Since its birth in 1985, the laptop has not changed much in addition to becoming thinner and lighter, and what is visible to the naked eye is half screen and half keyboard. Compared with the changes of mobile phones from "straight board", "touch screen" to "folding screen", notebooks seem to be a little less innovative. But in fact, innovation about notebooks has always been endless. Among these innovations, the dual-screen design was once considered the future form of the notebook, but in the end, after a period of "excitement", it is still a niche market.
In fact, there is a brand that has not given up on innovation, from the W5Fe with a small secondary screen in 2007 to the UX260 in 2018, ASUS has been seriously studying the dual-screen design. Therefore, this Zenbook 14 dual screen has given me a lot of shock, and maybe this product will become a milestone in the history of dual-screen design.
The surface is ordinary, but the inside is full of goodness
In terms of appearance, the overall design of the machine continues the Zenbook series, and the fuselage is made of recyclable magnesium and aluminum alloy materials, which is low-carbon and environmentally friendly. The understated and restrained style of matte black lacquer is in stark contrast to the stunning feeling when the dual screens are unfolded, and it has a certain impact.
When I first got this machine, my colleagues thought it was just an ordinary laptop, until I told him that the keyboard could be taken off, and he blurted out the tone word that applies to all scenarios, yes, "amazing!" This contrasting design, to be honest, really brings a lot of satisfaction to its owner.
In fact, the most difficult problem to generalize in the past dual-screen notebooks is the interactive feeling of the second screen. Everyone should know that operating on this kind of full touch screen, no matter how you slide and drag, is a very silky enjoyment, but it is unrealistic to let it replace the tapping feeling of the keyboard.
In response to this situation, Zenbook 14 Dual Screen has adopted a magnetic keyboard design to ensure that users can type the keyboard for a long time on the basis of continuous optimization of the on-screen keyboard, and the lower screen can be tightly covered by the 6 magnetic contacts below, "camouflaging" itself as an ordinary laptop. When you take it down, it automatically turns into a large and almost frameless dual screen.
It is worth mentioning that the use scenarios of the dual-screen laptop fully considered by ASUS are different from the placement method of the regular notebook, so a large area metal bracket is installed at the bottom of the machine, and through the author's visual inspection, its maximum opening and closing angle has exceeded the right angle of 90°, so it can fully meet the needs of different angles.
Dual-screen design, double the joy
Judging from the name, ASUS has put the word "dual screen" in the name, indicating that it has done enough "homework" for the dual screen design. Among them, the five forms provided by ASUS really give full play to the characteristics of dual screens.
The first is of course the standard laptop mode, where the keyboard is connected to the computer through magnetic contacts, and at first glance it looks like a normal 14-inch laptop. The usage is also the same as a traditional laptop, with basically no differences. When the keyboard is removed, the secondary screen is activated, and the virtual keyboard can be awakened with a six-finger click, which is the second virtual keyboard mode of the Zenbook 14 Dual Screen, which projects the keyboard onto the second screen to build a virtual full keyboard interface. The first home screen still shows the main content.
It is worth mentioning that more tools can be opened by pulling down with six fingers, and you can switch between many tools by swiping with two fingers, it can be a pen tablet, or a workbench for editing, retouching, and color grading, and the office processing efficiency is directly doubled.
The third is the waterfall mode, which can be woken up with five fingers, at this time, the secondary screen is used as an extended display screen, providing a display area of nearly 20 inches, and the bracket at the bottom can be expanded at multiple angles, and the interaction mode of dual screens can easily surpass the limitations of traditional notebooks.
In waterfall mode, it is very beneficial for those who usually deal with multitasking. You can type on the upper screen and consult materials on the lower screen, you can read books and take online classes on one screen, take notes on the other screen, and the two screens operate independently without interfering with each other. And this new form of use can also display the interface of one software on two screens at the same time, so as to browse information in a more efficient way, and significantly improve the user experience and work efficiency.
The fourth is a book-like portrait mode, which can be activated by rotating Zenbook 14 Dual Display 90 degrees and standing it on a tabletop with a stand. The left-right split-screen experience is great for reading documents, PDFs, viewing long images, or doing some design work, Excel spreadsheets.
The last one is the sharing mode,Thanks to Zenbook 14 Dual ScreensThe maximum opening and closing angle180°,So you can stretch out two full-size2.8K ultra-narrow bezelOLEDThe touchable ASUS good screens at the same time,In this mode,The content on the screen can be rotated 180° as needed,Tile on the desktop,Mirror the content to the other party,Real-time operations can also be synchronized to the other party to see,When holding a meeting or presentation,There is no need to cast the screen,It also avoids the troublesome operation of moving the computer back and forth,So as to make communication smoother。
ASUS good screen, excellent quality
With five ways to display and use the screen, then its screen quality will naturally not fall behind. The Zenbook 14 Dual features a 14-inch 16:10 OLED touchscreen with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 2.8K resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 0.2ms response time.
It's worth mentioning that the screen also supports VRR variable refresh rate, which can be used to reduce energy efficiency when browsing general documents, and can switch to a high refresh rate of 120Hz for high-dynamic scenes such as video clips and games, resulting in a smoother picture.
In the UFOtest web test, it can be seen from the pictures taken by the author at 1/60 shutter speed that due to the low refresh rate of 30Hz, the ghosting is the most severe, the 60Hz has some ghosting, and the top 120Hz is due to the refresh speed, there is almost no ghosting.
In addition, the two OLEDs of Zenbook 14 dual screen also support 100% P3 wide color gamut, four professional color gamut switching, 10-bit color depth, and ΔE
In order to verify the true quality of the Zenbook 14 dual screen, the author used the Spyder X calibrator and DisplayCal software to see how the color accuracy and color gamut performance of this screen are.
Display P3模式
sRGB mode
In terms of color accuracy, the author tested the color accuracy performance in the more extensive Display P3 and sRGB modes. In Display P3 mode, the notebook averaged a color ΔE value of 0.74 with a maximum of 2.37, and in sRGB mode, the average color accuracy ΔE value was 0.72 with a maximum of 2.11. This shows that the screen color deviation of this notebook is extremely low, and the color accuracy is extremely accurate.
Display P3 mode (left), sRGB mode (right)
In addition, it can also be seen from the two color accuracy maps of Display P3 color gamut mode and sRGB mode that this screen is very accurate for the display of all colors, worthy of such a dual-screen design.
Native color gamut, sRGB color gamut, Display P3 color gamut (from left to right)
In terms of color gamut, the author tested three modes separately, namely the native color gamut, the sRGB color gamut, and Display P3. It can be seen from the results that in the native color gamut mode, the sRGB color gamut covers 100% and the color gamut volume is 184.7%. The P3 color gamut covers 99.9% and the color gamut volume is 130.8%, while in sRGB mode, the sRGB color gamut coverage is still 100%, and the color gamut volume is 107.5.1%, which is also excellent. Display P3 mode sRGB color gamut coverage is still the familiar 100%, color gamut volume is 156.4%, and P3 color gamut coverage and color gamut volume also reach a very good level.
Native color gamut
sRGB color gamut
Display P3色域
It is worth mentioning that in the color gamut coverage diagram, the test results for these three modes are still excellent. The colored areas in the diagram are the actual representation of the screen, and the dotted lines are the standard range by default. Therefore, it can be seen,Whether it is the native color gamut、sRGB color gamut、Or Display P3Color gamut,Their coverage has reached a perfect level,It shows the performance advantages of this screen,It can really be called a good screen that makes image creators happy。
Thin and light dual screens can also have high performance
Generally speaking, thin and light laptops tend to underperform in terms of performance, but Zenbook 14 Dual is an exception. The machine is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, 32GB LPDDR5X 7467MHz memory, 2TB PCIe4.0 solid state drive, and the GPU is the processor's own Intel Arc GPU.
It's worth mentioning that the Core Ultra series is Intel's latest series, and this processor is the highest in this series, so in terms of performance, it may be better than some so-called "all-round" all-round laptops.
According to the data of CUP-Z, the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor uses 6 performance cores, 8 energy efficiency cores, and 2 ultra-low-power cores, with a total of 16 cores and 22 threads. It can reach a maximum turbo frequency of 5.1GHz, has 24MB of L3 cache, and has a base TDP of 45W.
After testing, Zenbook 14 Dual scored 764.3 and 8170 in the CPU-Z's single-core and multi-core performance tests, which is indeed the level that the current highest-spec model in the family should have. AT THE SAME TIME, UNDER THE CINEBENCH 2024 TEST STANDARD, THE SINGLE-CORE SCORE IS 108, THE MULTI-CORE SCORE IS 796, AND THE PERFORMANCE IS IN LINE WITH EXPECTATIONS. Under the CINEBENCH R23 test standard, this processor scored 1869 for single-core and 15548 for multi-core, surpassing the i7-13700H standard processor on the gaming laptop, and compared to the high-performance processor on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, the desktop computer, the gap is also very weak.
According to the 3DMark CPU Profile test criteria, the Core Ultra 9 185H processor scored 1012 for single threads, 1941 for 2 threads, 3457 for 4 threads, 4889 for 8 threads, 6008 for 16 threads, and 6915 for the largest thread. Overall, the multi-core performance is good. In addition, 3Dmark has a TimeSpy test score of 3893, with a Graphics score of 3520 and a CPU score of 9784.
In terms of productivity, the PCMark 10 benchmark shows that Zenbook 14 Dual scored 10284 for common basic features, 9756 for productivity, 9837 for digital content creation, and 7138 for a final overall score. As a result, the laptop performs well in both daily productivity and demanding digital media activities.
Through the above measurements, it can be seen that Zenbook 14 dual screen benefits from the blessing of Core Ultra 9 185H, whether it is in entertainment and leisure, or in work and office, it can bring users a better experience.
Write at the end
In general, thanks to ASUS's years of precipitation in dual-screen design, this Zenbook 14 dual screen is no longer a distinctive and impractical product. When used as a regular notebook, it is capable of providing users with a practical, high-performance experience. When switching to dual-screen mode, users can also get an efficient and novel experience that regular laptops don't have. Among them, the silky sense of cohesion is what the author is most pleased with, but if there is one more step in this, or if it is unresponsive, it will greatly reduce the user's use experience, but ASUS has turned it into a place to add points, take down the keyboard and become a dual screen in seconds, put the keyboard and type directly.
In addition, Zenbook 14 Dual Display has 5 display formats, which fully demonstrate ASUS's diversified and in-depth research on the actual usage scenarios of users, so that the dual screen design is no longer flashy, but a more efficient form. In addition to the temporary virtual keyboard, Zenbook 14 Dual Screen also adapts to different software with a drag-and-drop and sliding console, and a dedicated stylus, which can be said to be a divine weapon for creators, greatly improving creative efficiency.