The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650RW is a 16” dual-screen gaming laptop with the power of an AMD Ryzen 9 9600HX mobile processor and an NVIDIA RTX laptop GPU for solid gaming performance.

To be clear, we are not gamers, so we review gaming laptops on their potential for use by creators, videographers, and power users. It has the power to burn and terrific GPU capabilities. Where it may lack is in expandability as AMD does not support Thunderbolt 3 or 4 for docks and multiple monitors.

Our review unit is the top-of-the-line ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650RX-L0146W. There is a lesser speced version, GX650RW-L2-102W, with differences shown in brackets

Brief Specs ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX650RW Model GX650RX-L0146W

The key to this device is how useful the second 14” stylus screen is.

We use Fail (below expectations), Pass (meets expectations) and Exceed (surpasses expectations or is the class leader) against many of the items below. We occasionally give a Pass ‘+’ rating to show it is good but does not quite make it to Exceed.

You can click on most images for an enlargement.

I suspect gamers would desire this device, but you have to understand that two screens add considerable weight and size to a laptop. If you don’t want this, the ASUS ROG Strix G15 series – serious gaming laptops (review) with similar specs is probably more for you.

The primary non-touch screen is an AU Optronics B160QAN02.S mini-LED backlit (not the same as IPS/LCD used on other ASUS ROG laptops). It has 2560 x 1600, 188ppi resolution, 10-bit/1.07 billion colours, and a 16:10 ratio. It does not use PWM dimming. The screen reclines to 130°.

Mini-LED technology is relatively new; however, it is just a mini-LED backlight under a standard LCD panel – no Quantum Dots to amp up colour.

Still, the panel specifications are impressive at 100% sRGB, 86% Adobe RGB, 100% DCI-P3 and  Pantone Skin Tone validated (SDR mode). In tests, these figures are relatively accurate and could be used by creators and videographers with minimal calibration (Delta E 2 out of the box).

The panel has a native SDR brightness of 500 nits; in tests, it averages 440 across the screen. Typically, you will use this at about 300 nits in an office.

But it is VESA Display HDR 1000 certified, which means when it receives Dolby Vision or HDR10 metadata, it can produce 1000nits in a small percentage of the screen. It does that via the AUO AMLED (Adaptive mini-LED) technology to ramp up the voltage to a small section of the mini-LEDs that need to reproduce HDR effects. Similarly, the panel has a 1000:1 contrast, which can be amped up to 100,000:1, again in a tiny section of the screen. Does this hurt the screen? Probably not, but it does create extra heat when watching Dolby Vision content.

Gamers – it has a claimed 3ms response, but tests indicate 15ms G-T-G and 6ms W-T-B – still excellent.

BTW – if you play 1080p games, the screen can switch to FHD@240Hz by dithering four pixels into one and reducing it to an 8-bit, 16.07m colour screen.

It has a second screen that rises from the keyboard deck. It uses a BOEhydis NV140XTM-N52 a-si TFT-LCD panel plus a touch overlay. This is a capacitive screen for finger touch and passive stylus use.

It is an 8-bit/16.7m colour 30ms screen with a maximum brightness of 300 nits and contrast 1200:1. We did not test this as its role is for finger or stylus use and as extra real estate for control panels, Armoury Crate, messages, shortcut keys, multi-tasking and more. Creatives can use its passive stylus and see the edited results in real-time on the main screen.

Very simple – Windows sees them as two separate screens, so you can drag open Apps from the main screen to the bottom screen, and it resizes them.

The 6nm processor has 8-cores and 16-threads rubs from 3.3-4.9Ghz. Default TDP is 45W, but it can be overclocked.

Geekbench 5 single multi-core scores are 1,631/10,245. Under load, the top deck near the screen reached 50° the fans went from near-silent to 50dB – not overly loud.

It has AMD Radeon Graphics 680M, 2400MhzGPU. It will support 4K@50/60Hz or 1920 x 1080p@240Hz. It can support four displays (1 x internal, 1 x HDMI, 1 X USB-C alt DP and 1 x Miracast). This GPU can decode MPEG2, VC1, VP9, H.264, H.265 and JPEG to a maximum of 200/240fps.

OpenCL and Vulkan scores are 34,423/83,235. If the internal display uses this, the maximum refresh is 165Hz. You can switch this GPU off (Optimus MUX).

The external GPU is GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. OpenCL and Vulkan scores are 141,891/26,735/157,531. It does the majority of the work and runs the internal screen at up to 1080p@240Hz,

It has ROG Boost: 1445 MHz at 165W (1395MHz Boost Clock+50MHz OC, 140W+10W Dynamic Boost in Turbo Mode, 140W+25W in Manual Mode)

There is a spec comparison here.

Our only concern is that AMD does not support Thunderbolt 3 or 4, and expansion options via USB-C are limited.

Two DDR5-4800 SODIMM slots will hold 64GB maximum.

The Micron 3400 has a theoretical sequential read speed of 6.6GBps. CPDT sequential read/write is 4.68/2.12GBps – blazingly fast using the PCIe 4.0 interface. Crystal Disk Mark is 6777.67/5009.05 – it uses different testing regimens, but the drive is seriously fast.

The Achilles heel is the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps/1250MBps) external interface that maxes out at 849/670MBps on a WD Black P50 SSD – seriously fast (Western Digital review). We were hoping for USB-C 4.0 ports, but alas, no.

Unlike the excellent ROG Strix ASUS ROG Strix G15 series – serious gaming laptops (review) that has a superb keyboard, this goes back to a standard scissor-lift, rubber membrane, chiclet board that I really don’t like for serious typing.

It has a 1mm throw and 25g actuation with the result that it is a bit like typing on a glass desk. At least the keys have injection moulded reverse lettering, and you can select various Aura themes in Armoury Crate.

A wrist rest is provided as there is no front keyboard deck.

It is not that the trackpad is bad, but it is in a portrait mode on the far right when almost every other has a trackpad under the space bar. I know that is to maximise keyboard spacing, but it is just plain hard to use. For example, a top right to bottom left swipe only covers 25% of the screen. You are going to need a mouse. It is also pretty touchy as to where you can left and right-click.

It can also convert to a numeric pad.

It is a standard .9MP 720p@30fps that produces a typical poor webcam image. The good news is that it also has an IR camera for Windows Hello (no fingerprint scanner).

There is a dual array mic that is effective to about 2 metres.

The Armoury Crate is a dashboard that allows you to set parameters, change colour calibrations, set up a games library (with individual game settings), activate XG Mobile and update the firmware. Gamers will love it.

It has a 90WHr battery and uses 240VAC Adapter, 20VDC/12A/240W output. But you need to know that all specs are reduced to around 30W on battery – that’s 15% of the full power gamut.

PC Mark 3.0 Modern Office Battery test gave 7 hours and 3 minutes. Interestingly a VLC video loop was 11 hours and 49 minutes. A VLC Video loop (50% brightness/sound, aeroplane mode) was 6 hours and 22 minutes. When pushed at 100% brightness and sound, duals screen, Wi-Fi and BT on it was four hours 52 minutes.

Both tests were on Best Power Efficiency and AMD graphics, so expect far worse results if you select RTX graphics. Charge time is a very respectable 1 hour and 1 minute.

It can charge using USB-C 20V/5A/10)W, but that won’t keep up under load.

It has left and right stereo speakers under the keyboard deck. There are bottom vents with down-firing speakers and finally tweeters under the second screen.

The maximum volume is 83dB – quite good. The sound stage is about screen width, and Dolby Atmos pre-sets do not add a wider or higher stage. It reaches a maximum volume of 81.4dB – average.

Using the Dolby Atmos Dynamic default settings over the 2.0 stereo up-firing speakers.

This is an odd signature. It has some mid-bass 50-100Hz (critical bass where you get all the musically important bass). It continues to build high bass 100-200Hz (provides preciseness to bass). Then it is flat to 2kHz (Where the action is. It covers the human voice (1-4khz), where our ears are most sensitive even as we age. This is the critical area for clear dialogue) before slowly declining to 20Hz.

Technically it is a Mid signature (bass recessed, mid boosted, treble recessed) – for clear voice and not for music. But the reasonable mid-and-high bass makes this pretty good for most movies and music.

What it lacks is mid-and-upper-treble that defines sound character. Without it, sound can seem dull and lack a sense of sound direction and a feeling of ‘air’, a reality as though the music were really there.

But it is not a big issue as most people don’t use their computer speakers for music.

Dolby Access is usually at extra cost from the Windows Store. Here it is enabled and allows you to select Bright, Dark and Vivid Dolby Vision profiles.

The Dolby Atmos settings allow for a range of sound pre-sets, including Dynamic (default), Game, Movie, Music, Voice and three custom settings. You can customise it for the stereo speakers, headphones, or home theatre (over HDMI via a dock).

The Atmos pre-sets made little difference, but the Vision pre-sets did. Note: these only enable you to play Dolby Vision and Atmos at SDR and in stereo 2.0.

It has Wi-Fi 6e, 2×2 MIMO using the MediaTek MT7922 160Hz wireless LAN card.

We don’t have a 6e router yet, but it achieved 2400Mbps full duplex at 2m from a Netgear AX11000 router. We expect that to almost double with 6e.

BT 5.2 has the SBC codec. It was good to 15 metres and supports multi-point connection with one other BT 5.X device.

You should be aware that AMD does not support Thunderbolt 4, so expansion is limited to USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps. This is not a good device to expand.

* The specs mention that the USB-C has power delivery, but if you use USB-C PD 20V/5A/100W, it won’t keep up with battery drag under load.

The LAN, HDMI and 1 x USB-A are on the rear, and some may find this inconvenient. The remainder are on the left, with one USB-C PD port on the right.

But while it has many features like a terrific colour-accurate screen, the lack of Thunderbolt 3 or 4 limits expansion. To its credit, it has HDMI 2.1 and 2 x USB-C ports supporting alt DP so that may not be an issue. We tested three 4K@60Hz monitors on these ports – all working very well.

Is the second screen a gimmick? No. It is very useful for parking active Apps, e.g., mail, chat, Armoury Crate etc. It is capacitive touch, so stylus use is not precise, but it is great to navigate around.

I like that you can fit two SSD (or use this for RAID 0 or 1) and two SO-DIMM memory slots.

While you can USB-C charge is not enough – the 240W brick is necessary for heavy users.

My biggest gripe is the portrait trackpad on the right side but hey, use a mouse.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16, ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16

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