ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L laptop review: guest from the future

In the spring of 2021, we tested the ASUS ZenBook Duo 14 UX482 laptop equipped with an additional ScreenPad Plus display. Although this model is equipped with sufficiently productive components, including an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor and 32 GB of LPDDR4X-4266 RAM, it is not suitable for games, and its display is made using IPS technology. With the new ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L, ASUS decided to go for broke and not only increased the display diagonal from 14 to 15.6 inches, but also chose OLED as a matrix, and also built a laptop hardware configuration on some of the most productive components.

 

 

 

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L is similar to two other models: both the already mentioned ZenBook Duo 14 UX482 and the year before last ZenBook Pro Duo UX581. And in fact, this is the development of the ideas of “fifteen” with the use of new developments that are familiar to us from a 14-inch laptop. Let’s take a closer look at the new product and test it comprehensively.

⇡#Box and accessories

The laptop comes in a black cardboard box with a plastic carrying handle. There is a minimum of useful information on the front and back sides of the box: only the motto and the name of the manufacturer.

But at the end of the box there is a detailed information sticker listing the configuration features of the laptop, barcodes and serial number.

Inside the cardboard package, between the soft corners, another flat box is inserted, where the ultrabook is placed, and with it you can find a box with a power supply and a power cable, an envelope case with orange stitching, a palm rest and a stand for the ErgoLift Stand laptop itself. .

In addition, the kit includes instructions, a memo and an ASUS Pen stylus for working with touch displays.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L manufactured in China comes with a two-year warranty. We have a flagship version of the laptop in our tests, so its price is high – 4500 dollars. A version with a less productive processor, half the amount of RAM and a drive costs 254 thousand rubles. The specific differences between them are given in the next section of the article.

⇡#Specifications

Hull design and ergonomics

When unpacking the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L, you find that an information sticker with pictograms marking the key features of the device is glued to its front end.

The laptop is offered in a single color with the original name Celestial Blue – gray with metallic tints, although the manufacturer calls this shade sky blue. Be that as it may, the laptop case looks very cool, even if it quickly loses its appearance due to fingerprints.

The screen cover and the working keyboard panel are made of lightweight and durable magnesium-aluminum alloy, and the base is made of plastic. On the top right is a silver ASUS logo, from which concentric circles diverge. This element, with minor changes, has been moving from one ZenBook model to another for ten years and makes them recognizable.

Also from the design solutions, we note the edges of the body with a mirror finish, reflecting light at different angles. Almost every detail of the case is given attention, which, as it were, emphasizes the premium level of the product.

The new ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L is 2.5mm thinner and 100 grams lighter than the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 UX581. Its dimensions are 359.8 × 249.2 × 21.5 mm and weighs 2405 grams.

Those who happened to see the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo for the first time will surely be surprised by the unusually narrow keyboard and the additional ScreenPad Plus screen above it, but for our regular readers this branded feature of the laptop will no longer be a novelty.

The panel with the display leans back by 150 degrees, and the additional screen rises by 9.5 degrees, visually forming a single work surface with the main one.

To prevent the edge of the top panel from scratching, plastic stops are provided in its lower end.

The laptop supports two long rubber strips glued to the front and back of the base. With them, the thickness of the laptop is 25 mm.

The front end of the laptop case does not contain any connectors and controls, but there is a barely noticeable LED strip on it, indicating the mode of operation of the laptop’s hardware component. We will talk about this later. We add that there is no notch for the fingers here either, however, due to the beveled front edge, it is convenient to open the screen, and you do not need to hold the base, even despite the tight ErgoLift screen hinges.

On the right side of the case, there are two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports of the Thunderbolt 3 interface (up to 40 Gb / s) with support for video output modes (DisplayPort) and power supply (Power Delivery), as well as one USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port (5 Gb / s). with).

In turn, the power connector, HDMI 2.1 video output, headphone and microphone combo jack, as well as storage and charge activity indicators are displayed on the left.

In our opinion, one more USB Type-A connector and a microSD card reader are missing here. However, this is due to the fact that a large area of ​​​​the ends of the case was taken away by the massive ventilation grilles of the laptop cooling system, which are necessary for cooling a very serious hardware component.
ASUS highlights the fact that the laptop has received MIL-STD-810H certification and passed a whole series of additional ASUS internal tests.

This is a rather important point, since such an expensive device simply has to be durable and reliable, so the company’s engineers pay close attention to such moments.

⇡#Input Devices

Apparently, the keyboard in the new ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L has not changed compared to what was in the previous 15.6-inch model. This is a compact membrane keyboard without a mechanical numeric keypad, shifted to the front edge of the operating panel.

The key travel is 1.4 mm, the concavity is 0.15 mm, the pressing is soft and pleasant to the touch. The dimensions of the main keys are 15.0 × 14.0 mm, the functional keys are 12.0 × 7.0 mm. The increased Shift and Enter, as well as a fairly large space bar, make working at the keyboard comfortable, while small (narrow) arrows measuring 18.5 × 6.5 mm will take some getting used to.

Since the keyboard is shifted to the front edge of the case, ASUS carefully provided a stand for a more comfortable position of the hands.

The keyboard has a white backlight with three levels of brightness. The first, however, is barely noticeable, but the other two make working on a laptop at night quite comfortable.

The touchpad, measuring 62 × 86 mm, is located on the right and is equipped with two dedicated buttons.

The surface is smooth and very sensitive. After getting used to the non-standard location and vertical shape of the touchpad, it becomes convenient to work with it. By pressing the touch button in the upper right corner, the touchpad turns into NumberPad 2.0.

The laptop’s 720p webcam is built into the center of the display’s top bezel.

Supports biometric face recognition Windows Hello, working even in the dark thanks to the built-in infrared sensor.

Display and ScreenPad Plus

Structurally, both displays are not frameless: the side frames are 7.0 mm, and the top one is 9.0 mm. However, all the frames are under glass, which completely conceals their presence, and the impression of framelessness is really created.

The main NanoEdge sensor matrix is ​​made using OLED technology, has a resolution of 3840 × 2160 pixels (4K) with HDR support, a declared brightness of 440 nits and operates at a frequency of 60 Hz. The claimed response time is 0.2 ms.

Claimed 100% DCI-P3 cinematic color gamut and exceptional color accuracy (ΔE

We tested the laptop’s main display with an X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator and Argyll CMS software with a DispcalGUI GUI. All measurements were taken without additional display calibration, but the laptop already comes with a proprietary calibration profile using ASUS Calibration technology, which we did not remove. Let’s look at the results.

We got the average value of DeltaE deviations a little higher than the deuce declared in the characteristics – 2.12, and the maximum turned out to be 5.05 units, but this is the only exceptional case in the measurement table.

The color temperature of the main display of the laptop almost copies the reference value of 6500 K.

The gamma curve runs in the range from 2.05 to 2.25, which is also a good indicator.

The deviations of the color balance in the gray gradient do not exceed 5%.

After calibration, the average DeltaE deviation of the OLED matrix of the laptop was only 0.08 units, and the maximum was 1.52 units. The sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI P3 color spaces are 100.0%, 96.9%, and 99.9%, respectively.

But the maximum brightness of OLED ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L was only 388 cd/m², which is noticeably lower than the 440 cd/m² stated in the specifications. sup>. The minimum value turned out to be 5 cd/m².

If we take into account the type of display (in OLED, we recall that each pixel glows individually), the backlight uniformity could not be measured, but purely for practice, we carried out such measurements, making sure it was ideal.

As for me, the main OLED display of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L laptop is the benchmark among mobile computer displays. You will meet the same color reproduction, brightness and perfect clarity, to put it mildly, infrequently, even in models worth almost three hundred thousand rubles.

As for the so-called poisonousness of the OLED color gamut (true for any displays of this type), ASUS also thought about users here, providing for the possibility of adjusting it in the proprietary MyASUS application.

As in ASUS ZenBook Duo 14 UX482, here the color scheme can be changed separately for the main display and separately for the ScreenPad Plus panel.

In addition, it is possible to protect the OLED display from burn-in, the corresponding section with settings in MyASUS is called ASUS OLED Care.

Also in the ProArt Creator Hub application (preinstalled on the laptop), you can calibrate the display, which will require the appropriate tool.

As for the optional ScreenPad Plus touch display, it is based on a 14-inch IPS-matrix with a resolution of 3840 × 1100 pixels. The maximum declared brightness is 400 cd/m².

As you already know, when you open the main display, the secondary ScreenPad Plus rises by 9.5 degrees, creating the effect of combining two screens into one. True, there is also a specificity here: in order to achieve this, it is also necessary to adjust the height of the chair and the angle of inclination, depending on the height of the user and his usual position at work. In other words, just opening the lid so that both displays immediately merge into a single whole will not work, adjustment is still required. However, it is for this that the kit includes a stand, which greatly simplifies this process.

Setting up an additional display is implemented through the menu called by the key in the column on the left. There you can also customize the menu itself, as well as open detailed help for working with ScreenPad Plus with examples.

Another feature of the new ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L is a special panel that expands the possibilities for working with programs from the Adobe family.

It can be configured to suit your requirements and displayed on ScreenPad Plus, which makes working with, for example, the same Adobe AfterEffects much more convenient.

You are already familiar with the capabilities of the ScreenPad Plus from our previous articles on ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo laptops, and they are also quite fully described on the official laptop page. At the same time, we found the use of an additional display in games, placing on it monitoring programs that allow real-time monitoring of a huge number of parameters of the laptop’s hardware configuration.

Yes, some of them can also be displayed on the main screen using MSI Afterburner, but it’s much more convenient this way – extra numbers do not flicker before your eyes on the main screen. In general, the ScreenPad Plus is really useful, and you understand this especially when you get used to the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L, and then switch to another laptop.

⇡#Internal device and accessories

 

 

 

The bottom panel of the laptop is made of plastic and can be removed entirely, which will require unscrewing a few Torx screws.

Under the bottom cover is a massive dual-circuit cooling system that covers most of the motherboard, as well as the battery along the entire length of the front of the case.
We will give brief characteristics of the main components of the laptop in the following screenshot from AIDA64 Extreme, and then we will analyze each component separately.

The laptop motherboard is based on the Intel Comet Lake HM470 chipset.

The BIOS version UX582LR.203 is dated February 18, 2021, there were no more recent versions at the time of writing.

As the processor in our version of ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L, the flagship eight-core and sixteen-thread Intel Core i9-10980HK, released according to the 14-nm process technology, is used.

Its base frequency is 2.4 GHz, but in turbo mode it can increase to up to 5.3 GHz. L3 cache is 16 MB and peak heat dissipation can be up to 65 watts (45 watts typical). A slightly simpler and less expensive version of this laptop uses an Intel Core i7-10870H processor, inferior to the flagship only in its maximum turbo frequency of 5.0 GHz.

The amount of DDR4 RAM in this laptop model can be equal to 16 or 32 GB, as in our case. The memory is soldered on the board, so it cannot be increased.

The effective frequency of the chips is 2933 MHz with timings of 21-21-21-47 CR2.

The bandwidth and latency of the memory are quite average by modern standards, and with a laptop of this level they are not at all compatible.

We once again draw the attention of ASUS and other laptop manufacturers that in flagship models, and even more so in gaming laptops, to which ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L also belongs, users would like to see memory with a frequency of at least 3.2 GHz and main timings 16 and below. This will significantly improve the level of comfort in 3D games and performance in resource-intensive applications.

The laptop has two graphics cores. Built into the processor, Intel UHD Graphics delivers 2D performance and saves battery power. The discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU is responsible for gaming performance.

The declared TDP level for the video card is 110W in Dynamic Boost mode, and the core frequency should reach 1.44 GHz. The amount of video memory is 8 GB, and its effective frequency is 12 GHz.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L can be equipped with 512 GB or 1 TB drives. In the latter case, this is a fast NVMe SSD Samsung PM981a (MZVLB1T0HBLR-00000) in the M.2 2280 form factor.

According to the test results, the performance of the drive when the laptop is running from the mains is higher than when it is offline from the battery, but the difference is not critical.

The temperature regime of the drive is monitored by two sensors. According to one of them in the stress test, the maximum temperature reached 64 degrees Celsius, and according to the second – 50 degrees Celsius.

In normal work with a laptop or in games, the drive does not warm up above 53 degrees Celsius according to the “hottest” sensor. These are normal figures for high-performance laptop models and their SSDs.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L is equipped with only a wireless communication module, the role of which is played by the Intel AX201D2W chip with support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), MIMO 2 × 2 and the ability to operate at frequencies of 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz ( bandwidth 160 MHz).

The receiver antennas are built into the front of the case.

The TaskFirst and WiFi SmartConnect functions from the MyASUS kit are responsible for traffic prioritization.

The audio path of the laptop called SonicMaster is based on the Realtek ALC3288 audio processor, and Harman Kardon specialists took part in the development of the sound system.

Two stereo speakers are built into the base of the notebook in close proximity to the side bevels.

Subjectively, the sound is very loud and detailed. This is perhaps one of the highest quality audio systems in laptops of this size, even if the lack of low frequencies is also felt here.

All in the same MyASUS software package there is a separate section for activating microphone noise reduction and filtering the output through the acoustics of all sounds, except for the human voice.

A separate application on the laptop installed DTS Audio Processing with the ability to select the environment mode and a graphic equalizer.

⇡#Cooling system, efficiency and noise level

The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L is equipped with Active Aerodynamic System (AAS+) cooling system, which includes ErgoLift screen hinges that raise the secondary screen by 9.5 degrees, thereby increasing airflow by 36%.

Cold air enters the laptop mainly from below, through two massive ventilation grilles.

And the release of heated air occurs on the sides of the case and back, and in the stress test mode, a very hot air stream comes out of these gratings.

Six heat pipes, two radiators and two fans are directly responsible for cooling the central and graphics processors. Three heat pipes have a diameter of 8 mm, two – 6 mm and one – 5 mm. The fans are 97-blade, while the previous generation of ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo used 71-blade fans of the same diameter.

A liquid metal thermal interface is applied to the processor die, which, according to ASUS engineers, has reduced the CPU temperature by 10 degrees Celsius or even more when compared with a scenario where conventional thermal paste is used. For laptops, this is of particular importance, since the frequency of the processor, and hence the performance, directly depends on the temperature of the processor.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L has two operating modes in the MyASUS app: high performance and standard.

But in the ProArt Creator Hub application, these same modes are called “Rendering” and “Normal”. Here you can also activate the maximum fan speed mode and look at the monitoring data.

The LED strip in the front of the case will inform you about which particular mode of the laptop is activated.

To evaluate the efficiency of CPU cooling in the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L laptop, we used the FPU stress test from the AIDA64 Extreme utility version 6.33.5725 Beta. Monitoring of indicators was also provided by this utility. Testing conducted in hot weather, indoor temperature about 27.5 degrees Celsius, running Windows 10 Pro x64 with the latest drivers and updates available.

First, we tested the laptop while running on power adapter and mains power in two available modes.

As you can see, the differences between these modes are very significant. At high performance, the laptop processor was permanently throttling, but still kept the frequency at 3.9 GHz at a temperature of 93 degrees Celsius and the heat dissipation of the entire system was 94 watts. The noise level and the degree of heating of the air emitted from the laptop are very high. In the standard mode, the eight-core processor activated the throttling mode only at the beginning of the test, but then, with a simultaneous decrease in frequency and an increase in the speed of the cooler fans, the frequency stabilized at 2.9 GHz at a temperature of about 77 degrees Celsius and a power consumption of 51 watts. In this case, the laptop’s cooling system is audible, but it does not cause any discomfort when working on it.

Now let’s repeat the stress test with the laptop running on battery power (Standard mode only).

No throttling was observed here from the very beginning of the test, the processor frequency is around 2.8 GHz at a temperature of 73-75 degrees Celsius and a power consumption of 45 watts.

Next, we stress-tested the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU discrete graphics card, which was loaded with the Fire Strike Extreme looped benchmark from the 3DMark test suite.

And again, first we will show the test results of the laptop when powered from the mains in two modes.

Once again there is a difference. When the high performance mode is activated, the graphics processor of the video card keeps a frequency of 1.47 GHz at a temperature after stabilization of 75 degrees Celsius and a power consumption of 98 watts (sometimes increased to 110 watts). The noise level is again high, and the exhaust on the sides of the laptop can heat a small room. Much quieter is the “Standard” mode, where the GPU frequency stabilizes at 1.24 GHz at the same temperature and 80 watts of power consumption. The same mode becomes even more moderate when the laptop is running on battery power.

In this case, you can only count on 0.92 GHz for the GPU, and even the frequency of the video memory is reduced from 12 to 11 GHz. But the laptop is quiet, though not for long, which we will demonstrate in the autonomy section.

⇡#Performance testing

We compared the performance of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L to two gaming laptops: the Gigabyte AORUS 15G XC with an Intel Core i7-10870H processor and the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733Q with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX processor. All laptops were tested in maximum performance mode when running on power adapter and mains. First, let’s look at the results of the processor and RAM tests.

Test name	Indicator		ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582L (Intel Core i9-10980HK)	Gigabyte Aorus 15G XC (Intel Core i7-10870H)	ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733Q (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX)
	Announcement date and cost:		May 2021 $4,500	January 2021 ~$2300	January 2021 >$4,500
AIDA64 memtest	Read	↑	40 820	40 382	45 673
	Write	↑	41 138	40 936	43 149
	Copy	↑	36 991	37 047	40 962
	Latency	↓	52.8	57.9	82,8
WinRAR	KB/s	↑	21 587	20 883	22 044
7-Zip	MIPS	↑	67 988	63 582	85 899
HandBrake	H.265 MKV 4K, s	↓	358,91	388,22	284,12
CineBench R23	CPU (Multi Core), pts	↑	10 190	9 893	13 701
	CPU (Single Core), pts	↑	1 312	1 231	1 468
Blender (Classroom)	Classroom, time	↓	0:10:32	0:11:52	0:08:22
Geekbench 5	Single-Core Score	↑	1 318	1 275	1 517
	Multi-Core Score	↑	7 598	7 696	8 521
VeraCrypt (Kuznyechik (Serpent (Camellia)	Encryption, MiB/s	↑	877	839	767
	Decryption, MiB/s	↑	813	801	717
PCMark’10	Total	↑	5 936	6 516	7 081
	Essentials	↑	9 320	9 610	10 044
	Productivity	↑	7 419	8 845	9 498
	Digital Content Creation	↑	8 209	8 836	10 103
3DMark	Night Raid	↑	26 353	45 830	46 725
	Fire Strike	↑	18 692	19 895	25 017
	Wild Life	↑	17 192	47 743	55 873
World of Tanks enCore RT (среднее качество)	Score	↑	75 894	69 856	64 829
CompuBench 2.0 (Cuda)	Level-set Sim. 256, MVoxels/s	↑	10 708,9	10 719,7	13 785,0
	Ocean Surface Sim., It./s	↑	4 527,1	4 939,7	4 737,2
	TV-L1 Optical Flow, Mpixels/s	↑	67,680	63,554	81,684
GFXBench 5 (DX11)	Aztec Ruins (High Tier), Frames	↑	6 124,29	20 279,70	24 241,30
	ALU, Frames	↑	1 794,28	7 195,28	8 986,40
	Render Quality, mB PSNR	↑	4 541,60	2 493,75	2 493,75