Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 overview: Two monitors and a complete bunch of walk

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 is a dual-cloak gaming laptop that’s discovered a aspect or two. It has a few predecessors, most now not too long in the past the HP Omen X 2S 15 and Asus ZenBook Pro from 2019. Nonetheless auxiliary cloak sizes have been the limiting aspect. The ZenBook Pro upped the ante with a powerful bigger cloak, as an illustration, but it completely gentle lay flat, which made viewing angles a wretchedness in the neck.

With the sight-catching—and blisteringly like a flash—ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550, Asus takes the identical small-cloak thought from the ZenBook Pro and uses a folding mechanism to tilt the cloak up about 20 levels as you start the lid. That tilt every increases visibility and permits for a more efficient cooling route thru the laptop. Moderately slick. And fine costly ($3,699 from Asus.com). Nonetheless being the first at your LAN occasion with a dual-cloak gaming laptop might perchance possibly perchance also unbiased gentle be worth one thing.

This overview is share of our ongoing roundup of the most efficient gaming laptops. Tear there for data on competing merchandise and the diagram in which we examined them. 

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ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX5550 Specs

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 is set medium-sized for a gaming laptop, with very few compromises in aspects. Right here are the details: 

CPU: Intel 10th gen 8-core Core i9-10980HK with liquid metallic thermal interface fabric

GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Gargantuan Max-Q

RAM: 32GB DDR4/3200 in dual-channel mode

Shows: 15.6-trip, UHD 4K 60Hz factory-calibrated 100 percent Adobe RGB panel with strengthen for G-Sync and Optimus; 13.4-trip x 7.4-trip 1920×550 contact cloak.

Storage: Two 1TB Samsung PM981 NVMe M.2 in RAID 0

Networking: WiFi 6, Realtek Gigabit ethernet

Size: 14.1 x 10.5 x 0.8 inches. 

Weight: Asus lists the laptop as 5.29 kilos, but our scale put it closer to 5.6 kilos, with one other 2 kilos for the 240-watt vitality brick.

The ideal manner to checklist the sparkling assortment of ports is with images. On the left you peek a dedicated charging jack for the 240-watt vitality brick and two analog audio ports.

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With the left side fine bare, Asus happily makes moral employ of the lend a hand of the laptop by giving you Gigabit ethernet, USB-A, and complete-dimension HDMI 2.0.

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The sparkling side offers you two USB-A and Thunderbolt 3. We would have preferred to scrutinize a card reader. The moral news is the Thunderbolt 3 jack helps USB Vitality Birth, so that that you just can perchance also leave the total 240W brick at house and valid employ a USB-C charger for gentle-accountability tasks.

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Keyboard and trackpad

The per-key RGB keyboard is fine frequent of gaming laptops. The layout makes few compromises. As a gaming laptop, the region bar is wider on the left to accommodate those that support their hands at shameful angles while gaming.

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The trackpad is an offset selection. It takes some getting used to, but we perceive on memoir of a gaming laptop might perchance possibly perchance also unbiased gentle undoubtedly be used with a mouse loads of the time. A protracted faucet on the upper left nook activates a virtual ten-key feature, which would possibly be helpful for anyone presumably practicing for the professional Microsoft Excel gaming scene. 

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No webcam. Surely.

We must point out the elephant in the room: no webcam. Again. Right here’s the 2d ROG laptop we’ve seen without a webcam which, seen in a Zoom video chat world, appears love the greatest head slap this side of Taipei. We suspect that when this laptop used to be sketched out a year or two in the past, few thought anyone would care if the webcam went overboard. The shift to far off working has forced us all to care about this ragged afterthought.

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Constructing

We don’t in overall gain into the building small print weeds of a laptop, but the abnormal ROG Zephyrus Duo is great of it. For you upgraders, that you just can perchance also explore in the image from Asus below two M.2 slots (every of that are populated in our RAID configuration) and a single SO-DIMM slot for reminiscence. The 2d reminiscence module happily isn’t soldered in, but it completely is on the various side of the motherboard, so any upgrades would require main disassembly. These minimize-outs on the backside left and sparkling are to manufacture region for the tilt mechanism (more images of that are below).

Asus

If you look more carefully on the picture above, that you just can perchance also moreover explore the CPU, which appears to be a microscopic bit bit love a baseball area from an airplane. The gray yell that might perchance possibly perchance be grass on this case is where Asus clamps a containment system to preserve the evolved liquid metallic thermal interface fabric face in yell and pause it from presumably shorting out the laptop.

If you’re taking a look on the picture of the ROG Zephyrus Duo’s cooler, below, that you just can perchance also explore the fence to admire the liquid metallic.

Asus

Why even steal that threat over weak thermal paste? If you watched of the thermal interface fabric as the ketchup that mates the burger patty (CPU) with the bun (the cooler), Thermal Grizzly’s liquid metallic compound is artisanal ketchup. Asus said its assessments present an explanation for just a few 10-percent improvement in cooling over dilapidated thermal paste in laptops. Working cooler moreover diagram working quieter, and in our expertise the ROG Zephyrus Duo is positively quieter than loads of the 10th-gen laptops we’ve seen with this powerful hardware, even when working laborious.

Right here’s a closer take a look on the “toes,” that are appreciable bumps. That’s in overall a moral aspect in a gaming laptop, as air waft is key to efficiency, but they’re moreover massive on memoir of they’re hollow, to accommodate the hinge and tilt mechanisms.

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Lest you watched the tilting mechanism will rupture, Asus emphasizes that it’s a full piece of metallic, which that you just can perchance also explore below. It’s been designed to tilt the panel as much as a mounted angle while letting you continue to regulate the main cloak’s angle.

The secondary panel itself is constructed of an alloy in would favor to plastic to preserve it inflexible (the laptop’s body is a magnesium alloy). At last, while you happen to gain your mouse or vitality cable jammed below the 2d cloak, Asus said it would steal a appreciable quantity of power to interrupt.

For kicks we put the laptop’s admire vitality cord below one nook and tried to shut the lid. We stopped as we felt the cable’s resistance, and nothing broke or snapped. That doesn’t imply that you just can perchance also’t rupture it, but it completely’s now not as tender as that you just can perchance also center of attention on.

Asus

Is the 2d cloak worth the bother?

All this work Asus has put into the ROG Zephyrus Duo might perchance possibly perchance be meaningless if it weren’t worth the ache to have a 2d cloak. The foremost cloak in our case is a 15.6-trip 60Hz 4K panel. Or now not it is factory-calibrated, G-Sync-licensed, and might perchance possibly perchance also hit 100 percent of Adobe RGB. Or now not it is now not particularly realizing at a measured 300 nits. Asus offers this as a compromise for those that wish to perform instruct advent on the laptop. That’s fine, but for a gaming laptop, we center of attention on the various choice can be greater: a 300Hz 1080p cloak.

The ScreenPad Plus is where the action is. If we wished to visual show unit the GPU’s thermals, the CPU’s clock walk, or merely put a 2d file interior eyeshot, having the 2d panel is, effectively, as mountainous as having it to your desktop. 

The gaming expertise is now not undoubtedly ideal, even though. If you’re in a sport and call the 2d cloak to regulate one thing or scroll a window–or come to the subsequent YouTube video–Windows adjustments focal point from the sport, and likewise you might want to Alt-Tab to gain lend a hand to the sport. Right here’s a shortcoming of Windows, now not the ROG Zephyrus Duo. To pause that from breaking your sport expertise, Asus added a button in the Armoury Crate utility that lets you without complications disable the contact expertise.

Most of our multi-visual show unit expertise is side-by-side. The backside-and-top configuration took some getting used to. That can be our mousing habits even though, as we tend to maneuver the backside border of Windows love a guardrail. With the head-and-backside expertise, the cursor would valid go to the 2d cloak, and it would steal us a few moments to search out it again.

Asus’ Armoury Crate and various contact apps first offered with Zenbook Duo are very polished. Let’s imagine that is seemingly essentially the most efficient multi-cloak expertise on a laptop this day.

Steal discovering out for efficiency benchmarks.

• Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550

  The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 is a dual-cloak laptop that gets it sparkling. From the sturdy tilting mechanism to the solid efficiency, it is a mountainous equipment , even though it comes at a cost.

  Professionals

  • A tilt-out 2d cloak!
  • High-of-the-line efficiency

  Cons

  • Very costly thanks to the 2d cloak
  • Puzzling efficiency on low-intensity gaming