The Zephyrus Duo 15 is a gaming laptop that has been designed specifically for gamers. It has additional adjustments and improvements that make it even more user-friendly, and its design is strikingly similar to the original. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that is both stylish and expensive, the Zephyrus Duo 15 is a great option.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 is a laptop that has two screens. The screens are implemented in a very streamlined manner and are the feature that stands out. The concept is still impressive, as is the laptop’s ability to remain thin and portable while housing the dual displays. We’ll talk more about what they can do later. The Duo is identical to last year’s model, measuring 0.82 by 14.2 by 10.6 inches and weighing 5.3 pounds. It is also not significantly larger than many typical gaming rigs. ..
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 review: Design
The ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 is a laptop that largely maintains the smart and reliable design of the previous year’s model. In essence, it consists of a relatively thin, blocky laptop chassis with a lift-up second screen that is located above the keyboard. The result is a crowded keyboard and an awkwardly placed moussing device, despite the fact that it looks good and feels solid and premium.
When you power on the laptop, the keys dance across the keyboard and glow red, and when you open the lid, the lower Screen Pad rises (to both improve viewing angles and aid in cooling). As the device boots, an animation that resembles a spacecraft console from a Marvel movie briefly plays on the lower screen before the Windows 10 Pro desktop appears. Is it a scam? Yes, but it’s also quite nicely done.
The MSI GP66 Leopard is a gaming laptop with high-end parts that is not very portable. It has a 14.09 by 10.51 by 0.92 inch size and weighs 5.25 pounds.
Asus has released a new laptop design that uses magnesium-aluminide for the body, which helps to reduce weight while providing a darker black shade this time around. The aggressive and game-like default animations and flashing RGB keyboard may be turned off or toned down to create a laptop that wouldn’t look out of place in an office. ..
This laptop has a number of features that are unique to it, such as a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.0b port, and the first USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10GBps) Type A port on the rear. Additionally, two additional 10GBps Type-A ports are located on the right edge of the laptop, along with a single USB-C port that is also 3.2 Gen 2. We would like to see a USB port on the left side and at least one more USB-C port in this location; however, this USB-C connector does support 100W charging. While you’ll want to keep the power brick nearby when gaming, the fact that it can also be charged through USB means there will be times when you can leave the large 280W power converter at home.
Keyboard and touchpad
The Zephyrus Duo 15 SE is a great laptop for gaming, but the keyboard is very crowded and uncomfortable.
The laptop’s primary display is a touch-enabled number pad that is located on the right edge of the device. However, since the trackpad cannot be clicked, there are two physical buttons at the bottom of the device. Additionally, the touchpad is fairly sensitive and works well with Windows Precision Gestures. However, we don’t believe anyone will voluntarily use this keyboard because it is difficult to type quickly and accurately using just one hand. The second display may be worth it if you need to keep your laptop further from your eyes in order to use an external keyboard.
Display
The 14-inch touch ScreenPad has a 3840 x 1100 resolution and it contains a specialized management tool that arranges the panel’s programmes in snaps. It offers a customizable shortcut dock. The ScreenPad is practical because it allows you to utilize any software. We used Discord while playing games and Spotify and Skype while working. Many well-known eSports games, including League of Legends and Fortnite, have Overwolf plugins that are compatible with the ScreenPad, and XSplit Gamecaster is designed for the second screen.
The ScreenPad on the GX550 is similar in design to the one on the GX550S, but it has a number of advantages. For one, it is more adaptable, allowing users to change its display contrast and color fidelity to match their needs. Additionally, it benefits streamers by providing a more versatile secondary display that is more adaptable and accurate than the GX550S’s primary display.
The GX551 is a great monitor for work and play. It has a 4K IPS panel with 120Hz AMD FreeSync and a 3ms response time, making it ideal for frantic gaming. The panel renders a staggering 100% of the sRGB and Adobe RGB color gamuts, and its contrast ratio of 1144:1 is strong, punchy, and vibrant enough for work and gaming. The screen is excellent for both work and play. The GX551’s audio system includes two 4W speakers and two 2W tweeters. They have strong bass that is never overpowering and are loud, clear, and well-balanced.
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 review: Audio
The SE version of the Duo doesn’t add many new capabilities, but Asus has enhanced the original speakers with a pair of “Smart Amp Woofers,” which the company claims enables immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound. Now, any assertion that the four speakers in a laptop can provide real surround sound is at best speculative. We can, however, state that there is some audible low-end thump present. The opening bassline of “Purge,” the first track on Frontline Assembly’s most recent album Mechanical Soul, had a visceral weight to it even before the beat began to play.
Bill Leeb’s vocals remained as menacing as ever despite the lack of distortion at maximum volume. However, the current setup is adequate for gaming and watching videos at moderate volumes, but if you want really loud sound, you’ll need to connect headphones or a reliable Bluetooth speaker. ..
Graphic and gaming
The GeForce RTX 3080 is a far cry from the raw graphics performance, which is only about 15% faster than the typical GeForce RTX 2080 laptop. Despite having the same name as the desktop version, it is still one of the fastest mobile GPUs currently on the market. Nevertheless, users should not anticipate performance to be even remotely comparable. Performance will instead be closer to that of a desktop GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
According to 3DMark, using our Zephyrus’s GPU in Performance mode as opposed to Turbo mode would only result in a 5–10% performance loss.
Our Fire Strike Physics and Graphics scores would be 24710 and 6478 points, respectively, if we were operating on battery power. The GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q is consistently outperformed by real-world game performance, especially when playing at higher resolutions than 1080p. When running at 4K, frame rates should increase by up to 50%, compared to 30–40% at 1080p.
Performance
The RTX 3080 is a powerful graphics card that has 6144 CUDA cores and an Ampere-powered architecture. It comes with a 2TB RAID 0 SSD array, and it has a GX551 processor that has 8 cores. This card is also great for gaming because it has the Zen 3 architecture.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 is the latest and most powerful graphics card on the market, and it can run games at 4K and Ultra settings with frame rates ranging between 36fps and 50fps. It also has ray tracing and DLSS enabled, which gives games a realistic look that is impossible to achieve with other graphics cards.
The RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 are both great cards. They outperform the Aorus by eight and thirteen frames in 1080p benchmark tests, and they also compare favorably to the RTX 2080 Super.
Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a powerful graphics card that offers smooth gameplay at 1080p. It typically ran beyond 60 frames per second and frequently soared past 100 frames per second with every game’s settings turned up. In less taxing games like Dirt Rally, the average frame rate is 146 fps, significantly beyond the display’s minimum requirement of 120 fps for that refresh rate. The potential for playing eSports games smoothly is therefore enormous. For eSports enthusiasts, there is a better option: the GX551 for £2499 comes with an RTX 3070, a 1TB SSD, and a 1080p screen, but it also offers a 300Hz refresh rate.
The RTX 3080 laptop version of CyberPunk 2077 and Metro Exodus had difficulty handling 4K and Ultra settings. The issues were fixed by lowering the graphics settings, but they demonstrate that the laptop’s RTX 3080 isn’t faultless and that it won’t achieve 120 frames per second in the majority of high-end games at 4K. ..
Battery life
The Dell Inspirion 15 7000 Gaming Laptop is one of the most powerful laptops on the market. It has a GTX 1070 graphics card and a 6-core Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor. The battery life is good for a laptop with these specs. In PCMark’s battery life test, it managed a respectable five and a half hours, and four and a half hours while playing a movie continuously, which is on the lower end of reasonable and slightly longer than we’d anticipate for a device with these tiny insides. ..
We played games on the battery, and before it died, we reached a pretty-much industry standard cooking time of almost two hours. This is a device you can use to cook wherever there is a power outlet, not a laptop that will get you through a long flight.
Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 review: Heat
The ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 is a gaming laptop that isn’t particularly loud, as was already said. The fans are audible while gaming, but they don’t make a forceful blowing noise or keep spinning continuously as they do on some laptops. Instead, they make a consistent midrange whirr. And while the laptop might become warm in some places, that happens largely on the bottom. We used an IR thermometer to record surface temperatures when we ran our Metro Exodus stress test (see the gaming performance section above).
The laptop’s touchpad reached 35.2 degrees Celsius while the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, registered 34.9 degrees Celsius (94.9 degrees Fahrenheit) (95.1 degrees Fahrenheit). The area of the laptop’s bottom that reached its highest temperature was directly behind the serial number sticker, close to the back, at 49.4 degrees Celsius (120.9 degrees Fahrenheit). These numbers, with the exception of the keyboard temperature, are a little higher than what we observed on MSI’s GP66 Leopard, but that laptop has a single screen and is thicker and noisier.
Configuration options
The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 SE GX551 is a more uncommon laptop; you won’t see it produced in great quantities, but Asus appears to have established a reliable supply chain in most areas, so you should be able to get one if you look around. You won’t be spending much less than the MSRP, according to stockists, and you might even have to pay a tiny premium. For $2,999.99 (£2,499, AU$4,099), you can get the version with fewer features, which includes an RTX 3070 (8GB GDDR6), a 300Hz IPS FHD screen, 16GB RAM that is soldered on, 16GB RAM that is slotted, and 1TB M.2 storage.
This is a pricey device made for people with a lot of extra cash. It probably isn’t for people like us.
Conclusion
Asus has made some really cool advancements in their laptops over the past few years. The decision to transition to AMD was unquestionably wise, as today, if your device doesn’t have an AMD CPU inside, you can’t declare it “the most powerful laptop on the market.” This is for the five or six of you if you’re a serious gamer looking for a portable system that doesn’t sacrifice performance or a creative professional whose time is literally your money and who can’t sit around all day waiting for a video to render.
