The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 (GX550) is an eye-popping beast in every sense

Note: This article was first published on 19th August 2020.

ROG’s newest gaming flagship has finally hit our sunny (or rainy) shores – the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15. Kenny has previously given us a good first-look from an ASUS private media session way back in April, which you can read again here but for completeness sake, I will talk about them in detail in my review as well. I was intrigued by the gaming notebook because from an aesthetic, functional and technical point of views, the Zephyrus Duo 15 is an engineering marvel. Over the past week, I’ve had the chance to play, test and benchmark it and here are my thoughts.

It's quite the engineering feat

The Zephyrus series have always been a showcase of ROG’s engineering prowess. There’s the original ROG Zephyrus GX501 that debuted way back in Computex 2017 and features a unique bottom panel, which drops down slightly like the drawbridge to a spaceship when the hinge is raised to boost airflow. Then most recently there’s the impish ROG Zephyrus G14, which became the first gaming notebook to run on AMD’s newest and excellent Ryzen 4000 mobile processors, and also sport a unique AniMe Matrix LED panel on its lid.

The Zephyrus Duo 15 and its two displays concept, however, isn’t new and is actually just the third notebook of its type that has rolled out of the ASUS factory – although it’s the first for ASUS’ gaming-centric ROG brand. All three looks uncannily alike, but consider the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 to be a very souped-up and much improved version of the original two-screen notebook, the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo. How so?

For one, the secondary display, which is called the ROG ScreenPad Plus and is pretty much a replica of the ScreenPad Plus found on the ZenBook Pro Duo, has a new hinge design that lifts the display at a greater angle when the notebook is opened. Next, the Zephyrus Duo 15 is a specs monster. My test unit came with these key specifications:

• Intel Core i9-10980HK (2.4GHz, 8 Cores)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super with Max-Q
• 32GB RAM (dual-channel)
• 2 x 1TB M.2 NVMe that combines into 1TB running at RAID 0
• 15.6-inch Full-HD IPS display panel 300Hz/3ms, Patone Validated (A 4K display upgrade option is available as well)

As you can see, the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 comes with a pretty insane specs and decked with Intel and NVIDIA’s top of the line mobile processors. This notebook has the looks as well as the power to back it up. But managing all this power and heat efficiently requires some ingenuity too. Keeping everything cool is an extensive heatsink design that uses Thermal Grizzly’s liquid metal compound instead of regular thermal paste for the CPU. ASUS claims this improves heat transfer and enables the CPU to sustain higher clock speeds for longer (less throttling).

Additionally, having the ROG ScreenPad Plus lifted exposes the large 28.5mm high air intake path to enable the notebook to draw cooler air above it. ASUS calls it the Active Aerodynamic System Plus. These combined to make the Zephyrus Duo 15, while not exactly whisper quiet, one of the quieter gaming notebooks I’ve tested to date even when it’s running at full load. That’s quite a remarkable feat.

But how are the displays?

The 15.6-inch primary display that came with my test unit uses a Full-HD IPS panel, meaning its native resolution is locked to 1920 x 1080 pixels. You’d also be forgiven for assuming that many manufacturers will abandon visual quality in place of a faster display but not so with this gaming notebook. Sure, the Zephyrus Duo 15’s screen sports a speedy 300Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time, but the panel is also Pantone Validated and factory calibrated for accuracy across 100% of the sRGB colour space. The colours, brightness and clarity output is both impressive and stunning, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s by far the best Full-HD display I’ve seen on any notebook.

Naturally, the 14-inch secondary ROG ScreenPad Plus display is a key highlight of the Zephyrus Duo 15. It’s a touch-screen capable display with an IPS panel running at a native 3840 x 1100 resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate. It’s an odd resolution that works better with the 4K display upgrade option though, as the resolution disparity between both screens on my test unit meant that I kept having to resize my windows each time I drag them between them.

It also has a matte finish, which is a good choice as I can imagine a glossy one will just makes the inevitable fingerprints and other smudges on it more obvious and harder to clean.

Port side, Sir.

As for ports, there’s a single USB-C port that supports Thunderbolt 3 and two USB-A ports supporting USB 3.2 Gen 1 on the right side. Right at the rear there’s another USB-A port that supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, an HDMI 2.0b port (supporting 4K@60Hz), and a Gigabit Ethernet port. When not tethered to LAN, the Zephyrus Duo 15 supports the latest Wi-Fi 6 for fast wireless downloads. Completing the list are the 3.5mm audio jacks for headphones and microphones, and DC-in jack for charging on the left side of the notebook.

Speaking of charging, the Zephyrus Duo 15 also comes with a separate 65W power adapter that lets you charge the notebook via the USB-C port. It’s a much smaller and lighter power brick for traveling around with than the default 230W adapter, but only suitable for light uses such as web browsing and streaming videos. I thought this was a very nice touch from ROG.

My only gripe here is there’s no memory card readers of any sort, which is a little odd exclusion as ROG has targeted this notebook at three key audiences and one of them certainly could do with one. More on that in the next page.

For Gamers by Gamers?

As a ROG-badged gaming notebook, the Zephyrus Duo 15 is without a doubt targeted at gamers. But with the presence of the secondary ROG ScreenPad Plus display, it’s also specifically aimed at gamers who streams and or, create gaming-related content. The second screen have some practical user scenarios here. Here are some examples:

Streamers, for example, can play their APEX Legends or Valorant matches on the 15.6-inch primary screen while having optimised apps like Xsplit Gamecaster run on the secondary display, so that it’s easier to get to your broadcast controls and stream chats.

Some games, like DOTA 2, work with Overwolf apps that show you real-time stats, build recommendations. The second screen also allows you to place your team chats or a browser running YouTube video guides at the same time.

Digital designers could always do with more space on their screen and for those who prefer to do their creative production outside of home, the ROG ScreenPad Plus give you the capability to, for example, move the timeline, layers and other contextual menus in Adobe Photoshop to this second screen.

Basically, Windows sees the ROG ScreenPad Plus as a second display so you can practically use it to display anything you want here. But how practical this additional screen can be will ultimately depends on your usage habits. If you are used to a large desktop-size monitor, then the ROG ScreenPad Plus goes a long way in alleviating one of the biggest shortcomings that come with working on a notebook ― namely a smaller display. Alternatively, if you have always been comfortable working on a notebook and do not face the odd scenario where you need to track two or more programs running simultaneously, then the additional display real estate might be wasted most of the time.

The ROG ScreenPad Plus is not without its shortcomings though. For one, accidentally tapping on it while running a game on full-screen mode will cause you to exit the game and minimise it to the Windows taskbar – a catastrophic nightmare if you’re playing a MOBA or online Shooter game. Second, and not so deadly, is when swiping to the bottom of your screen to search or to click on the taskbar, you might find yourself overshooting and ending up in the ROG ScreenPad Plus. But perhaps what I find to be shortcomings could just be minor niggles that can be overcome or get used to for some.

How does it performs?

At the end of the day, performance still matters. Let’s find out how the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 stacks against some 15-inch gaming notebooks that we have tested to date. For comparisons’ sake, I’ve also decided to include the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo UX581 into the mix for some of the benchmarks, as it’s almost identical in shape and form.

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Application Performance

Unlike PCMark 10, which is a synthetic benchmark tool and the results are great as a reference point of a computer’s performance, SYSmark 2018 is an application-based benchmark that reflects “real world” usage patterns of business users in the areas of Productivity, Creativity and Responsiveness. This means using popular Microsoft and even Adobe applications rather than less obscure options used in PCMark 10. The only gaming notebook that I’ve run SYSmark on is the previously reviewed Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XB, but I’ll be including this benchmark in our future notebook reviews from hereon.

Suffice to say, the Zephyrus Duo 15’s performance is unsurprisingly good given its top-of-the-line specifications. We can see that it pretty much edged out all the notebooks in both PCMark 10’s Extended and SYSmark 2018 benchmark rounds. What’s not immediately noticeable is that the 10th-Gen Intel Core i9-10980HK mobile processor is an unlocked and overclockable processor (unlike the locked 10th-Gen i7-10875H mobile processor on the Gigabyte Aero 15 OLED XB), and unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to explore this aspect and see how far we can push it to make it in time for this review. Nonetheless, I will revisit this in a separate article because I am intrigued, amused even, by how the supposedly lesser i7-10875H performs so close to the higher-end i9-10980HK in SYSmark (more on that in my closing statement). Let’s just move on for now.

Gaming Performance

It’s a gaming notebook! Of course we needed to run gaming benchmarks and as we can see from the results below, the Zephyrus Duo 15 pretty much ate up whatever games we threw at it with ease even with the secondary display turned on. But some context needs to be explained here. You see, the gaming notebook is powered by the latest GeForce RTX 2080 Super with Max-Q mobile GPU along with the fastest mobile processor available from Intel, and our test unit’s display only supports up to Full-HD resolution. That is a lot of excess power to play games at 1080p, and if specs-friendly games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or League of Legends are the only games you play all the time then the Zephyrus Duo 15 is obviously an overkill.

Conversely, I can imagine YouTubers or Streamers who play and create content out of resource-hungry games like Red Dead Redemption 2 Online and Call of Duty: Warzone will get more performance mileage out of the notebook.

What about battery life?

Our Battery life test was done on PCMark 10 with the Zephyrus Duo 15's two displays at full brightness. You can read more about our battery testing methodology and philosophy here.

Despite its two displays and power-hungry processors, the Zephyrus Duo 15’s battery life is surprisingly good for a gaming notebook. I certainly wasn’t expecting a 15-inch notebook of this class to be able to last more than five hours. Certainly, the notebook’s 90Wh high capacity battery played a part, but we can also see that its power consumption is pretty low when it comes to non-gaming activities as well. At the same time, it’s not unexpected to see the Zephyrus Duo 15 draining battery much quicker when gaming.

It must also be noted that during some of these intensive benchmarks or when playing games, the notebook never got exceedingly noisy nor uncomfortably hot to the touch. ROG did some pretty wicked magic here with the thermal dissipation, and I am more than convinced that their new Liquid Metal Thermal compound (apparently it’s used on all of the latest ROG notebooks) played a key role with getting heat away from the processor more effectively too.

Closing statement

First, let me drop the bombshell. This Zephyrus Duo 15 (GX550) is not cheap and certainly not for those with a tight wallet. But yet, it’s also an ROG so if you are familiar with ASUS gaming sub-brand by now, then the notebook’s price tag of S$6,998 should feel like a familiar punch in the gut. You’d winched but it would not have been the first time. ROG even felt obliged to throw in a haversack (which actually looks nice), gaming headset, gaming mouse and even a Full-HD webcam (the notebook does not come with one built in) in the package.

But price tag aside, there are quite a lot to like about the Zephyrus Duo 15. The build quality is impressive, for one. The Zephyrus Duo 15 is built with a reinforced metal chassis that supposedly keeps it resilient against everyday use. It’s certainly not light nor is it the slimmest, but it does exude premium and I can say with confidence that’s a rare characteristic in modern gaming notebooks.

Then there’s the hardware that powers the notebook. A top of the line 10th-Gen Intel Core i9-10980HK processor paired with a matching high performance NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super with Max-Q is the best processor pairing that money can buy today. 32GB of memory and two 1TB M.2 SSDs running at RAID 0 completes the setup to give the Zephyrus Duo 15 a super responsive and fluid performance. If you are chasing after specifications, I can’t think of a better spec-ed or a better-built gaming notebook than the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15.

I also genuinely consider the ROG ScreenPad Plus secondary display a useful feature that I think many will appreciate, and a classic case of “you won’t know how much you want one until you’ve used one”.

But there are the question marks too. There can’t be a perfect computer, can it?

To accommodate the dual-display concept, compromises have been made. The placement of the keyboard and trackpad have been pushed down to the lower edge of the notebook, and despite a wristpad that comes with the notebook, does take a while to get used to. This also has the unwanted effect of discouraging owners to take it out and about, as not only does the wristpad takes up additional space on, say, a coffee table, and without it, the keyboard is almost a pain to use. Don’t even try typing with the notebook on your lap. But even if you do want to take it out for a spin, bear in mind that the same reinforced metal that adds to its durability is also what contributes to its 2.4kg weight. It’s not heavy per se, but carry it in a backpack for a while and your shoulders will definitely feel its presence.

So, my closing statement is this. I like the innovations taken here and the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 is an interesting peek at what the future of mobile PC gaming could look like. The Zephyrus Duo 15 is already one of the best 15-inch high-end gaming notebook I've come across this year – it’s got top-notch performance, beautiful and unique screens and an exceptional build quality. It’s also very expensive and not exactly portable, but if you could live with that and have the dollars to match your pursuit for a top-of-the-line gaming notebook despite these unusual times, then I can't think of a better recommendation. And that's why this notebook deserves our Editor's Choice seal of approval.

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