 Putting a second or even a third screen on a laptop isn't an especially original or even new idea. The problem that everyone, myself included, seems to run into is that doing it in an elegant manner is easier said than done. That changes today. So this review is gonna have to be a little different because this laptop is a little different. I'm gonna talk about the speed and specs and build quality and whatnot as well as my experience using the ZenBook Pro Duo. Then I'm actually gonna hand the floor over to our reigning king of multi-monitor, Taron Van Heemert, who has been editing our videos for the past five years to talk about his experience with it. And guys, pay attention, because even if you're not shopping for a laptop, you should watch this video. I'm calling it now. This is the direction the industry is going. This video is brought to you by GlassWire. What's going in and out of your PC when you're connected to the internet? With GlassWire, you can find out and see if there are any suspicious or badly behaving apps. Use offer code Linus to get 25% off at the link below. It starts under the hood. The Pro Duo is available with the most powerful mobile processor in the market, the 8-core Core i9-9980HK. It can be equipped with up to 32 gigs of dual-channel DDR4 memory, as much as a terabyte of storage on a PCI Express Gen 3 X4 interface, and a GeForce RTX 2060 to handle GPU heavy tasks. But we've heard that story before. Roided out hardware specs in anything but a thick desktop replacement form factor typically result in a prompt visit from our friend, Mr. Thermal Throttling. Not this time though. Borrowing from their Zephyrus gaming lineup, Asus designed the hinge of this notebook to lift up the bottom of the device, giving it better access to the fresh air it needs to stay cool, even under heavy multi-threaded workloads. After an initial spike to 3.6 GHz, my Blender classroom render saw all core clock speeds of 3.1 to 3.2 GHz throughout the entire rest of the test, with CPU temps in the 90 degree range and system fans that I would describe as clearly audible, but not super annoying. And that's even though they were configured in turbo mode. To put that in perspective guys, the advertised all core base clock of this CPU is a mere 2.4 GHz. By the way, we'll be putting Apple's upcoming Mac Pro through the paces once it's available, subject to thermal throttling, so get subscribed so you don't miss that. And the performance story here is great on the graphics side of things as well. While it's not going to be on par with a top-of-the-line quadro GPU in certain professional applications, the RTX 2060 with Nvidia's pro-optimized studio driver ends up being a great middle ground option. It can be used to power real-time video effects like accelerating high resolution red footage playback or applying denoising effects in DaVinci Resolve. It can accelerate ray traced scene creation as we saw during Nvidia's demo day where they showed off RTX support in the Arnold renderer. It can encode high quality video in real time using NVENC and of course it can game, which presents a spectacularly interesting use case for the Pro Duo, doesn't it? Now the built-in webcam isn't amazing, but the notebook has got adequate I.O. So without any adapter weirdness, it's really simple to set up a mobile streaming station that all packs up neatly. Instead of relying on a phone on a little stand or a separate display to tweak software parameters or monitor Twitch chat for content creators who support themselves by live streaming gameplay online. I mean, it's kind of a funny thing, isn't it? Over the last decade the definition of digital artist has changed a lot. Which means that building a product that manages to improve the experience for this ever broader definition of content creator has proven to be a bit of a moving target. But the one thing that pretty much every creative professional will tell you is that you can never have too much desktop real estate. So let's pivot and talk about me. I do most of my creative work in Microsoft Word. I know it's not sexy like Lloyd's work designing our awesome merch, LTTstore.com, but the extra screen space definitely comes in handy for me in a lot of ways. I found it distracting at first, but I ended up quite liking the click and hold menu that pops up to let you add an app to the launcher, throw it down to the other screen or up, or do what I call a full maximize. And while I found that the 3x1 arrangement along the bottom was pretty small for a lot of things, the fact that it is just a normal secondary display with support for Windows's own snapping features means that it is super quick to do a 2x1 as well. This other feature means you probably won't end up fussing around with it much though. You can create a handful of common loadouts. So for me the ones that made the most sense were my dense and focused one designed for easily going back and forth between writing and reference materials like reviewers guides or keynote presentations. And then another one for when I'm working on something lighter and I don't mind being distracted by incoming messages or something playing in the background. Now some of the features like the 4K OLED 100% DCI-P3 upper screen were nice to haves for me rather than need to haves. So I guess this is a perfect spot to throw over to Taron who declared the ZenBook Pro Duo to be actually decent for editing video. Whatever that means, maybe he can elaborate. Oh yeah, that I'm rendering Linus. Please don't mess with that. Like in the middle of a render. Linus asked me to see if I thought this machine could make an editor more productive. I have some complaints, which I will definitely mention, but I love the second screen. It's fantastic. For Premiere I just put all my bins down there and for Photoshop I put panels down there that otherwise would have to be minimized. Compared to carrying around an external screen, having it integrated into the laptop feels like less of a pain in the ass. The fewer things I have to travel with the better. And I'll already be carrying an external mouse and keyboard anyway, and then I'll find a box to prop up the laptop on because I am not a fan of laptop ergonomics at the best of times. I wish I could force... What are you doing? I wish I could force this thing to be only a touchpad or only a numpad. As it is now, the cursor will jump when you hit a number, unless you have a mouse plugged in, but even then the number display just vanishes after a little while. Honestly, the all screen prototype looks really interesting to me because the more screen the better, and I prefer not to use the built-in keyboard anyway. I don't like that the top screen is glossy. I don't prefer those, but it was no worse than any other glossy screen. You've just got to reposition it a little bit to get rid of the glare. Viewing angles on both screens were great, so that helps. The touch functionality of both screens works really well, though occasionally when using the keyboard I would accidentally touch the second screen, which moves the cursor and clicks on stuff that I don't want to. With my Premiere Bins and Titler, I would find myself using touch to move things around, but I didn't find the screenpad software useful, and sometimes its menu button would get in the way. It's hard to put a number on the productivity improvement, but I think the most useful thing you can do for productivity is to add an extra screen. And while one and a half screens is obviously not as good as two screens, it is better than half as good as a full extra screen, if that makes sense. The more panels and menus and crap that I can get out of the way, the more room I have to work. And if we got new editing laptops, I would prefer this over a conventional one. Now to be clear, there are some compromises here. I mean, I was satisfied with the quality of the key switches, and the tracking of the touchpad is decent, but the unconventional layout means poorer ergonomics, both while typing and while operating the touchpad two-handed. ASUS unfortunately wasn't able to implement my idea for rebinding some of the keys on the left side to right and left click. I found the device and its included power brick to be pretty heavy to lug around all day, and when it's working, the Zenbook Pro Duo does get pretty toasty. But there is absolutely nothing else like this on the market right now, and it does do so many things right. It's got an IR Windows Hello camera so that it works in the dark, it includes a stylus for the bottom screen, the speakers are great with surprisingly good stereo imaging, and the overall fit and finish is a level of premium that I would have said ASUS would never reach back when they launched the original Zenbook. So, bottom line then, if it's between this and a MacBook Pro, the choice is pretty obvious to me. The folks at Apple have got some innovating to do. If you guys liked this video, go check out our recent one on building an ultimate performance DIY file sharing NAS, or click the link below to pick up your own Zenbook Pro Duo. If you really liked it, check out our sponsor, Drop.com. 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