VERDICT
World-beating power and innovative design, but it’s
also expensive and the design could be improved in
some key areas.OVERALL SCORE
81 %%
PERFORMANCE
24 / 25
DESIGN
21 / 25
HARDWARE
23 / 25VALUE
13 / 25BENCHMARK RESULTS
settings if we enabled DLSS (without ray tracing), and its
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla minimums dipped below 30fps.
The new AMD CPU is a monster though. The single-
threaded image editing score of 66,279 is almost 10,000
points beyond the results from any Intel laptop chip, and its
Handbrake video encoding result of 621,204 trounces any
competition. The Duo will handle 4K video work and other
high-end content-creation tasks with ease.
The Asus produces fan noise when gaming, but it’s no
worse than other high-end laptops. During work tests, the
processor hit a single-core peak of 4.5GHz and an all-core
turbo peak of 4.1GHz. It attained a delta T of 72°C, which is
the CPU’s maximum temperature, but clock speeds never
declined and there was never any instability.
The processor is limited to drawing 50W when the GPU
is active, and this means the CPU throttles to 3.7GHz on all
cores during graphical workloads. Asus has clearly had to
do some work to keep the thermals balanced, but no matter
what the task, the noise levels are reasonable and there’s
always enormous power available.
The biggest problem is heat. During gaming and CPU-
intensive workloads, hot air is vented from the right of the
machine and the underside becomes too hot to touch.GIMP IMAGE
EDITING
66,279
HANDBRAKE H.264
VIDEO ENCODING621,204
HEAVY MULTI-
TASKING
173,721
SYSTEM
SCORE223,091
Thankfully, system stability never suffered, and this laptop
will rarely leave a desktop anyway. Expect to be desk-
bound because of the battery too. While the Duo lasted for
three hours during work, it barely made it through an hour
of gaming.
Meanwhile, the main panel has a 1,144:1 contrast ratio and
a 6,740K colour temperature, and it renders 100 per cent of
the sRGB and Adobe RGB gamuts. The only issue is the delta
E of 4.33, which is good rather than great, but this display is
generally bold, punchy, and excellent for gaming and work.
The ScreenPad has lower contrast and poorer colours, but
accuracy is more important on the primary panel. The two
4W speakers and two 2W tweeters are great too – they’re
loud and clear, with balanced bass and a crisp top end.Conclusion
The Zephyrus Duo has more power than any other laptop
we’ve tested. The dual-screen design can be useful in
some scenarios, and the machine is surprisingly slim. The
second screen is hardly an essential, though, and it hampers
keyboard and trackpad quality. Also, the GPU can’t handle
demanding 4K gaming, and the Asus is expensive and
sometimes hot and loud. If you’ve got money to burn and
you’ll benefit from the second screen, then the Asus is an
impressive showcase of new technology, but most people
will be better off saving a big chunk of money and buying a
conventional laptop.
MIKE JENNINGS99th percentile Average3,840 x 2,160, Vulkan, Ultra Nightmare settingsDOOM ETERNAL0 30 60 90 120Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo SE GX551 42fps 81fps
3,840 x 2,160, Very High settings, High anti-aliasingASSASSIN’S CREED VALHALLA0 30 60 90 120Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo SE GX551 27fps 36fps
3,840 x 2,160, Ultra settingsCYBERPUNK 20770 30 60 90 120Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo SE GX551 21fps 23fps
3,840 x 2,160, Ultra settings, High RT, PhysX Off, Hairworks offMETRO EXODUS0 30 60 90 120Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo SE GX551 20fps 29fps