Asus ships the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 with AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX, the fastest mobile processor available

The Asus Zephyrus Duo 16 is part of the ROG brand (Republic of Gamers) and is obviously targeted towards gamers, but the specials concept with the secondary screen as well as the powerful components also makes it an interesting option for content creators and as a mobile workstation. Designated mobile workstations usually have an advantage thanks to professional GPUs with additional driver certifications for professional apps, but the consumer GeForce GPUs can also keep up very well in some professional scenarios.

The device itself is pretty inconspicuous when the lid is closed and you can use it in professional environments, but the thickness already reveals that is not a conventional laptop. As soon as you open the lid, you will immediately notice the keyboard right at the front of the base unit as well as the secondary screen, which is slightly raised. Whether you actually need a second screen is another question though and even if the handling is not always ideal, the concept works pretty well overall. The picture quality of the glossy IPS touchscreen is good, but it cannot keep up with the matte Mini-LED screen. It offers the WQHD resolution (2560 x 1600 pixels) and it offers excellent image quality with the 240 Hz refresh rate. We measure a maximum brightness of 700 nits for SDR contents and almost 1400 nits for HDR contents. It is also very easy to calibrate.

Asus does not make many compromises in terms of performance, either, because the new GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop is combined with the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, which has 16 Zen4 cores and offers more performance than Intel's Raptor Lake-HX CPUs, but it is also more efficient at the same time. The manufacturer only saves some money in terms of RAM and "only" uses DDR5-4800, but at least 32 GB. 

We noticed some bugs during our review and there were even a couple of blue screens. The high idle consumption of 20-30 Watts (without the secondary screen) was also a bit high. The bright Mini-LED screen is one reason, but we suspect the new AMD platform might consume quite a bit of power while idling as well. However, we need to gather more data from other review units before we can analyze this further. The result for the Zepyhrus Duo 16 is a short battery runtime though, and you cannot expect more than 4 hours even with a noticeably reduced panel brightness and without the use of the secondary screen.

The ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 is definitely a very interesting and powerful laptop, but it is also very pricey at 5000 Euros. Considering the WQHD resolution of the main screen, you should consider the less expensive SKU with the RTX 4080 Laptop. If you can utilize the secondary screen, you should have a closer look, but if that's not the case, you will be better off with a traditional laptop. Please see our comprehensive review for all further details:

• Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 2023 Review (Ryzen 9 7945HX, GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop, 240 Hz Mini-LED)