Any
drivers knows the pain of driving. Traffic jam? No, not really. There
is one very big inconvenience whenever you take out your car.
Put
it this way; your car needs energy to run. For electric cars, you need a
battery pack to store energy for the car. While you can do that at
home, you need to get your car plugged in still. It will take forever to charge too.
While electric cars may not be too clever of an investment in Malaysia at this time, the traditional internal combustion
engines with traditional fossil fuels are the way to go. The
inconvenience is that you have to keep your tank topped up when it runs
out, a 5 minute ordeal at times.
Most of the time though its just 5 minutes that you spend in the fueling station. You tend to spend more than 15 minutes in the fueling station. At times you have to wait for a pump to free up when there is too many people at the station. Once that’s done, you have to queue up to pay for your fuel at the kiosk. To skip that, you can use your debit/credit card at the pump. If you use a debit card though, the vendor first takes MYR200 from your account before you even start doing anything.
What if there is a better solution. Since every other person in Malaysia has been going on and on about eWallet, why not use these apps to pay for fuel, from inside the car; ‘Setel’ it there and then.
Welcome to the world of Setel, an eWallet app that is specialised in handling all your fuelling needs. With Setel, it really is just 5 minutes in the fuelling station, not 15 minutes.
The moment you get to the fueling station, all you need to do is to pull up to an available pump, whip out the smartphone, open Setel app, choose the pump you are at, enter the amount that you would like to fuel, and voila, your pump is ready. Of course you need to make sure you still have credits in the app wallet. For that, you can use your credit/debit card with no fuss. If you need to find a petrol station near you, the app will help you find it too.
While the app has existed for about a year now, the app was only readily useable in the Klang Valley region and was in Beta mode. Now though, the app is fully launched as a full running app. The app will not just stop at the pumps though. They are working closely with PETRONA Malaysia to release more features within their petrol pumping stations like purchasing items in PETRONAS Mesra shops or partnering vendors, with collection at the station.
Speaking of Mesra, you can connect you Mesra card to the app and collect points automatically as you use the app. While in Beta you could not redeem the points in your Mesra card through the app now though, you can. The Setel app is the one stop shop for all fueling needs in PETRONAS.
The Setel app is now available for free on Google’s Play Store for Android and Apple App Store of iOS devices. You can use Setel app in over 700 PETRONAS fuelling stations across the nation. For now, there is no other vendors that accepts payment via the Setel
app. There is also currently an MYR 200 cap within the app. No matter
though, you can now tell your friends that you are actually ‘setel-ing’ some business as your late excuse. More information on the Setel app on their website.
Yes, we are riding the waves of the top news today too. If you go on Twitter, there are two quite a number of things that are trending in Malaysia. As of this writing, the top trending topic in Malaysia has nothing to do with the subject. Look further down though and there it is. #Wuhan is number three in Malaysia’s trending topics. Following that is #2019nCoV. Both of these refers to the subject that is also commonly known as the Wuhan virus.
Due to the virus, plenty of life in Asia has grounded to a halt. The official death toll in China has climbed over 400 and will continue to do so. Beyond that, China has also confirmed more than 20,000 cases within their borders. There are reports coming out of the country itself that China has quarantined more than 30 million people and suspects that the confirmed case numbers are closer to 10 million.
In Malaysia itself, there are already 8 reported cases. All of them are now in quarantine though. Still, #Wuhan is the trending topic, not only on twitter but everywhere else too. Air travels has been suspended and trips cancelled left and right. Not to mention, you might not be able to obtain anymore hand sanitisers and face mask now.
The virus though, does not hinder the progress of humanity. Wait, no that is not right. The virus will not hinder Samsung’s progress in their digital conquest. That sounds about right.
Source: Business Korea
You would expect plenty of construction work, or any sort of work in China itself to slowdown. That is not the case with Samsung’s Xi’an plant though. The plant, that is to be operational in the mid of 2020 will be Samsung’s second manufacturing plant in Xi’an and will be focusing on making memory chips.
While that construction is going smoothly and on track, Samsung has not stopped their progress as the world’s most advanced memory chip maker too. They have just announced and introduced their brand new third generation HBM2E fondly named ‘Flashbolt’. HBM stands for ‘High Bandwidth Memory’.
Source: Samsung
The new Flashbolt chip has a capacity of 16GB that is combined through stacking eight 10nm 16Gb DRAM (that is Gigabit for you) dies on top of a buffer chip. A little technical? Quite a lot actually. While half of us may not understand that process, it is important to note that the HBM2E has an average transfer speed of 3.2Gbps. In some cases, the Flashbolt can hit 4.2 Gbps in transfer speeds.
The current high performance memory module, the Aquabolt has a bandwidth of 307 GBps. With the new Flashbolt, that number goes up to 410 GBps per stack or up to 538GBps, if you might. Technically this does not mean that much to us as consumers.
Thing is, research labs all over the world needs all these stuff in their super computers. Plenty of these highly advanced labs uses Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) or Machine Learning (M.L.). Those applications eventually reach us, the users. With the advanced of a high speed and bandwidth chip like this, A.I. and M.L. algorithms and application can be more powerful than ever before. In that sense, no one will argue for a more powerful Google Assistant or Siri then.
Late yesterday Alphabet, which is what Google has become since their 2015 restructuring made their 2019 revenue reports available to the public. Of course Wall Street was the first to pick up the reports and ate their way through it to see if it matches all expectations. It did not; shareholders were not happy.
Source: Alphabet
Alphabet announced a total revenue of US$ 46 billion for 2019. That is a fair 17% increase from 2018. Sounds healthy, right? Wall street and shareholders though are expecting nearly a billion more in revenue though. Google missed the mark by about US$ 800 million.
US$ 800 million is quite small compared to the US$ 46 billion that they have made. Or, so you thought. Apparently it is quite a big deal in the market since every other competitor is reporting a huge surge in their own ad game. People like Amazon, for example reported a large jump on their ad revenue in 2019.
Still, Google also made sure that their shareholders are happy by also announcing that out of the US$ 46 billion of revenue, US$ 10.6 billion of those are profits. That number is bigger than estimated by Wall Street too. At least that is that.
They broke down where their money was made too within the Alphabet empire. Google cloud business, that is their Drive, Docs, Sheets and what not, makes up US$ 8.91 billion in total. YouTube, our beloved red play button on our smartphones makes up US$ 15.5 billion in revenue for 2019. That is just from Ads.
Source: YouTube
One of the bigger contributing factors of Alphabet disclosing YouTube’s earnings this year, as suggested via experts, is that the organisation as a whole failed to meet revenue expectations. The numbers, as per presented by Alphabet, indeed are quite staggering and mind boggling. The disparity could be due to a number of reasons; we cannot know for sure until Alphabet says something. The earnings number alone though tells us that the tech giants are still here to stay and they are still quite untouchable for now.
Still, the fact that YouTube, a platform that we all use for free makes US$ 15.5 billion is quite mind boggling. That is six times more than Twitch and one sixth of Facebook’s ad platform. Yes, we apparently still spend more time on the blue ‘f’ logo app than the social video platform. Then again, Facebook’s platform is plenty more versatile.
The ad revenues are not about to dwindle down anytime soon though. We cannot get enough of YouTube, you have to admit that. Annoying ads will not stop us from watching our favourite videos. But there is a bigger picture in play here though.
YouTube as a platform, thanks to the now disclosed US$ 15.5 billion in ad revenue, will grow even bigger. There will be more people that could potentially see more money in YouTube. While that means that there will be even more content for us to enjoy, that could also spell more ads being shoved in your faces. It is quite inevitable though; the more you consume, the more of a target you become.
Smart Bands and Smartwatches are becoming some of the most essential fitness accessories nowadays. However, they always need manual input of meals, caloric intake and hydration. That’s where the HEALBE GoBe3 sets itself apart from the competition. The new smart band from HEALBE is touting the first ever commercially available smartband which tracks caloric intake automatically.
The HEALBE GoBe3 is a smartband which comes with sensors designed to monitor nine key vitals. This is done non-invasively through the surface of the skin and, according to its manufacturer, with real time accuracy. The vitals tracked include sleep, stress, energy balance, heart rate, and steps taken. It does all this tracking through the hypo allergenic titanium sensor contacts on the back of the device.
Monitoring Calories Through Your Own Electrical Impulses
The new HEALBE GoBe3 uses the company’s proprietary HEALBE Flow technology to monitor caloric intake. It does this by monitoring the bio-electrical impedance of skin cells. This method of monitoring caloric intake is backed by an understanding of the human digestive system and nutrient absorption.
Our body digests different foods at different intervals after we consume it. When the nutrients are absorbed, cells create a differential gradient to assist. Essentially, the cell pump water out to allow nutrients in. HEALBE Flow uses this movement to detect the caloric value and nutrient breakdown of foods. In essence, it monitors the differences in bio-electric charges in skin cells to derive the caloric value of foods. The impedance is then used to calculate the caloric value of foods and their nutrient content.
This method was recently verified by researchers at the University of California Davis. Their research found that the technology that HEALBE uses in the GoBe3 is as accurate as manually tracking caloric input. This research is supported by another piece of independent research by the Red Cross Hospital in Guangzhou, China. Both pieces of research found the HEALBE Flow to have 89% accuracy in its reporting.
Taking On the competition with Cutting Edge Technology
Aside from the groundbreaking HEALBE Flow technology, the GoBe3 is equipped with an always-on MIP display. The display is touted to be glare free. The GoBe 3 is also lighter and sleeker than its predecessor. In addition, the smart band has interchangeable straps which come in many colours and designs. The new design is also touted to increase the accuracy of tracking. This paired with a new optical pulse sensor allows more accurate and more frequent data collection. The GoBe3 also has WiFi capabilities which speeds up data processing.
Pricing & Availability
There’s no official price for the GoBe3 announced just yet. However, we expect that the smart band will continue to hover around the USD$169 of the GoBe2.
Keep an eye on healbe.com for the GoBe3’s availability.
5G is fast becoming the norm in the tech industry as more countries see the rollout of their own 5G networks. Back at AWS re:invent, Amazon Web Services made a significant announcement, in partnership with Verizon, which made it the first company to have 5G edge computing services. AWS Wavelength is a first of its kind service which brings AWS services closer to developers and, more importantly, end users.
AWS Wavelength will see an initial rollout to 69 sites in the United States. Verizon and AWS have already been hard at work developing and fine tuning the service in Chicago. There companies such as Bethesda Softworks and the National Football League have been developing on and utilising Wavelength to deliver new, enhanced experiences to their users. This includes interactive experiences which may be the next generation of gaming and sports.
AWS Wavelength essentially brings the company’s full suite of services to the 5G Edge. The technology allows telecommunications providers and AWS to deploy remote containers fitted with all of its services. This allows developers to develop with real time experience and with single digit millisecond latency. They will then be able deploy whole new experiences to end users.
The deployment of Wavelength marks a paradigm shift which empowers edge computing like never before. It allows real time compute with large data packets which will find its applications in things like autonomous vehicles and even Smart City management. The deployment of Amazon’s full suite of web services will allow developers to deploy unique experiences for end users which take advantage of the low latency and high data volume. This in addition to the exponential increase in the number of devices each base station is able to handle will enable IoT technologies as well. The availability of machine learning interfaces at the 5G edge enables developers to develop more complex applications with further ranging implications.
Source: AWS
Developers won’t need to familiarise themselves with a new interface; Wavelength comes with the same interface developers are used to in their AWS dashboard. In fact, they will simply need to activate instances of AWS services such as EC2, ECS and more which suit their needs at a Wavelength availability zone to use the service.
AWS Wavelength is available in an initial 69 availability zones in 25 AWS Regions. The initial rollout in the United States will be done in partnership with Verizon. However, the company has committed to new availability zone in South Korea (SK Telcom), Japan (KDDI) and Europe (Vodafone) in 2020.
Adobe Premiere Pro is quickly becoming one of the most popular video editing tools among professionals. If you stay for the credits in movies, you’ll realise that a growing number of them have Adobe’s logo in the credits. As such, the demands on Premiere Pro and its features are slowly evolving to adapt to an ever changing workplace with an increased amount of collaboration.
“Productions” was designed in collaboration with some of the largest producers and editors in Hollywood. The feature was tested on recent films such as “Terminator: Dark Fate” and “Dolemite is My Name” with special builds being used in ongoing projects.
The new “Productions” feature in Adobe Premiere Pro allows users to arrange and organise large projects into smaller, bite sized chunks. With these chunks as guides, video editors and videographers are able to divide and upload footage and assets to Adobe Creative Cloud and Premiere Pro in a more organised way. They will be able to create folders within their project files which will sync seamlessly between team members and also allow team members to download updated assets and files to work offline. It will continue to sync once the person goes online.
The more flexible collaborative and management features on “Productions” allow assets and video footage for large productions to be segregated into smaller portions. It also allows larger episodic productions to be organised according to episodes or even more granular divisions. It also allows reused assets to be shared or duplicated across folders seamlessly. You can easily add to project workflows by adding projects to the “Productions” panel within Adobe Premiere Pro. This will then add the project to the larger workflow.
Project locking in “Productions” allows editors to lock their active project. This will prevent collaborators from overwriting or deleting work files or the project. However, it still allows collaborators to seamlessly copy and import assets from the active workflow to their own. Project settings are also synchronised between project files in “Productions”. This allows collaborators to previews rendered by a single editor can be made available to all the editors for smooth playback.
The feature is coming to Adobe Premiere Pro soonon both MacOS and Windows. However, Adobe has not provided an exact date just yet.
CISO stands for Chief Information Security Officer. From that description alone, we believe you would know what this report is about then. If you still do not; Cisco did a study for the cyber security field for 2019 by interviewing about 2,000 Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) or security professionals all over Asia Pacific. You would be glad to know also that about 10% of the participants in the study are Malaysian. While that does not change the nature of the study, the sample size should mean that there is some accuracy in the general scheme of things.
Source: Cisco
The Big Numbers
The big numbers for Malaysia are 44% of threat alerts are investigated, 46% of the recognised threats are neutralised, and 27% have faced downtime of longer than 24 hours due to a cyber security breach or threat. There are some good things about these numbers, and some bad things too. So it is not all roses and rainbows for Malaysia’s cyber security industry in 2019.
The first of the numbers are the investigated threats. This does not mean alerts. Receiving cyber threat alerts and investigating them are two different things. You can have threat alerts of more than 10,000 and still not investigate any of them for a number of reasons. Still, investigated threats are escalated from reported threats.
According to the Malaysian numbers, 44% of threats reported in Malaysia are investigated in 2019. That is 4% more than 2018, Malaysian CISOs are busier by 4% last year 2019 than in 2018 then. That could be due to the raised number of serious threats. It could also mean that awareness to cyber threats have increased in Malaysia. So while it does sound like Malaysia is being attacked more, it also means that Malaysians are now better prepared for cyber threats or breaches.
Out of all the verified threats, nearly half of them were remediated at 46%. That number is higher than plenty of Malaysia’s neighbours and the average in Asia Pacific at 43%. The other half? Maybe those cases could be a little tougher. Still, that also means that Malaysians are capable of handling cyber security issues. This number is also an increase from 2018.
The next big number is 27% of companies declared a downtime of more than 24 hours when they get attacked. This is a large increase from 2018’s 9%. While this may not seem like a good thing, there is a bigger story that than. For one, this also means that Malaysia is plenty more digital in 2019 than 2018. This increase could also be because of the increased threat detection in 2019. The result was also a higher resolution to each identified threat.
More Vendors, More Problems?
It seems only yesterday that having multiple layers of security is a good thing. Like plenty of things, throwing money at something should solve a problem. Those were the days.
There used to be a time when organisations like banks would recommend having about 10 security vendors to layer security in all parts of their organisation. In some sense, it works; but it is very expensive, and very inconvenient for users. That is not yet considering the fact that having multiple vendors and that many layers of security increases complexity in controlling and managing the solutions.
The new way to think about cyber security then is to keep the number of vendors down to as little as required. This reduces not just complexity of workflow and simplifies management, but also increases the efficiency of managing cyber threats.
From the Malaysian numbers though, this seems to be a slightly new concept with more than 35% of the responding organisations having more than 10 vendors. While this is slightly lower than 2018’s 39%, there is still a need to reduce that number even lower. Malaysians realise that too, with 90% of respondents finding it hard to manage that many vendors at the same time. Some experts suggests that having five to six vendors at a time is enough for a holistic cybersecurity system to be in place for any organisation.
The Problem With Cybersecurity Malaysia
There are still looming problems for a country that is going through a major digital transformation though. While the progress toward a digital Malaysia and Industry 4.0 has been a steady one in the region, there are still fundamental problems that might hinder progress or create holes in the cyber armours that the CISOs have put up or tried to put up. One of these enemies to cyber security is budget.
There are times where companies might have a large constraint over budget. For most SMEs and startups, it is quite understandable. They would probably need to pool their money in things that they might find more useful to them in the shorter run. That is not saying that it is not a problem for them or the general cyber security state in Malaysia. It is still a problem, but an inevitable one.
There are cases with large organisations that has restricted their budgets to cyber security because they do not yet see the value in cybersecurity. This becomes a major issue for CISOs. Despite the consensus that more money may not mean more protection, cyber security still needs a pool of money to work with. If not enough money is being poured into the department, not much can be done. With less protection, larger organisations are more vulnerable and thus, might lose even more money.
The biggest problem with cyber security, not just in Malaysia but most of the world, is always personnel; both the lack of skilled workers and awareness of the main issue. Thing is though, CISOs all over Malaysia are also making efforts to reduce this number down with plenty of awareness and skill training of personnel all over the company. The number of skilled personnel in terms of cyber security in Malaysia is also growing continuously, which also means that it is a problem that can be solved in time.
So What do We do in 2020?
2020 is meant to be the year of progress, of near complete digital revolution. It is the year of 5G and WiFi 6, the year where data is meant to be all covering and seamless. That potentially means more cyber security risks with bigger data bandwidth and less latency. It gives software less time to react. Which means that a DDoS attack could be a big thing in 2020.
Still, awareness is key to combating cyber attacks. With the availability of data in today’s world, having a VPN no longer cuts it. The only benefit of VPN these days is to ensure that whatever that you have accessed is not tracked by your data or service provider. You are still at risk of a cyber attack even via VPN.
The fact that you have multiple devices that are connected to the internet and each other is already a threat on their own. At every point and turn, you really have to be aware of what you are accessing on the internet and what you are vulnerable to. That allows you to be more alert on things like phishing attacks, malicious links, email scams and what not. That should be enough as the first layer of defense against common cyber attacks, maybe even big ones like ransomware and what not.
If you are planning on getting an Anti-Virus software protection on your PC, consider spending a little more than what you would pay for a generic Anti-Virus program. You might want to look into find an Anti-Virus program that covers the whole lot from spyware, adware, to even malware. That way, you are ensured of a holistic protection, at least on your own end.
Maxis and Astro have been offering a combo package for internet, IPTV and Astro’s satellite TV since last year. This year, the companies are upping the ante with even faster packages to cater to a more digital audience.
The packages offered by the partnership are essentially an combination of the preexisting offerings already available from the companies. However, Astro is offering a limited 2-year rebate for those subscribing to their higher packages. This rebate is in addition to the MYR5 rebate for those using the auto-debit service. Subscribers will get either an MYR15 or MYR25 monthly rebate for 24 months depending on their subscription.
The breakdown of the costings are summarised in the table we created below. Do note that the prices for Astro are their minimum at each level, there are packages that are more expensive that are not reflected in the table. Prices are also not inclusive of the 6% SST.
Users who are interested in subscribing to the new packages can visit the official Astro broadband website. The offer is not limited to new subscribers, preexisting Astro subscribers can opt to add on the Maxis internet packages to their subscription. Do note that on higher speeds, Maxis is offering free Mesh routers for new sign ups only. Users who add-on the internet package will not be eligible for the mesh router.
However, Astro is offering a free upgrade to their new Ultra box which features Cloud Recording and a new interface for all subscribers. For more details, visit https://product.astro.com.my/broadband/offers.
Malaysia has been discussing and researching 5G for a while now. In fact, the initial rollout of 5G commercially will begin in Q3 2020. With that in mind, HUAWEI was also present at the recent 5G Malaysia International Conference in Langkawi. The company was showing off their Mate 30 Pro 5G in Malaysia’s 5G test bed. HUAWEI has announced today, that the smartphone will be available officially in Malaysia starting on 7 February 2020.
The Mate30 Pro 5G initially leaked earlier this year when screen caps of its certification in SIRIM surfaced. Now, it looks like Malaysia will join China for its commercial rollout. The new Mate30 Pro 5G is the first 5G capable smartphone top be made commercially available in Malaysia. The smartphone will be available via HUAWEI stores and telco partners such as Maxis, U mobile and Celcom.
Powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G, the Mate30 Pro is a step above its Mate30 Pro brother. The new 5G capable chipset supports 2G, 3G, and 4G in addition to the upcoming 5G. The new entry supports standalone and non-standalone 5G networks. HUAWEI touts low latency connectivity with the 5G capable smartphone, however, keep in mind that this is only applicable with a 5G network.
Aside from this, the smartphone shares the same design, software and camera setup found on the Mate30 Pro. This means that one of the most praised smartphone cameras is available on the smartphone; DxO mark gave the camera setup a 123. This paired with the 40 SuperCharge feature on the smartphone makes it a compelling offering from HUAWEI.
Pricing and Availability
The HUAWEI Mate30 Pro 5G will be available starting from February 7, 2020. The smartphone will initially be available from HUAWEI stores and also from Maxis, Celcom and U Mobile. It is also slated to be available through DiGi.
It will be retailing for MYR4,199 off contract. Purchases of the HUAWEI Mate30 Pro 5G will be entitled to freebies from HUAWEI worth MYR537 including an extended year of warranty and an in-car wireless charger.
The
PC that we know today has evolved leaps and bounds from the old days.
These days, while PC towers are still around, and you can buy a decent
one for less than MYR 2,000, portable PCs are kings. They offer
unrivalled portability and yet still offer you the power to work like
you have never left the office, or your desk. Powerful enough notebook
PCs are even able to allow you to not only work on graphic heavy
applications, they allow you to play games at a level of immersion that
has never been seen before. They are as powerful as your desktop tower
PC at home.
Still, there are some limitations to a notebook PC. The keyboard for one, you cannot change that, and most will never get the benefit of mechanical keyboards, thanks to the bulk in most mechanical keyboard designs. So you end up with less-than-stellar keyboard most of the time. Then there is cooling. A notebook PC will always have the same cooling issues because you try to fit powerful, aluminium melting processors into a space that is not even big enough for your pinky to fit into. Of course, there are going to be heat management problems. Of course, technology have negated those issues and caught the notebook PCs up to the traditional desktop towers.
There
is however, one problem that can hardly be solved when it comes to
notebook PCs – display, or should I say; displays. There is only one
display on a notebook PC, and you cannot upgrade it once you get one. On
a desktop tower, you can choose to get one large display, or two, or
three, or four; depending on your budget and set up requirements. On a
notebook PC you only can have one, thanks to the size. Or is it?
Not according to ASUS though. This is the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, a dual-display wieldinng
piece of hunk that you call a notebook PC. It has two displays and
still folds the same way any notebook PC does. No this is not some kind
of an e-ink display paired to a normal display like the Lenovo YogaBook
C930. This is a proper coloured LCD display that you get alongside a 4K
resolution OLED display. It is not a concept like the Razer that we saw
a few years ago too. It is real, and it is in our hands. Is it any good
though? Should you spend your money on this? Oh wait, we have not told
you how much it is just yet.
Design
On
the outside, it looks just like any other notebook PC. It is none of
those super slim, super light notebook PC though. It is a properly heavy
notebook PC packing some metal in its sculpted body. Well, then again,
its body is made up of metal as well.
There
is plenty aluminium everywhere, not a lot of plastic; very unlike any
other ASUS notebook PCs that we are used to. While using plastic sounds
cheap, the ones on most ASUS notebook PCs I know are quite high in
quality. The benefit of weight is also a good encouragement for the use
of plastics.
Of course, aluminium and other metal materials are more premium. That is exactly the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, premium in both feel and build. The downside to that is weight, but you are going to want this to sit on your desk most of the time anyway, it weighs 2.5kg; reminds you of the old days of notebook PCs no?
Still, the ZenBook Pro Duo looks unique. In line with ASUS Anniversary design language, the ZenBook Pro Duo looks sharp, with acute angles and powerful lines. You have the iconic brushed aluminium on the top clam, and multiple grilles on the sides and the edges to cool the rig. It looks, cool in that its metallic blue finish. It looks like a spaceship; otherworldly. It looks cool.
To
be fair though, this is a hate it or love it design. At first, I was
struggling to like the look of the odd notebook PC. It is aggressive in
looks, and if I am being honest, I like more flowy designs with softer
lines. Still, it grew on me.
Open
it up and you see the dual displays. The regular display is a beautiful
OLED, glossing in your eyes. Look down and you see another LCD display
that is put right above the keyboard, a familiar layout (ehem Zephyrus ehem). Oh, and there is an LED outlet too at the bottom part of the clam, under the keyboard. That is strangely cool.
Because typing on this kind of layout can be awkward, there is a palm rest included in the box of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, which extends the bottom part of the notebook PC a little bit. No, it is not aluminium just like the rest of the PC, it is plastic constructed with some faux leather top and rubberised strips for better grip on the table and comfortable typing. There is a prism thing going on in the palm rest too reflecting the LED below the keyboard. It glows green when the PC is fully charged, and red while charging. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Unlike the ASUS notebook PCs of the previous generation, you do not get an indented display hinge. It is now a completely seamless hinge that goes from one end to the other end. It does make the notebook PC look cleaner than before. But there is another reason for this completely streamlined hinge. The display part of the notebook PC also acts like the stand to angle the notebook the PC’s bottom part. The benefit of that is the better ergonomics on your keyboard. The downside is cooling because the vents at the back is now pointing to the display. The ZenBook Pro Duo’s cooling though is on the sides, so your main display is not going to be overheated.
Hardware
The premium ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is built with aluminium mostly, not as cold and heavy as steel but still very sturdy and high quality. That aluminium build, that we may not be very used to on an ASUS notebook PC, while makes it 2.5kg heavy, makes it a little more special. Yes, it has two displays.
To power two displays though you need some real processing ang GPU power. That is the 9th
Generation Intel Core i7 you find under the hood. That processor is
also paired to a NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060 for good measure. Yes, they
could have gone for an RTX 2080, but that would bring the cost up and
complicate the whole heat management issue. Remember, they have to deal
with dissipating heat from the other display too.
Specifications
ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo UX581GV
As Tested
Processor (clock)
9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H (2.6GHz ~ up to 4.5GHz)
GPU
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB DDR6 VRAM)
Display(s)
Primary 15.6-inch OLED 4K (3840 x 2160) touch sensitive 100% DCI-P3 Secondary (ScreenPad+) 14-inch 4K (3840 x 1100) touch sensitive
Memory
1TB NVME M.2 SSD 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 RAM
Networking and Connections
1 x Thunderbolt™ 3 USB-C™ (up to 40Gbps and DisplayPort) 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A (up to 10Gbps) 1 x Standard HDMI 2.0 1 x Audio combo jack Intel Wi-Fi 6 with Gig+ performance (802.11ax) Bluetooth 5.0
Battery
71Wh 8-cell Li-Polymer
Operating System
Windows 10 Home
Miscellaneous
ASUS SonicMaster Audio with Harman Kardon Certification Detachable Palm Rest Detachable Laptop Stand ASUS Pen
Features
Its good looks are not all show, no go. This thing packs plenty of tasteful goodies. For starters you see the dual displays.
Doubling Down
The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, true to its name, packs two displays. One is a full 15.6-inch display with 4K resolution on board. The other is also 4K in resolution, in width anyway. In height, it is half the size of the 15.6-inch display. It is not the same OLED panel as the main 15-incher display too. It is an LCD panel amd we are guessing that the decision to go LCD was also because of cost. An OLED panel would have made sense though with its minimal heat production and accurate colour reproduction. It would have added quite a little bit to the cost, yes.
Still,
dual displays built into a notebook PC; not the first time we see it
but it is the first that is commercially available. The first we saw of
this was a prototype that came from Razer a few years ago. While that
was an interesting concept, it was not viable mainly because of its
massive weight and estimated cost. It was stolen as well, a day or two
after it was displayed on the biggest electronics show floor.
So,
this the first commercially available and viable dual display notebook
PC for the market. It will still set you back more than MYR10,000 and
that is still a lot of money to be fair. But hey, where eles can you find a notebook with two displays built into it.
The
LCD display on top of the keyboard is mostly used as a control panel
for whatever applications you might think of. Things like Adobe’s
Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and what not can support a
multi-window workflow and the dual display surely benefits users from
that. For example, you can control your timelines and what not on Adobe
Premiere Pro on your secondary display. That way, your preview panel can
be bigger and fuller. I would still be recommending anyone to downscale the preview to half the resolution if they are planning to edit 4K videos though for smoother workflow.
For
gaming, we hardly see the point. But other form of entertainment like
movies, or Spotify, or YouTube, maybe. For Spotify especially, you can
just leave the Spotify window to open on the secondary display and
control music on the secondary display via touch. Yes, both displays are
touch sensitive, so there is that. Of course, you may not extend your
movie watching to go all the way into the secondary display, but you can
pull out your controls and use it on the secondary display.
The
secondary display can also act as your alternative web browser just in
case you need to refer to anything for other things on your main
display. If you do use the pen that comes in the box (we did not have
ours) you can even use the secondary panel as a drawing pad. There is
one thing about the PadScreen (as they call it) though that is a little annoying; its placement.
While
the secondary display is functional, its placement can be a little bit
of a literal pain in the neck. You are craning down on the secondary
display most of the time when you are looking at it. If you are not
using any palm rest for it the keyboard, you are going to have to
prepare yourself for carpal tunnel syndrome too, your wrist is going to
get injured in that kind of prolonged usage. Yes, they have included a
stand out of the box which you can use to raise the keyboard and ScreenPad panel a little bit, which helps; not a lot.
Still, there is definitely use for the ScreenPad. While we do think that you will not miss out that much if you do not have a ScreenPad,
it is a nice thing to have on the go. Still, we would recommend you to
pack the palm rest as well in your bag when you want to work offsite.
Still, it is a heavy piece of kit to be carrying around so you might
want to leave it behind and pack something lighter.
OLED Forever
The
15.6-inch main display is a 4K OLED unit, which also means
ultra-accurate colours with ultra-high contrasts. The numbers speak for
itself though; 100% DCI-P3. You get HDR with this display too for even
better contrasts. Well, it is an OLED panel after all.
Still,
the OLED display is not just important when you want to sit back, kick
back, and enjoy a good movie, or play a video game. It is important for
you as a creator as well. You need highly accurate colours to do colour
correction and editing. You need HDR to correctly tell where your
content is. You need OLED for everything. Yes, we really like OLED
technology.
Still,
beyond your creator and editing duties, you would like to be able to
enjoy contents too. In that case as well the OLED on the ZenBook
Pro Duo does not disappoint. Playing Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon:
Breakpoint definitely highlights the super accurate and vivid colours
that the OLED boasts. Even the slightest in light changes can be noted
on the display thanks to HDR on OLED. Watching Netflix with HDR and 4K
enabled shows is breathtaking and immersive, especially with a good pair of headphones.
Harman Kardon
While it is not the loudest speakers you can find on a notebook PC, it is actually quite good. Thanks to some magic from Harman Kardon, the speakers fires very balanced audio with very clear highs and mids.
The bass needs a little working but it is quite normal for notebook PCs
with no built-in woofers. Then again, not many notebook PCs come with
subwoofers.
Still,
it is loud enough if you are not sharing the speakers with a room full
of people. It is good enough for personal listening and entertainment
purposes. Spotify on the speakers sounds plenty than good enough.
Watching movies with it though is awesome.
Gaming with the Harman Kardon
speakers is a little weak though, mostly because the lows are not that
great here. Still, it is not that you cannot use it for gaming; you can.
Maybe play games that does not include a lot of explosions?
Performance
Power Power Power
The weighty ASUS ZenBook
Pro Duo is bound to be a powerful notebook PC. Especially its packing
of an Intel Core i7 paired to at least 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce
RTX 2060 GPU. You can spec this with a Core i9 by the way if you really
wanted, of course you have to pay more for it if you do. The maximum
that they will do for GPU is the RTX2060 though, as we previously
mentioned and as per specified by ASUS; cooling issues.
That
is not to say that the Intel Core i9 produces the same heat as the Core
i7. The more powerful CPU obviously runs hotter than the less powerful
Core i7. Still, the Core i9 does not produce a significantly larger
amount of heat that the fans within the ASUS ZenBook
Pro Duo cannot manage. It is a different story with the GPU though.
While the heat produced from an NVIDIA GeForce RTX2070 is not that much
bigger than an RTX2060 too, it is about choosing between using a lesser
CPU or a more powerful one. In the case of ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo – it is the matter of pure processing power.
The
result, at least on our unit (Intel Core i7), is a fast machine, very
fast with the SSD installed in the machine. While you can expect a
bigger performance to come from the Core i9, we do think that the Core
i7 is plenty capable enough and you may not need to fork out an extra
MYR3,000 price tag that the Core i9 comes with. Yes, the Intel Core i9
option sets you back MYR3,000 more than the regular Core i7 option. You
only need that kind of power in certain situations.
Still,
our Core i7 can cope with plenty that we can throw at it. It handles
video editing without major issue, we pushed 4K videos on it mind you
and downscales it to 1080p. It renders the preview with no more issue or
render time than usual.
Gaming
We seldom push games to extend all the way to the secondary display. Why? What for?
Most
of the time, if you do want a multi-screen gaming experience, you want
to extend the displays horizontally; not vertically like the ZenBook Pro Duo’s dislpay arrangement. In this case, I cannot really think of any use case for the secondary display.
Still, you can game with it and as I have mentioned, the 4K OLED display will not disappoint you. Any games will look gorgeous on the 4K OLED display with great contrast and vivid colours.
Of
course, the powerful Intel Core i7 helped with the generously adequate
NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060 helps with the extra smooth gaming performance
when we play Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: BreakPoint
and The Shadow of the Tomb Raider. While we may not be able to push the
graphics all the way to ultra, we are still able to render them at high
settings at the minimum. We did not try Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on
it yet, but we are pretty sure it will look good.
Would we like to see better GPUs in the ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo? An RTX2070 perhaps? Yes. Would it make sense if we spec it at a mere Core i7? Maybe? Would it make sense cost wise? Maybe not. On its own, we think that the MYR 12,999 asking price is already quite steep if you are just looking to game. We admit that games look really good though.
Still,
if you wish to go all the way to the RTX2080, just remember that the
behemoth of a thing called the Acer Predator Helios 700 with their slide
down keyboard just for more airflow to keep the big GPU from
overheating or melting your hands.
Bringing in the Heat
With any PC build, especially a notebook PC, there is always the consideration of heat management. This is always true when you are trying to have a powerful build. In the case of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, there is the problem of powerful internals. Imagine the thought of fitting in an ultra-powerful Intel Core i9 to pair it to a powerful NVIDIA GeForce RTX2060.
While that may not be that much of a scary thought; you have to also think about the extra display that the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo packs. Not only that, ASUS is stacking the display on top of the CPU and GPU placements. That adds a whole slew of cooling problems in itself.
Still,
ASUS manages the heat with their new designed fans to dissipate the
heat mostly from the sides. That is why you see large grilles on the
side of the notebook PC, instead of the usual exhaust toward the back of
the device. In this case, if you aim all the heat to the back of the
device, it will heat up the 4K OLED display instead; not ideal.
Firing
the heat to the sides then is the most ideal way to dissipate the heat
generated by the internals and the additional LCD display; both the left
and right side for the ASUS. You will not believe the heat that is
produced by this thing though. I left a glass of chilled Coke with some
ice in it about 1 meter away from the left side of the notebook PC and
the ice melted within the 10 minutes I left it there. The drink got warm
a little later after that; so, I was left to drink a warm Coca-Cola
after that. To be fair, I was on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint at
the time.
On normal operations though, you still feel a little bit of the heat coming down to your hands when you use a mouse right next to the notebook PC. While the fan may not be running at full chat, you can still feel the gush of air come out the side exhaust ports when the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is on. If you have anything that is taxing on the GPU and CPU, you will hear the fan spooling faster and feel more heat on your hand; your mouse hand.
The Workhorse
The main function of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo though is mostly for an added productivity. Thanks to the dual displays, at least, it should be quite something at that. Of course, with an included stylus, it should be even more intuitive and productive. We did not get to test it with the stylus though, sadly.
Still,
the dual displays do help a little with our video workflow. We use
Adobe’s Premiere Pro quite a lot in our video work process. As we have
mentioned we used the main AMOLED display for previews. The secondary
display is where all our timelines sits. You can put all the assets
there too and use that to enhance your workflow that way; we did
anyway.
Thanks to the colour accuracy of the main AMOLED display and 4K too, colour correcting is much easier to do with the ASUS ZenBook
Pro Duo. Of course, all the controls are pushed to the secondary
display to give more real estate for the preview screen. Larger display
real estate also means you can see more.
It is not all sunshine with the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo though. We do not like the keyboard
too much, we feel that the keyboard travel was a little too short;
uncomfortable to type on. The discomfort is pushed even further with the
keyboard placement; especially when you do not use the palm rest
provided in the box with the notebook PC.
The kind of keyboard layout the ZenBook Pro Duo has does not give us the possibility to use the notebook PC comfortably on our laps too. That, and the heat produced from the Zenbook Pro Duo just makes it uncomfortable after a while. The 2.5kg does not help too, it makes it feel like you are using your legs as ironing boards. You could toast a sandwich there too.
The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo – Unportable Productivity Machine
The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo will set you back MYR 12,999. If I am being completely hoinest,
I would tell you not to buy this notebook PC for that kind of money.
For that kind of money, you might get a better deal if you look
elsewhere even in ASUS’ extensive stables. For that kind of money, you
could easily get a large sized gaming notebook with a fast 17-inch
display that is powered by the same sort of CPU and an even more
powerful GPU to work with.
You
lose the AMOLED display, sure. But you get bigger display, lighter
build, and more power. You might not get 4K resolution, but the trade-off is still quite big.
You do not get the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo for gaming though. You get it for the productivity appeal of it. You get it for the dual displays; not because it is practical to bring around. You are most likely to just leave it on your work desk, or home desk, and go to a meeting with a piece of print out or thumb drive you can work with. You really do not want to carry it much, you might break your back with it.
You
get it for work mostly; creative work. You get it because you need
extra flexibility that you get with the dual display. You get it for the
beautiful 4K AMOLED display that you would use to watch movies and make
films out of it. You get it for the touch screens that you would use to
draw something with. You buy it as a creator, you buy it as a creative
professional. Except, you might still not.
If
you are a creative professional and have MYR 12,999 to spend on a
powerful work notebook PC that you will not carry around, why not spend
on a PC tower that you will not even move from your work place? What
about getting two other full-sized monitors with highly accurate colours
as well?
So, who, in their right mind would get this? We still do think that this ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is made for professionals and those are the guys that would get their hands on this device. Most likely though they might not get it on their own account. The most probable scenario for this is that the companies that they work for get one for them out of whatever necessity they have out of it. Hey, that is still one way to get a notebook PC.
