Asus unveils radical new laptop with TWO 4K screens that turns the touchpad into a second display
- The ZenBook Pro Duo features a 14-inch 4K display and a 15-6.inch OLED screen
- The secondary display can be used to draw doodles, manage apps and more
- Asus hasn’t released pricing or availability but expects it to launch later this year
Asus has added a new laptop to its lineup that puts a fresh spin on the dual-screen device trend.
The ZenBook Pro Duo takes some inspiration from the Touch Bar on Apple’s MacBook Pro by putting a 14-inch 4K display just above the keyboard.
While it’s certainly not a replacement for the main 15.6-inch display, the ‘ScreenPad’ is designed to accomplish quite a few tasks, serving as a toolbar to hold your app icons, a mini drawing tablet for quick doodles or a way to easily multitask between apps.
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Asus revealed the ZenBook Pro Duo at the Computex tech conference in Taipei.
The firm has yet to announce pricing or availability for the device, but said it expects to launch the ZenBook toward the end of this year.
Even with the futuristic dual-screen design, the laptop has many familiar features that users need.
There’s a keyboard below the ScreenPad, as well as a standard touchpad to the right of it that can transform into a number pad with just a few taps.
The webcam supports Windows Hello face recognition so that users can unlock their device by scanning their face, instead of entering a password.
Early hands-on tests of the device have mentioned that the keyboard can feel a bit cramped, since it’s competing with a 14-inch secondary display above it.
For similar reasons, several testers noted that the touchpad can be awkward to use because it’s crammed into the corner of the laptop.
Asus has added a new laptop to its lineup that puts a fresh spin on the dual-screen device trend. The ZenBook Pro Duo a 14-inch 4K display just above the keyboard
Asus debuted the ZenBook Pro Duo at the Computex conference in Taipei. The firm didn’t announce pricing or availability, but said it expects to launch the device by the end of this year
That said, there are some compelling use cases for the ScreenPad.
Users can turn the display into a secondary screen for multi-tasking, running three different app windows at a time in the smaller display, so that users can, for example, keep chatting with their friends while running a video game full-screen on the main display.
It can serve as a control panel for the computer, letting users close out of whatever windows or apps they have open all at once.
Additionally, it can be used as an extension of the main display, so that whatever window you have open displays continuously into the secondary screen.
Users can turn the display into a secondary screen for multi-tasking, running three different app windows at a time in the smaller display, so that users can, for example, keep chatting with their friends while running a video game full-screen on the main display
As The Verge pointed out, this could make for a bit of a disorienting user experience.
Despite this, the ZenBook Pro Duo is being released at a convenient time when many other gadgetmakers are experimenting with screen shapes and styles.
Earlier this month, Lenovo showed off an as-yet-unnamed laptop with a folding screen.
It features a 13.3-inch all-screen display in the interior that can shift between ‘laptop mode,’ where half of the display turns into an on-screen keyboard, or ‘tablet mode,’ where it becomes a full-screen display.