Asus recently announced this year’s full laptop lineup at CES 2024, including the latest iteration of the weird and wonderful Zenbook Duo. This year, as with every year, the focus seems to be on power, performance and portability, now with added AI.
In fact, across the board of laptops this year, Asus is very keen to let users know that they’re supported to use generative AI for content, imaging, video, documents, design and coding. There is currently a significant legal battle playing out between OpenAI and The New York Times that will have major implications for generative AI technologies going forward.
The newest laptops in the Asus line-up are the Asus Vivobook S 14/15/16 OLED. They all feature the new 3.2K Asus Lumina OLED technology, with Pantone Validated colours, Asus Splendid colour gamut customisation, Asus Tru2Life video optimisation, “70% reduced blue light”, Tüv Rheinland low blue light certification, 120Hz refresh rate and burn-in prevention. Which is a lot of features for a screen.
The bodies of the numbers start at 13.9mm thin and 1.4kg. They have up to 75Whr capacity batteries, up to 32GB RAM, up to 1TB SSD storage, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2 USB-A 3.2 ports, HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a MicroSD card slot. All three screen sizes come in either Intel or AMD flavours. The Intel has up to Intel Core Ultra 9, while AMD fans can get up to AMD Ryzen 9 8940H.
Versatile Asus Zenbook Duo
The weirdest new laptop in the range is the Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406), which has two 14-inch 16:10, 2880×1800, 550-nit OLED touch displays. This isn’t the first time that a laptop has had two screens. Normally, there’s just a second, small screen above the keyboard, or an extra screen that can emerge from behind the main screen.
The Zenbook Duo, however, is like a normal laptop, but if you lift up the removable keyboard, there’s another screen there, which you can use in five different configurations. It’s similar to last year’s Lenovo Yoga Book 9i but has a larger keyboard.
With many screens comes much battery usage, and the 75Whr battery only claims to power the laptop for 10 hours in between charges. However, it’s surprisingly thin and light, at only 14.6mm and 1.35kg.
Rounding out the Asus laptop range is a refresh of the Vivobook 14/15/16/17 models with faster processors and more of a focus on AI.
