Asus ZenBook Pro Duo With A Secondary ScreenPad Takes MacBook’s Touch Bar A Step Further

Taiwan based electronics manufacturer, Asus has unveiled yet another innovative lineup of laptops at the Computex 2019. The said event is held in Taipei, Taiwan and it is one of the world’s biggest PC convention. Taking the Touch Bar from Apple’s MacBooks a step further, Asus unveiled the ZenBook Pro Duo which features dual displays.

Asus ZenBook Pro Duo Specs & Design

As previously mentioned the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo has a distinctive design accrediting to two display. Out of the two displays, one is the primary screen while the second display is placed above the keyboard. The company has unveiled two models of the laptop which carry the following model numbers:

• UX581
• UX481

The key differences between the two models are disparate CPU, GPU and screen size. The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo UX581 features a 15.6 inch touch screen main display along with the 14 inch ScreenPad Plus (secondary display). On the other hand, the more affordable Asus ZenBook Pro Duo UX481 has a 14 inch main display along with 12.6 inch ScreenPad Plus display. Notably, the beefed up UX581 features 4K display while the UX481 has a display with FHD resolution.

In terms of processor, the Asus ZenBook UX581 is offered with two options a) i9-9980HK and b) i7-9750H. While the UX481 is offered only with the i7 option. The former features the Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU 6 GB of DDR6 RAM while the latter features Nvidia MX250 with 2 GB of RAM. The UX581 can be kitted with upto 32 GB of DD4 2666 MHz RAM while the former supports 2133 MHz DDR3 RAM upto 16GB.

Both the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo laptops can be configured with similar storage options which include 1 TB PCIE x4 SSD or 512GB / 256GB PCIe x2 SSD. The primary difference between the two storage options is dissimilar read and write speeds. The x4 SSD are upto twice as fast as the x2 variant. Features including connectivity, webcam and I/O port are identical on two variants of the Asus ZenBook. They support Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 along with an IR webcam with Windows Hello Support. I/O ports on the two laptops are as follows:

• 1 x Thunderbolt
• 3x USB-C
• 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A
• 1 x Standard HDMI
• 1 x Audio combo jack
• 1 x DC-in

Notably, the economical Asus ZenBook Pro Duo UX481 also has a Micro SD card slot. The former is powered by a 70 Wh battery while the UX581 is powered by a 71 Wh battery. 

Talking about the ScreenPad it is mainly targetted towards content creators who can use the secondary display to control or monitor additional controls in certain apps. One example of the ScreenPad would controlling additional features in video editing programs.  

Also Read: Lenovo’s Project Limitless Features a 5G Laptop Running On Snapdragon 8cx CPU Processor

All in all, the newly launched Asus ZenBook Pro Duo ultrabooks laptop seem highly innovative. However, the price of the two devices is yet to be unveiled which can be expected in the near future.