Mo Hassan

The hype is real, and it’s worth it.

This is the longest I’ve waited for any piece of technology, and the most excited I have been in a very long time. If y’all remember HTC One 8, it was that kind of feeling.

What a phone that was!! The build, the software, features. Classic.

I initially purchased a Lenovo Legion 5 Slim on Ebay for a pretty great deal fully loaded (32GBs of RAM, 1TB of storage, Dedicated RTX 4080 graphics card, 4K Oled Screen, Keyboard Backlighting). While it was a great laptop, I had to ultimately return it. For two, maybe three, reasons:

1. Screen tearing. Not sure if it was a physical screen issue or a software issue with the 4k resolution. Similarly, font’s never looked right, either too skinny or too blurry. Even tried playing around with MacType. Sometimes it look ok, and other times not. Not acceptable.
2. Battery. It lasted about 5 ours on battery on normal use of mostly browser activity, slack, mail app, todoist, and sometimes visual code studios. I never felt confident how much I would get out of the battery.
3. No thunderbolt ports. I mean what even…it’s just silly to just have USB-C 3.2 ports and no USB 4 or thunderbolt.
4. Oh and yeah I came across ZenBook Duo 2024 on Youtube while randomly browsing. The more I researched, the more I found trusted tech reviewers (like Thao, Austin Evans, The Tech Chap) absolutely RAVING about this machine. The specs on paper and pricing seemed unbelievable.

So the drama begun. It. was. out. of. stock. everywhere. What the hell? Cool piece of tech, I’m ready to purchase, want it desperately, and most importantly like almost everything else in our lives, expected to be able to have it the next day.

This led me down hours and hours of reddit digging, checking out any and all possible websites that would sell it. Then randomly on March 7th, I clicked on an Amazon link from a reddit post or an article (can’t remember exactly), and to my surprise the add to cart button was enabled — ready for my to purchase. Leaped out of bed, ran to my wife, deciding together if I should pull the trigger. And I do. Expected delivery date: 3/23 – 4/7. Jeeeesus.

Over the next 2 weeks, I spend an ungodly amount of time each day searching for this laptop — maybe, just maybe, a Micro Center near me might be in stock, or Asus.com would have one ready to ship in 24 hours. And — watching more reviews, unboxings, reading more reddit posts, and articles. A typical reddit lurker, I started commenting and posting.

The very last time I comment or posted something on reddit that I actually cared or felt passionate about was my dismay with Windows 10.

The day it got delivered, it had been a long day by that point (8PM delivery) and I was exhausted. I felt I put WAY TOO much energy into this thing and pretty much came to the realization that it’s just a…laptop. I don’t know what I was so excited for and got so obsessed with…but my wife reminded me and tried to get excited.

As I unboxed slowly, still not giving into being excited, I couldn’t but to start smiling and feel…OH SO FUCKING EXCITED. It was Christmas (or rather Eid), I was kid, and this … this was it.

Solid build. Hefty. Sleek. A fucking work of beauty.

Back pack. Stylus pen. Paper cover that becomes a trifold stand.

Finally something worth getting excited about, and something different.

No charge. OF FUCKING COURSE.

Let it charge. Boot it up. Spent 2-3 hours just installing updates, including a BIOS update.

Really got into testing and using the machine the next day. It was SOLID experience. The screens are just BEAUTIFUL. The two screens just make sense. Trackpad and keyboard are a dream to use (I’d say a little less comfortable than MX Keys but better than every other laptop I’ve used (Macbook, ThinkPads, HP/Dell).

Put of course I was looking for faults, flaws, and so began the painful and headache inducing rabbit holes.

• Is there a heating problem? Is the computer getting too hot just on idle? On light use? Uh oh.
• Randomly lags, mouse lags across the screen, windows open and close with clear delays. Uh oh.
• Something wrong with the keyboard? Anytime I type a word with the letter “o” in it, it puts double o’s (most often in the word “you”).
• Is it handling the apps that I need and use? I hate nothing more than to have to compromise what I’m used to using, or need to use. Slack, or a mail app like Spark, etc. That’s not the point, it’s 2024 – I should be able to use the same apps on my iPhone, Samsung Tablet, and PC laptop and have a similar experience. No lagging bullshit, no too much stress on the CPU, GPU, RAM, or whatever.
• Can I support and work with my external dual monitor setup with a DisplayLink (VisionTek) dock/adapter? Can it do it without losing it’s mind, getting hot as shit, and blowing the fan loud enough to hear it from the moon?

You name it, I got worrying about it. That’s who I am, I fucking worry, I obsess and ultimately always be disappointed. But I don’t want to just give in or give up. I have expectations out of my tech, and I would simply like them to be met…especially if those expectations are nothing out of this world, and is a common experience on other computers, OS’s, and devices.

Some apps I’ve got installed on my Windows 11 on the Zenbook Duo 2024.

Sleek, effective, and powerful app called G-Helper.

Auto Dark Mode. If you don’t have it, you need it.

Twinkle Tray. If you have external monitors, a must have to control the screen brightness.

Resilio Sync because I despise OneDrive, Google Drive, and DropBox. Resilio allows me to seamlessly sync my Synology Nas drive. Synology Drive is alright but too resource hungry and has caused sync issues and duplicate file versions.

If you’re used to previewing files with your space bar (read: moved from MacOs), this is a great replacement. I find it better than ‘Peak’ that comes with Windows PowerToys.

Similarly, I’ve become a huge fan of Flow Launcher, which works as FANTASTIC replacement for MacOS’s Spotlight search.