The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo is big, weird and kind of awesome
A couple years ago ASUS made its first dual-screen laptop in the ZenBook Duo. Now at CES 2026, the company has taken that idea and branched off in a somewhat unexpected way with the ROG Zephyrus Duo, which might just be the world’s first true dual-screen gaming laptop.Unlike a more traditional productivity notebook with two built-in displays, the concept of a dual-screen gaming notebook doesn’t translate quite as naturally because powering two screens comes with a performance hit. Plus, in the heat of battle, it’s not like you have a lot of opportunity to utilize that second monitor. But if you view this Zephyrus Duo as more of an all-purpose portable content creation and gaming station, things begin to make a lot more sense. Both of Zephyrus Duo’s 16-inch Nebula OLED panels have strong specs including support for HDR with up to 1,100 nits of peak brightness, NVIDIA G-Sync, stylus integration and a very strong Delta-E (which measures color accuracy) of less than one. Performance also looks solid with ASUS offering the latest Core Ultra processors from Intel and up to an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU. Sure, with a TDP of 135 watts, the Zephyrus Duo won’t be quite as punchy as a comparable single-screened 16-inch gaming notebook, but those won’t be nearly as adaptable as the ROG either. Just like the Zenbook Duo, the Zephyrus Duo comes with a detachable wireless keyboard that can be charged up magnetically. This allows users to set up the laptop in all sorts of positions, which are enhanced thanks to a built-in kickstand. The one people will use the most is probably the stacked arrangement with one display above the other. However, you can also keep the Duo and clamshell mode, slide the keyboard forward for drawing, lay it down flat on a table or even put it into tent mode and game on it. Though even ASUS admits that may not be super practical as apps will need to specifically support that use case. Though at the very least, you can mirror your screen for a friend on the other side of a desk/table.The ROG Zephyrus Duo comes with a built-in kickstand which makes it easy to set it up in all sorts of different positions, even if it is a bit heavy. Sam Rutherford for EngadgetNow I will admit that after messing around with the Zephyrus Duo in person, it is a bit ungainly due to its weight of 6.28 pounds. But ASUS managed to do a good job of keeping it relatively thin (0.77 inches) without skimping on features like sound thanks to the Duo’s six-speaker stereo system and cooling which features a vapor chamber and a liquid metal thermal material. You also get a surprising amount of ports including multiple USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, USB-A, HDMI 2.1 and a full-size SD card slot, plus a decently large 90Whr battery. The one important thing we don’t know yet though is how much it will cost, particularly because this thing almost certainly won’t be cheap (I’m guessing a starting price of around $2,500). A dual-screen gaming laptop might not make a lot of sense, but I appreciate how ambitious ASUS is being with the ROG Zephyrus Duo and I’m looking forward to testing it out sometime later this year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/the-asus-rog-zephyrus-duo-is-big-weird-and-kind-of-awesome-000000156.html?src=rss
