By Matthew Powell
Multiple-screen setups are increasingly common these days. They offer massively improved real estate for getting work done and boost productivity accordingly. It can feel constraining, therefore, when you leave the office to work on your laptop with its single solitary screen.
Thankfully, there are now lightweight portable displays you can take with you and keep the multi-screen experience going at the library, the coffee shop, or wherever you need to work.
The ASUS ZenScreen Duo is one such offering, but it has a trick most others don’t: two screens. It features twin 14-inch OLED displays that can operate at up to 1920×1200 pixel resolution, connected by a hinge. Folded, it looks about the size of an ultraportable laptop, and weighs a bit less: a smidge over 1kg.
The neat thing is that the hinge has a full 360 degrees of motion, meaning you can have one screen pointed towards yourself and the other towards a coworker or client. Ideal for sales presentations without having to get everyone to crowd around your laptop.
The screens can operate in several different modes. Extend mode does what it says on the tin: acts as an extension of your laptop’s monitor. Mirror mode puts the same content on both screens — great for presentations or collaboration. Split mode treats the two screens as one, allowing the content to extend from one to the other. This is pretty useful for tasks like reading long documents or working on poster designs where it can be hard to see the whole image at once. Of course, the hinge between the screens breaks the illusion a bit, but for an on-the-go giant screen it’s pretty impressive.
Finally there’s Independent mode, with which you can plug multiple devices into the ZenScreen Duo and each gets its own display.
To facilitate that, the device features multiple inputs on the right edge. There’s a power-only USB-C port for plugging in the supplied brick, two DisplayPort-capable USB-C ports, and a mini-HDMI port. ASUS claims you can operate the device with a single cable from your laptop to the ZenScreen Duo supplying both power and signal — and indeed you can — but I found that a bit finicky and seriously draining on the laptop’s battery. For any extended use, you’re better to carry the (smallish) power supply with you.
A special note of gratitude is due to ASUS here, for actually including all of the required cables in the box.
Switching between modes means navigating the ZenScreen’s on-screen menu system, which takes a bit of learning. There’s a sort of toggle on the side near the ports, which you press in to get the menu and then flick up or down to navigate. And there’s a back button to get out. It’s kind of clunky and unintuitive, but once you’ve got the hang of it it’s OK.
There’s a clever kickstand built into the device to stand it up, but this feels decidedly fragile when both screens are in use. For a more secure mount, ASUS includes a screw-in socket so you can attach the ZenScreen Duo to a tripod.
In use, the screens are frankly gorgeous. Because it’s OLED it’s bright and clear and the blacks are true blacks — the pixels are actually off, not emitting any light — so contrast is brilliant. The colours are vivid, thanks to the ZenScreen’s support of 10-bit colour. Most portable displays in this category only handle 8-bit colour. For the non-technical that basically means it can display billions of shades on screen, as opposed to millions.
And yes, it’s noticeable.
All of this brilliance comes at a cost, however. While single-screen portable displays can be had for a few hundred dollars, the ZenScreen Duo ranges closer to a thousand. Understandable, since you’re essentially getting twice as much display, but it still feels like a serious investment.
Overall, I loved using the ZenScreen Duo. It’s light, easy to carry, looks amazing in use and genuinely boosted my productivity on the laptop. I want one —if only I had a spare grand.
Rating: 8.5/10
Pros
- OLED technology means a brilliant display with great contrast and colour
- Ability to share between multiple devices
- 360-degree hinge means you can share presentations with others
- Light and portable
Cons
- Expensive
- Menu system is clunky
- Energy hungry, so you need to carry an extra power supply for extended usage
