Asus Zenbook Duo (2024) is a dual-screen laptop with up to Intel Meteor Lake and a detachable keyboard

Asus has been sticking extra screens on laptops for years… but usually those screens don’t take up the whole keyboard area, allowing users to get a little extra screen space without sacrificing physical keys.

But the new Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406) is a little different, in that you can remove the keyboard to reveal a second full-size display, giving you more ways to use this dual-screen laptop. If it looks familiar though, that’s because the new Zenbook Duo seems to be the Asus version of the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i, which is a dual-screen laptop that’s getting its second iteration this year.

The Asus version features two 14 inch, 2880 x 1800 pixel OLED displays with 120 Hz refresh rates. You can open the computer up like a normal laptop and use the bottom screen for touch input… or place the laptop’s Bluetooth keyboard atop that screen for a more traditional laptop experience.

But you can also remove that keyboard, put it in front of the dual-screen PC, and then position the screens so they’re standing up like two horizontal monitors stacked atop one another or like two portrait-orientation screens stacked side by side.

Want to use the computer like a tablet? Too bad. One surprising difference between this dual-screen laptop and the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i is that the Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406) has a 180-degree hinge rather than a 360 degree hinge. But you could, I suppose, unfold the screens for use like an enormous tablet with a line down the center… or hold it like a book with the screens mostly unfolded.

Weighing 1.35 kg (about 3 pounds), it’s a kind of heavy book with big pages, but it can hold an awful lot of text thanks to support for up to 2TB of solid state storage.

When you’re not using the keyboard, it’s designed to fit between the screens for easy portability, and it charges by connecting to a set of pogo pins in the lower screen, where its held in place by a set of magnets.

Another thing that makes the Zenbook Duo different from Lenovo’s dual-screen laptop? Asus includes a built-in stand that lets you prop up both screens without the need for a removable case/stand.

The Asus laptop should also be more affordable: it’s expected to go on sale in early 2024 for $1500 and up, which is about 25% less than the starting price for the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i.

The Zenbook Duo (UX8406) also supports up to 32GB of RAM, features an Intel Meteor Lake processor (with support for up to a Core Ultra 9 185H chip), and features two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port.

The laptop has a magnesium-aluminum alloy body, which helps keep the weight of the system under 3 pounds (if you’re not using the keyboard, which adds another ..66 pounds or so).

While the 75 Wh battery is bigger than the ones you often find in thin and light laptops, I suspect the second screen will be rather power-hungry, so I’ll be curious to find out what real-world battery life is like.