Double Screen Laptops are FINALLY Good

This is the 2026 Asus laptop lineup. These are running all new chips. They have very impressive hardware engineering. A lot of cool stuff going on. So, let's start off with the big boy, the Asus ZenBook Duo. People really liked the previous version, but that ran an older generation of Intel chip that just didn't quite make this product what it could or should be. The new one for 2026 has Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chip in it and has been fully redesigned to take advantage of it. So, the first thing you'll notice, this now has their serillumin material across the whole device. The top panel, the keyboard deck, the bottom panel. This it's fully serumin. This is by far my favorite like unique material from any of the laptop companies right now. If you haven't felt it before, it's like this stone-like matte texture and it's tough. You can be rough with it. You can be messy with it. You throw it in your bag. Like this device here. I've had it for over a year. I've been treating it like I'm a degenerate with my laptops. I throw this thing around. But because the top panel has this ser aluminum stuff, it's just so good. I wish more devices would use it, and I'm glad that they brought it to this. The other big change is the hinge. So, if you look at the spine of this device, it almost looks like a Samsung foldable, like some big back foldable phone here. And it's this new hinge technology that when you open and close it, the hinge reveals and hides itself. It's really neat. But in addition to looking super cool, the purpose of it is to actually have a very small gap or like uh break between the two panels when you have it open. So, if this is the first time you've seen a double screen laptop, the way this one in particular works is that when you pop it open, you have a detachable keyboard, which we'll get to in a second, but you are greeted with a very nice double screen experience. And with this new hinge, this brake is quite a bit smaller, but it is not a foldable OLED display. It is two separate panels, or else this one would be so much more expensive. But these panels look really good. It's dual 14-inch OLEDs, 144 hertz, variable refresh rate. They are amazing for productivity and multitasking. It looks good when they're stacked vertically, but they also work really well when they're side by side. And the kickstand works nicely in this vertically stacked orientation as well as like the side by side orientation where I like that. It's just like a really versatile and very usable pair of displays. And because of that physical line break between the two panels, it's not something you use for like a single mega video spanning across both screens, it's more of a tool to just have more screen for whatever workflow you have. So if you have, you know, multiple applications you want all open at the same time or one application that has a ton of windows and you just want all of them showing at once, like this is it just allows for that. I think that most workflows in this world would just benefit from more screen. How could it not? More screen in the same footprint as a regular laptop. The keyboard's also been updated. It's still a detachable Bluetooth keyboard. The battery life has been improved significantly over the previous version. It's still very fast to type on, very comfortable to use. But when you place this new keyboard on the device, these magnetic pogo pins actually pop up from the chassis to make the connection for charging and data. And it makes this whole process of switching between the different screen modes feel very intentional and just properly engineered. The old one felt more like an afterthought. This feels like it was designed for this actual interaction. Now, under the hood, we have Intel's new Core Ultra Series 3 chip. I can't show you benchmarks and frame rates yet, but from poking around, it looks very impressive, and the chip is the main reason why this product is so much better this time around. It's a really powerful GPU, really energy efficient chip that just makes so much more sense for a dual screen laptop. And this time around, with the 99Wh battery that's split up into two for better balance, we're getting battery life claims that are much more appealing than the previous generation. Uh, so 45 watt total TDP with pen support on the display and great sounding speakers. all in a normal looking package. Now that chip, that Intel Core Ultra Series 3 is also being used in these products. So the Asus Zenbook S16 and S14, this is just a chip drop refresh. So same idea as the previous generation high-end ZenBook with an Intel chip. Uh but this time around, because of that new chip, you got a new CPU, way better GPU, more energy efficient. The top panel is slightly different. These are more minimal and arguably more modern looking, but they're still only running their ceramic polymer on the top panel on these devices. The middle and bottom are still just full aluminum. Okay, switching things up, we have the ZenBook A14 as well as the all-new ZenBook A16. And these are running the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite chip. So, the second generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite lineup. These are ARMbased CPUs. And last year when they launched the Zenbook A14, I think they had the right idea. The portability was there. It was very wellm made, but that first generation chip just made this product feel just a little bit underbaked. Partly it was the chip, but also it's just the software experience last year with Microsoft wasn't great. It it was good, but it wasn't great. This year with the X2 lead chip, Qualcomm's claimed a pretty big jump in CPU and GPU performance, but they're also claiming to be able to deliver that performance with way less power. Now, from my early testing of these devices, the gains seem legit. It looks to be a pretty significant CPU and GPU bump, but I do need to test these things more thoroughly, especially with more mature drivers to be able to draw a proper conclusion. Now, ASUS is claiming that these things have incredible battery life. 35 hours of video playback, which is bonkers. These aren't retail units, so I can't properly test battery life on them, but I will say just from early testing, these are absolutely multi-day battery devices, like for sure. So, between the A14 and A16, the A16 runs a more powerful version of the chip. It's running the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. So, this thing runs at higher clock speeds. It also has faster memory bus. And this bigger device also has more space inside to be able to run a more capable cooling solution. Now, in terms of software, in particular about compatibility with Windows and ARM, this entire product genre, like ARMbased Windows computers, has improved a lot over the past year, and Microsoft's Prism emulator now supports AVX and AVX2. So, the vast majority of Windows-based games should run on the Snapdragon XLite products, but it's not 100%. There's obviously gonna be like tools and applications in niche industries that don't run well with this. But also like something as simple as like Valerant, a kernel levelbased antiche, Vanguard does not work with these things and you just can't play Valerant properly on these devices. But I do think that with the launch of these new chips, because these things are so promising from just a hardware perspective, I think it just pushes that industry forward and we just get to see better and better support over time. Or at least that's the hope. Now, the hardware on these things, they both have two USBC and one USBA. There's a full-size SD, but only on the 16-in. The 14-in does not have it. And you get really nice looking displays. 120 Hz OLED panels that immediately make these devices great for working, watching content, gaming. These are just excellent screens. The weight is again a highlight. The A14, super light at 990 g. The A16, this is, I think, 1.2 kilos. Both extraordinarily light but very durable and tanky feeling devices. Again, Sarah aluminum on the full device. It's on the top, the keyboard deck and the bottom. Comes in these two distinct colorways. They also tweaked the hinge. This is now a onehand openable hinge despite it being such a lightweight device. This is actually very difficult to do. A lot of the kind of premium devices will spend the engineering time and cost to do it. But this like when you have a super heavy laptop, this is easy, right? you just because it's such a heavy base, you just crank it open with one hand. But on a super lightweight device, it's hard because you have to have just the right hinge tension and just like the mechanism has to be so good that you can do it. But it does it works on the A14 uh and A16 as well. One hand openable, which I think just adds this sense of I don't know engineering care to a product like this. So yeah, these are the new ZenBook A14 and A16 configured with the new Snapdragon X2 Elite. All right, the last thing I want to show you is the GoPro collaboration that ASUS did. So, this is the Pro Art PX13. The design of the packaging has GoPro all over. And when you open it up, the box even has those foam cubes you can pluck out for customizing and storing stuff. And everything has GoPro vibes. The box came in the hard shell storage case thing and the device itself. So, this thing runs the Stricks Halo chip from AMD. This is the APU with an incredibly powerful GPU. It is not like a super energyefficient chip. This is built for performance and I'm assuming with the GoPro collaboration video editing performance. It's got a color accurate OLED panel with a dedicated GoPro button to launch the GoPro launcher and it's got the ASUS dial for creative workflows. It's for a very specific audience, but if you're into the whole GoPro ecosystem, this can be pretty cool. Uh, so there you have it. That is the ASUS laptop line for 2026. Lot of cool chips and a ton of cool engineering behind the new devices this year. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.

First impressions of the 2026 ASUS Zenbook Duo If you'd like to support the channel, consider a Dave2D membership by clicking the “Join” button above! http://twitter.com/Dave2D http://www.instagram.com/Dave2D https://discord.gg/Dave2D