the NumberPad into this device. This dual-function touchpad comes with an LED-illuminated numeric keypad integrated in it.

To make sure this machine runs smoothly, the ZenBook Pro Duo runs on up to a 9th-gen Intel Core i9 processor, gaming-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU, Wi-Fi 6, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to a 1TB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD. You also get a full set of I/O ports that include a Thunderbolt 3-enabled USB Type C port and dedicated Turbo Fan to improve cooling.

The ZenBook Pro Duo comes in a new Celestial Blue color and an asymmetric version of the iconic Zen-inspired spun-metal finish. ASUS hasn't given the official rating for how long the ZenBook Pro Duo can last on a single charge. But when we asked, they're getting around five hours out of it with the ScreenPad Plus’s display on.

There is a smaller version of the ZenBook Pro Duo called the ZenBook Duo. It comes with a 14-inch display and 12.6-inch FHD ScreenPad Plus. It runs on an Intel Core i7 processor and GeForce MX250 GPU. ASUS hasn't given price of the device yet, but we can expect it to launch in the third quarter of this year.