00:06So new laptops launching for 2026. This is one of the first vids of the year. These are the new
00:11Asus ZenBook models. So we have the A14, the A16, and one of my favorites, the ZenBook Duo,
00:17which is super cool. We'll talk about this one first and then get to the other two in case you
00:21just haven't seen this before. So as the name implies, this is a dual folding screen laptop,
00:26essentially gives you two displays to give you more real estate. There's a bunch of different
00:30use cases that you can obviously use the laptop for. Like I said, if you haven't seen it before,
00:35it comes or you can use it as a traditional laptop in its normal clam shape mode. So it gives
00:41you a
00:42main 14 inch 3K 144 Hertz OLED panel. And when you close the laptop, it looks like a traditional one.
00:48You can see here Asus ZenBook, which is kind of like their design language across all ZenBook
00:52models. You can see against the other three. It's in Asus's material called Seraluminum. This
00:58one's specifically in mohair gray. And when you take a look at the side, that's where you can tell
01:02it's a bit chunkier because when you open the laptop, that's where the real magic happens.
01:07And you can remove the keyboard to give you access to that second 3K panel. So essentially you're
01:13getting two 3K OLEDs and on the back, that's where they have a little kickstand to prop up the
01:19screens. And now you have 28 inches of real estate to use and that keyboard, which is Bluetooth. So
01:23you can see, I can use this wherever I want. You can theoretically place this further away and say
01:29like type up something. You can use the trackpad obviously and use the screens however you want.
01:33So what's new to this year is the actual hinge mechanism. So if we actually take a look at that,
01:38it has a new hinge design to make the closing mechanism better. So it has a 5% smaller footprint
01:43than before. It weighs 1.65 kilograms. Obviously that's with the keyboard and you could theoretically
01:48close this and technically forget this. Just make sure you always carry around the keyboard
01:53as well. And you can see it's also loaded with ports. So you've got HDMI 2.1, USB-C,
01:58a headphone jack. And on the other side, you've got USB-A, another USB-C as well as the power
02:03button.
02:04And also what's new to this is what you can't see. So it has the new Series 3 Intel Core
02:08Ultra
02:08processor. So this one specifically has the Intel Core Ultra 9. It's the 386H processor. It's got Intel
02:14Arc graphics and the Intel NPU gets up to 50 tops. You can spec it with up to 32 gigs
02:19of RAM,
02:19which this one has, and also two terabytes of storage. Once again, this one is the top spec,
02:23making it almost like the ultimate multifunctional machine because you can use so many different
02:28displays. I'll kind of walk through what I like to use it for. So when you are obviously browsing
02:34most of the time, you're probably just using it as a standard laptop. You're all familiar with how
02:39that kind of works. This is great for daily usage, browsing, productivity, when you're just typing
02:44out emails, even like essays. And one question that I always got about this was when you're using
02:48the keyboard, is there any weird wiggle on it? Because technically it is magnetic. The keyboard
02:53stays quite secure. Like you don't actually notice this has two different screens or this can be
02:59removed. And then when you want, when you want to switch into baller mode, when you really want to
03:03watch content, that's when you open it up. So now as an example, if you want to get really into
03:09browsing, you want like a full continuous screen, for example, like I'm just on my YouTube page
03:13here, I can select one of my videos, you can watch that. And then you can kind of interact and
03:18see
03:19all the comments. And then if you really want to multitask, you can now technically have your second
03:23screen open and still watch your video, you can really obviously tailor that to how you want to use
03:28it. I've actually played games on the top screen sniped on the bottom, whatever you want to do,
03:33you can have different work pages open if you want to be more productive. And it also works in
03:37horizontal mode as well, maybe a bit more useful for short form content for TikTok. If you want to
03:42doom scroll things, I don't decide what you'd like to do with your spare time. But once again,
03:46the possibilities are endless. Say you are a coder, you can have these two screens, obviously in
03:52vertical, which is way better for that. You can also choose to mirror the screens and the last mode
03:56kind of maybe very use case specific is sharing mode. So say for example, you're sharing like a
04:01document, I'll use my house as an example, love to have like some of my architectural drawings on them,
04:06sharing them say, whoever sitting across the table, my wife, my architect, my designer,
04:11we haven't moved into our house by the way yet, which is more of an issue. You can see those
04:15drawings on two of the screen. So both of you can interact with it. And it does have a 99
04:20watt hour
04:20battery, which I think that's the toughest part to gauge for a dual screen laptop, because it really
04:25depends how heavily you're using your second display. If you have it for most of the time, with just
04:31one display on your keyboard over top, you typically get your all day usage. But once you start to
04:36activate that second lower display, obviously, if you're playing games, you're using it heavier,
04:41that's when battery life will kind of take a bigger hit. It also supports the Asus Pen 3,
04:45which comes in the box, I won't bore you with my non artistic skills, but you could technically use
04:49this say, like on the bottom touchscreen, and you can see what's happening on the top. It's got Dolby
04:53Vision Atmos with six speakers, it's got two front firing and four woofers. But yeah, that's pretty
04:58much a quick little rundown of what's new on the Asus ZenBook Duo. It's just a bit slimmer, new processors
05:04inside,
05:04it's got these beautiful 1000 nit OLED screens. And the coolest thing when I've whipped this out,
05:09when taking this to say like a coffee shop, people always ask like, what the heck is that? Imagine
05:13setting this up as a mobile workstation when you kind of bring this out into this form factor. Not a
05:19lot of people have seen a laptop like this, and you get the most interactions with people asking how it
05:25works. The tech has gotten way better. We've seen a couple generations of this and even something as
05:29simple as flipping orientations, the transitions have become way smoother. And as this gets better,
05:35I think it'll just become more mainstream. So that is the first laptop of the bunch. So moving on to
05:41I
05:41would say the more traditional laptops. So these ones are your classics. So this is I mentioned the
05:47A14 and of course, the A16 very similar. The biggest thing here is the screen size. So you can see
05:53the
05:54difference. This one obviously is 16 inches, whereas this one is 14 inches, still built out of that
05:59seraluminum. So if you haven't felt this, it's almost like a matte soft touch finish. It resists
06:03fingerprints, it's scratch resistant, and Asus has built this exclusively for the past couple years
06:08now. And it's a really nice and sleek material. This one's in Zabriskie beige, whereas this one is
06:13Iceland gray. So you can kind of almost see the three different color options, or I guess the range of
06:18seraluminum across three of them. And when you turn these around, these have, like I said, more of a
06:23traditional form factor. Not much has changed in terms of the overall design. So if you haven't picked up
06:28one of these Zenbooks before, these are super lightweight. So the 14 inch, this is under one
06:32kilogram, literally just with two fingers, you can kind of hold it up. Whereas the 16 inch, this weighs
06:37still pretty light for a 16 inch laptop, like 1.2 kilograms. But the big change coming to these guys
06:44is what's on the inside. So this features the new second gen Snapdragon chip. So this has the Snapdragon
06:49X2 Elite chip, whereas this one has the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip. Interesting naming scheme.
06:56It's almost like their ultra or their pro version. But as an example, the Elite Extreme chip has better
07:01clock speeds up to five gigahertz. Compared to the first gen, the X2 Elite has 41% faster performance
07:07in creative tasks like multitasking and video editing, 130% in gaming, which is pretty huge,
07:12and 78% in AI performance. Obviously, Snapdragon chips have been known for their great like multi-day
07:18battery life that has obviously continued. And on the AI side, they both have an 80 NPU tops. And
07:24interestingly, they both have a 70 watt hour battery. So technically, once again, all day,
07:29but since the A14, this is smaller, this will have better battery life. You can easily get over 33
07:34hours of video playback, once again, multi-day use. And the big difference between say the 14 and the
07:3816 inch has to be the display. So on the 14 inch, this is only like a full HD panel.
07:43It's an Asus
07:44Lumina OLED. So it's still nice to look at. It has a peak HDR brightness of 600 nits. But like
07:49I said,
07:50it's only technically full HD. On the 16 inch though, this has a 3K OLED. It gets up to 1100
07:57nits
07:58of peak HDR brightness. And it's 120 hertz versus the 60 hertz over on the 14 inch. So technically,
08:05bigger display, better screen. And for the rest, they both have Dolby Atmos, both have Snapdragon
08:09sound. They both have a dual lightweight fan design, which I like. So it still keeps it cool.
08:14You tend to see in these lighter laptops that sometimes they're fanless, but the fans do help
08:19keep the performance up. And lastly, for ports, slight difference on them just because of the
08:2316 inch. So we have dual USB-A slots on both. And then the 16 inch has a SD card
08:29slot, which I like
08:30great if you're a creator. And then on the other side, it's the same. So HDMI 2.1, the other
08:35two USB-C
08:35ports, as well as a headphone jack. This is pretty much like your everyday go-to laptop. You just have
08:41to
08:41decide, do you like the form factor of a smaller 14 inch screen? Obviously, lesser quality. Or if
08:46you want to go up to the big guy, still super lightweight. Like I said, for a 16 inch laptop,
08:51around 1.2 kilos, that is still very manageable to carry around in your backpack every single day.
08:57So that is pretty much your quick first look at the new Asus ZenBook models. Let me know which one
09:04your fave was. Like I said, I am a huge fan of the Duo. I don't think any other brand
09:09nails the
09:10dual screen laptop design like Asus does. Availability wise, I believe all of these
09:14laptops will be coming out in February, but make sure you stay posted. I hope you enjoyed
09:17my CES coverage where these were announced. Let me know what other tech laptops you're excited
09:22to see in the rest of 2026. And I'll catch the rest of you. I won't forget the keyboard
09:27in one of my next ones. Face.
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