High performance, generous equipment and two displays? With the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16, Asus wants to offer a gaming notebook that puts your old desktop PC in the shade. But can the manufacturer achieve this ambitious goal? We took a closer look at the notebook, which costs just under 3,000 euros.
While notebooks used to barely match the performance values of desktop PCs, some models now outperform the average gaming machine. That too Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 would like to boast high performance and two displays. The latter in particular is a unique selling point of the Duo series. We took a closer look at the notebook in our video:
AMD Rembrandt meets RTX 3080 Ti
The heart of the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 is the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, whose eight cores (individually) can clock at up to 4.9 GHz. Alternatively, the notebook is also available as a variant with Ryzen 9 6980HX available. It also offers eight cores and 16 threads, but clocks at up to 5 GHz – remarkable for a mobile CPU, right? In our case, the processor is combined with 32 GB DDR5-4800 RAM and two 2 TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs in a RAID array. The notebook thus has enough storage capacity to install several large game titles.
A gaming notebook naturally needs a powerful GPU. Asus relies on one here Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which can consume up to 165 watts during operation. Current games are no problem for the system and the GPU can also handle higher resolutions. In Forza Horizon 5 (graphics setting: Extreme), this is about as high as Zephyrus 81 FPS in 1,200p, whereby even in 1,600p still fluid 70 FPS be calculated.
Both the graphics card and the CPU are also kept in check by a special cooling system, which consists of a total of five heat pipes and two fans. The average temperatures under full load are 79 °C (CPU) and 65 °C (GPU) – that’s solid.
Two displays for more work space
Typical of the Duo model series, two high-resolution displays are used in the Asus ROG Zepyhrus Duo 16. That 4K-Zweitdisplay sits above the keyboard and protrudes at a 15% angle when opened. Users can display chat windows or setting modules for image editing. The main display is again a mini LED panel with a QHD resolution including 165 Hz. The panel is DisplayHDR 1000 certified and is accordingly bright up to 1,000 nits. We were able to measure up to 950 nits in HDR mode.
The whole thing is driven by one 90 Wh battery, which can be charged with 280 watts. The dedicated GPU can also be deactivated via a MUX switch in order to improve the battery life. In this state, the runtime should be comparatively good for everyday use. The basic version of the Zephyrus Duo 16 with Ryzen 9 6900HX and GeForce RTX 3060 is currently available from 3,000 euros available. Asus demands just under for the version we tested 4.499 Eurowhereby the top model costs another 700 euros more.
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