Best RTX 3080 Ti laptop buyer’s guide

ASUS’ high-end workstation laptop with RTX 3080 Ti is the ASUS Zephyrus Duo 16, which also comes packing a massively powerful AMD Ryzen 9 6980HX processor, up to 64GB of fast 4800MHz DDR5 RAM, and up to 4TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, with RAID 0 support to make read and write speeds even quicker.

With Dynamic boost, the TGP of the graphics card maxes out at 150W, which is not as powerful as some of the other selections on this page, meaning its gaming performance is not quite up there with the best, however it’s still a respectable power limit. In terms of workstation use, you will struggle to find a laptop with better multi-core performance than is given by the Ryzen 9 6980HX, which demolishes even the most demanding rendering or 3D modelling workloads. The inclusion of liquid cooling really helps to get the most out of this high-powered processor. Ultimately this just reinforces that this laptop is for serious workstation users only, given the very high price that it demands.

The most distinctive feature of the Asus Zephyrus Duo series is of course the secondary screen, placed between the keyboard and the main display, which lifts upwards. The new Duo 16 has a more seamless connection between the two displays now, with the mini screen lifting up close to the edge of the primary display. Once again this second display has touch screen functionality, and can be used to display alternative media whilst gaming (Discord or YouTube for instance) or different windows of your editing program (the timeline for example, allowing more screen space to watch the footage and to move and manipulate it via touch). Arguably buying a cheaper laptop plus a larger secondary screen separately could be for cash efficient, though this would take up more space to carry, plus would be less useful for the aforementioned editing workflows. Whether or not it will actually be useful though really depends on what you’re planning on doing with the laptop.

The inclusion of the second display does mean that the trackpad (which doubles as a numpad) is off to the side of the keyboard and that the keyboard is positioned closer to the user with no space to rest your hands on it, though there is an optional wrist rest included that you can attach to the front of the machine. This positioning can take a bit of getting used to but the actual quality of the keyboard is decent and it feels responsive. The trackpad is okay but we’d recommend using a mouse instead. Unlike the previous Duo, the Duo 16 now has a webcam included on the top of the display, which has InfraRed technology with Windows Hello support.

Besides the second display, the most unique thing about the ASUS Zephyrus Duo 16 is the new variable resolution and refresh rate option for the main panel that’s been introduce in 2022. If you pick this option you get a 4K 120Hz display that can switch to a 1080p 240Hz display using the onboard software: an ideal setup for those looking for a laptop capable of both graphical and video workflows at higher resolution and fast-paced competitive gaming.

In terms of response time, the previous version came with a 7ms response time with Overdrive enabled, which wasn’t great for a gaming laptop of this size, but not terrible either. We can expect this latest version to be at least as good, though hopefully better; we’ll have to wait for testing to find out. Color replication is around 98% sRGB, 75% Adobe RGB and the same for DCI-P3, meaning its suitable for color work in the sRGB space, but not much beyond that. Still, this is a unique 3080 Ti workstation and gaming laptop with features you won’t find anywhere else.