Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 Notebook Review: Multitasking monster with AMD Zen4, RTX 4090 & Mini-LED

Debut for the AMD Zen4 Ryzen 9 7945HX. Asus refreshes its ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 and uses the best components you can currently get. The new GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop is supported by AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX, the fastest mobile CPU right now. The manufacturer also replaces the 4K screen with a new WQHD Mini-LED panel with 240 Hz, which is supported by a secondary 4K screen. Update: sRGB profile is included

Andreas Osthoff 👁 (translated by Andreas Osthoff), Published 03/15/2023 🇩🇪

Note: The manufacturer may use components from different suppliers including display panels, drives or memory sticks with similar specifications.

The chassis design did not change compared to the previous model. The laptop is actually rather subtle when the lid is closed and only the ROG logo is colored compared to the otherwise matte black finish. There is no crazy chassis lighting, either. The quality of the laptop leaves a good impression, only the plastic bottom cover falls a bit short.

Once you open the lid, however, you will immediately see that this is not a regular laptop. Depending on the opening angle of the main screen, the secondary screen is slightly raised (to ~15 degrees) and shifted towards the back, which uncovers a transparent cover above the keyboard where you can even glimpse inside the chassis at the corners. The angle of the secondary screen cannot be changed, but it works well in practice. The lifting mechanism is also very sturdy and there are no movements. The stability is very good in general, only the maximum opening angle of the lid is a bit limited at ~130 degrees.

Our size comparison shows that the 17-inch MSI Titan GT77 has a much bigger footprint, but it also shows that the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 is by far the thickest device in our little comparison group. This is obviously caused by the secondary screen, which requires additional space. It is also one of the heaviest 16-inch models at almost 2.7 kg and you also have to consider the bulky 330W power supply, which tips the scale at more than 1.1 kg.

      MSI Titan GT77 HX 13VI       Lenovo Legion Pro 7 16IRX8H       Asus Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650PY-NM006W       Razer Blade 16 Early 2023       Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 GX650RX       Apple MacBook Pro 16 2023 M2 Max       Schenker XMG Neo 16 Raptor Lake       DIN A4 ❌

The rear area of the base unit is almost completely occupied by the cooling, which is why there are only three ports (Ethernet, HDMI, USB-A) in the center of the rear. The majority of the remaining ports is located at the front of the left side, which is also the case for the angled power connector. The cable from the PSU is pretty short, so the power cable can block the USB-A port depending on the orientation. There is one more USB-C port at the left side.

In addition to the somewhat inconvenient port layout, we are surprised that Asus did not include USB 4 support. The AMD processor supports USB 4 in general, but requires an additional USB controller, and it seems Asus did not want to spend the money.

There is a microSD card reader at the left side and SD cards sit flush with the chassis. The transfer rates in combination with our reference card (Angelbird AV Pro V60 128 GB) are excellent and we measure up to 270 MB/s and more than 180 MB/s when we copy jpeg image files.

You get a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack at the rear and the Wi-Fi module (RZ616) also supports the modern Wi-Fi 6E standard for 6 GHz networks. We had no issues to use the corresponding 6 GHz Wi-Fi network with our reference router from Asus and the transfer rates were both very high and stable. Bluetooth 5.2 is supported as well.

Asus upgraded the webcam and now uses a 1080p sensor. This has a positive effect on the sharpness of images compared to the previous model, but the color accuracy is still not very good. The ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 does not offer a mechanical shutter.

Every version of the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 is shipped with a rubberized palm rest as well a dark ROG backpack, which leaves a pretty good quality impression. The more expensive units with Windows 11 Pro, 64 GB RAM and 2 or 4 TB SSD storage also include the ROG Fusion II 300 headset as well as the gaming mouse ROG Gladius III Mouse P514. 

The bottom cover is secured by several Torx screws (TR6), but there is also an additional screw hidden in the center underneath a glued rubber pad, which makes it unnecessarily complicated to access the internals. Inside you get two SO-DIMM slots as well as two M.2-2280 slots for SSDs. It is also possible to replace the Wi-Fi module, but you will have to remove the SSD first.

The additional screen requires a shift towards the front of the base unit for the keyboard, which is obviously not ideal for the ergonomics. Asus knows this as well and ships every unit with a rubberized palm rest. It works well on your desk at home, but it is no help when you are on the road. The keyboard itself offers a comfortable typing experience with a shallow, but also quiet key travel. The keyboard is illuminated and you can use the Armoury Crate software to set the color for every key individually (if you want).

The touchpad in portrait orientation is sitting right next to the keyboard and even standard cursor movements can be challenging and require multiple attempts due to the narrow form factor. You can also use the touchpad as a numeric keypad (activated by tap in the upper left corner), which works well.

The 16-inch Mini-LED panel is one major upgrade over the previous model. It offers the WQHD resolution (2560 x 2600 pixels, 16:10) and a refresh rate of 240 Hz. The matte panel offers an exceptional image quality with razor-sharp contents and rich colors. Asus advertises a brightness of up to 1100 nits, but you have to differentiate between SDR and HDR contents.

The test results are very good and while the Mini-LED panel of the MacBook Pro 16 only reaches 500 nits for SDR contents, wen can measure up to 700 nits for the review unit. It even manages almost 1400 nits with HDR contents, and it does not matter if you only have a small area or a full picture. The HDR implementation of Windows on the other hand is still cumbersome and requires a manual settings change.

The black value is extremely low and results in an excellent contrast ratio. Mini-LED panels also do not have any issues with clouding or backlight bleeding.

* … smaller is better

The picture quality is already very good out of the box. We analyzed the panel with the professional CalMAN software (X-Rite i1 Pro 2) and both the grayscale as well as color checker performance only show small deviations compared to the P3 reference color space. However, there is a minor blue cast and the color temperature is also a bit on the cool side. Our own calibration (profile can be downloaded for free in the box above) improves the performance even further, so the panel is also suited for picture/video editing. It is a bit unfortunate that Asus does not include an option to switch to the smaller sRGB gamut.

Update: There is a dedciated sRGB profile available in the Armoury Crate software.

Display Response Times

↔    Response Time Black to White
19 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 10.6 ms rise
	↘ 8.4 ms fall
The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.4 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 31 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (22.5 ms).
↔    Response Time 50% Grey to 80% Grey
15.2 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 11.2 ms rise
	↘ 4 ms fall
The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.25 (minimum) to 636 (maximum) ms. » 19 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (35.6 ms).

Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)

Screen flickering / PWM detected	12000 Hz	≤ 100 % brightness setting
The display backlight flickers at 12000 Hz (Likely utilizing PWM) Flickering detected at a brightness setting of 100 % and below. There should be no flickering or PWM above this brightness setting. The frequency of 12000 Hz is quite high, so most users sensitive to PWM should not notice any flickering. In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 19343 (minimum: 5 – maximum: 3846000) Hz was measured.

The panel used PWM at all brightness levels, but the frequency of 12 kHz is very high and should not cause any problems. However, the constant PWM flickering makes it very hard to measure response times accurately. Our results are pretty average, but Asus advertises a response time of 3 ms. We did not notice any ghosting in during our tests and the panel is great for gaming.

The matte Mini-LED panel also works great outdoors, which is confirmed by our outdoor pictures. You should obviously avoid reflections from direct light sources, but you can still see the contents very comfortable on sunny days, while you cannot see anything on the glossy secondary screen (~400 nits). The viewing angle stability does not cause any criticism, either.

Display Response Times

↔    Response Time Black to White
17.2 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 7.7 ms rise
	↘ 9.5 ms fall
The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.4 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 29 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is better than the average of all tested devices (22.5 ms).
↔    Response Time 50% Grey to 80% Grey
32.1 ms … rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined	↗ 15.4 ms rise
	↘ 16.7 ms fall
The screen shows slow response rates in our tests and will be unsatisfactory for gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.25 (minimum) to 636 (maximum) ms. » 33 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is similar to the average of all tested devices (35.6 ms).

Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)

Screen flickering / PWM not detected
In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 19343 (minimum: 5 – maximum: 3846000) Hz was measured.

All models of the ROG Zephyrus Duo are equipped with the powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, but Asus does not use fast RAM and still uses DDR5-4800. We also faced some bugs during our review and we even had some blue screens when we launched AIDA64 benchmarks, for example. You also have to know that the graphics are handled by the dedicated GeForce GPU when you use an external screen. This is caused by the secondary screen, and the GeForce GPU is also running even when both integrated screens are turned off, which will obviously increase the power consumption.

The preloaded Armoury Crate software offers several power profiles for the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16. It is also possible to adjust the GPU settings in addition to the basic profiles. We got the best overall results with the Turbo profile as well as the default GPU setting (MSHybrid). 

The new AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX (Dragon Range) uses 16 Zen4 cores (32 threads) and is manufactured in a 5 nm process. It is AMD’s new flagship mobile CPU and is a direct rival for Intel’s current Raptor Lake HX chips. AMD advertises a typical TDP of 55 Watts, but the processor in the ROH Zephyrus Duo 16 can consume up to 130 Watts and 120 Watts for sustained workloads. This means it is much more efficient than Intel’s latest models like the Core i9-13980HX, which can consume more than 200 Watts in peak load scenarios.

The multi-core performance in particular is very impressive and the Ryzen 9 7945HX can take the top spot in almost every benchmark. Intel’s current CPUs only have a slight advantage in single-core tests, but also consume more power in these scenarios. We will offer a detailed comparison of the performance and efficiency between the new AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX and the Raptor Lake HX CPUs in a separate comparison article.

The CPU performance is almost completely stable under sustained workloads, but you have to expect a performance deficit of around 50 % in multi-core tests running on battery (the single-core performance is not affected). Compared to the Ryzen 9 6900HX in the old Zephyrus Duo 16, the CPU performance has increased by 68 % across all CPU benchmarks. More benchmark results are available in our tech section.

* … smaller is better

Help

Except for the previously mentioned blue screens, we also noticed some software bugs during our review period. There were issues with the Bluetooth connection (we occasionally had to open the Bluetooth menu before our mouse worked) and YouTube sometimes did not play any videos, which was solved by a restart. We are currently not sure whether these are software issues caused by Asus or initial issues with the new AMD platform.

If everything works as designed (which is the case most of the time), the performance is really good. There are no stutters and all inputs are executed without delays. The results in the synthetic benchmarks are also excellent and the AMD system can beat most Intel rivals.

Our standardized Latency test (web browsing, YouTube 4K playback, CPU load) shows significant limitations for the test unit with the current BIOS version, so it is not suited for real-time audio applications. 

* … smaller is better

Our review unit is equipped with a fast 2 TB SSD from SK Hynix (PC801), which is attached via PCIe 4.0. The performance of the NVMe drive is excellent and we transfer rates of more than 7 GB/s. The performance is also stable under sustained workloads, which is a problem for many high-end laptops right now. More SSD benchmarks are listed here.