GPD Duo Review – AMD Ryzen 9 AI 370 HX dual screen laptop for twice the fun and productivity

Since we first found out about the GPD Duo dual screen laptop over a year ago we have been patiently waiting to get our hands on it to try out. Please note that this is a pre-production model and not the final product. As such there are some talking points about the design which we will cover in this GPD Duo review.

GPD Duo Review Video

GPD Duo Overview

Let’s start our GPD Duo review with a look at the dual displays and the configurations you can use.

The GPD Duo measures around 11.6 x 8.2 x 0.9 inches (29.7 × 20.9 × 2.3 cm) when fully closed, and it weighs around 2.27 kilos (5 lbs). It is quite heavy especially compared to say the GPD Win MAX 2 model weighing less than half the weight of this.

The Duo folds open to reveal the dual displays. The top and bottom displays can be angled independently to your preference. On the back is a built-in kickstand to provide some support.

When fully opened to the standard angle, the laptop measures around 13.7 inches (35 cm) in height.

The top screen can be folded back on itself into a presentation mode where there is a screen on both sides. The laptop measures around 8.8 inches (22.5 cm) in height while like this orientation.

And last but not least is the tablet mode which is essentially closing the laptop with the top screen acting as the tablet screen. It is a little thicker than before at around 0.98 inches (2.5cm).

You may have noticed that while in presentation and tablet modes, the top display is not secured and a bit loose. GPD have confirmed that they will be adding a magnet to the final production model to keep it secure.

The displays themselves are AMOLED touchscreens measuring 13.3″ with a 2880×1800 resolution at 60Hz. All the finer details are on screen. The quality looks great, especially when HDR is switched on. Together they give you an 18″ display that is perfect for all tasks ranging from productivity, watching media and gaming.

Talking about productivity, both displays are compatible with the GPD stylus which has 4096 levels of pressure. I can’t draw at all, but designers will find the dual displays with stylus support very useful.

The top display also supports video via USB-C. You can use devices with USB-C video output such as gaming handhelds, laptops, mini PC’s and phones on the top display. The great thing is that you can still run Windows on the bottom display and you can also use it while the GPD Duo dual display laptop is switched off.

Lets now move on to the main part of the laptop for this GPD Duo review. It features a full QWERTY keyboard that is backlit and can be switched off/on independently. The keys are large with a fairly low profile. I wrote the voiceover text for this video and had no issues at all. I’m not a fan of laptop trackpads but I had no issues with using this one. It is responsive and the left and right mouse clicks feel nice.

On the left side we have a 3.5mm audio port, a full size SD card slot, a USB 4 port and USB Type-C port. On the right side are two USB A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and the power button with built-in fingerprint scanner. The back has a 2.5Gbps ethernet port, OcuLink port for connecting to an eGPU such as the GPD G1 eGPU docking station, and last but not least a HDMI port for connecting to an external display.

You can connect two additional monitors via the USB and HDMI ports to create an awesome quad monitor display setup. Or with the GPD G1 had four additional to bring it up to six displays.

GPD Duo Technical Specifications

As part of our GPD Duo review we will take a look at the specifications for boths models of the laptop, as well as our battery life, fan noise and temperature tests.

GPD Duo Processor Comparison

	AMD RYZEN 7 8840U MODEL	AMD RYZEN 9 AI HX 370 MODEL
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 8840U	AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
CORES/THREADS	8C / 16T	12C / 24T
BASE CLOCK	3.3 GHz	2.0 GHz
MAX BOOST CLOCK	5.1 GHz	5.1 GHz
AI PERFORMANCE	16 TOPS	50 TOPS
TOTAL PROCESSOR PERFORMANCE	38 TOPS	80 TOPS
TDP	28W to 35W	35W to 60W
GPU	AMD Radeon 780M	AMD Radeon 890M
ARCHITECTURE	Zen 4 (Hawk Point)	Zen 5 (Strix Point)

GPD Duo Specifications

DISPLAY	2x 13.3″ AMOLED, 28800×1800, 60Hz, 16:10, 255 PPI (RGB), sRGB: 133%, NTSC: 96%, Adobe RGB: 100%, DCI_P3: 100%, Brightness: 500 cd/m², Contrast Ratio: 1,000,000: 1
RAM	16GB / 32GB / 64GB LPDDR5x 6400 / 7500 MT/s Dual Channel
STORAGE	512GB / 1TB / 2TB PCIe 4.0 × 4, NVMe 1.3 / 1.4, NVMe 1.3 / 1.4 M.2 SSD (2 slots for up to 8TB)
CAMERA	Bottom display features an integrated ultra-wide-angle camera, with a resolution of 5 million pixels and 2592 × 1944 resolution
MICROPHONE	2x Built-in microphone
COMMUNICATIONS	Wi-Fi 6E, BT 5.3, 2500Mbps RJ45 ethernet
I/O	1x USB4 (40Gbps), 1x Full-featured Oculink PCIe 4.0 × 4，63Gbps) 1x HDMI 2.1 1x USB-C (10Gbps) 2x Full-featured USB-A (5Gbps) 1x Full size SD card reader 3.5mm audio port
BATTERY	80Wh Lithium Polymer Battery

Battery life, fan noise and temperature tests

We continue our GPD Duo review with some battery life, fan noise and temperature tests. The GPD Duo laptop runs on a 80Wh hour battery which supports fast charging up to 50% in 29 minutes. We ran some battery life tests with the TDP at the default 28W, full screen brightness with Cinebench running on a loop.

With both displays switched on we got a max load battery life of 1 hour 45. And with the top display switched off we got around 2 hours so around 15 minutes difference. We will cover the idle and average usage tests in our final model review.

We also conducted some fan noise and temperature tests while running the battery life tests. Fan noise was on the whole fairly quiet at around 55dB and under very heavy load it was as high as 60dB. While running Cinebench and Forza Horizon 5 at the same time the highest temperature we measured was around 50 degrees C.

System Benchmarks

Again, do keep in mind this GPD Duo laptop with two screens is a pre-production device and benchmarks may change by the time the final model is released. All benchmarks are performed at the default 28W TDP, we will perform benchmarks at different TDP once we have the final model for our GPD Duo review.

PCMark

We start the benchmarks with PCMark which tests the CPU,GPU, RAM and storage. We get an overall score of 7,788 which is around a 10% increase over the GPD WIN MAX 2 2024 model.

Geekbench 6

Geekbench 6 tests the CPU and GPU performance. We get a massive score of 5,852 and 14,107 on single and multi core tests. That’s a 133% and 24% increase over the previous highest results.

Geekbench AI

Geekbench AI as the name suggests, tests the AI processing performance. We get fairly similar scores on the single and half precision tests, but a large increase on the Quantized tests. We will have further test results and comparisons in our full review.

Cinebench R23

Cinebench tests the processors single and multi-core performance with some rendering tests. We get a reasonable increase on single core performance and a much larger 47% increase on the previous highest score from the GPD WIN 4 2024.

Cinebench 2024

And on Cinebench 2024 we see a small increase again in single core and a 42% increase on the multi core scores.

3DMARK

For 3DMARK we are running the Time Spy, Night Raid and Fire Strike benchmarks. We see a good increase in performance on the dual screen laptop compared to the 8840U models as well as the Intel Ultra 7 on the ONEXPLAYER X1. Keep in mind the X1 did score well in 3DMARK but was a bit lousy in actual gaming performance. 

Gaming Benchmarks

We will be making a separate more in-depth article with gaming performance including the GPD G1 eGPU as the GPD Duo has an OCuLink port.

Forza Horizon 5

We see a decent increase in frames per second for the GPD Duo. At 720P we see 151 frames per second compared to 135 on the Win 4 2024. And at 1080P we see 118 frames per second, compared to 98, again on the Win 4 2024. That’s an 11% and 20% increase respectively.

Call of Duty MW3

On Call of Duty Modern warfare 3 we get scores of 135 and 83 frames per second at 720P and 1080P respectively. That’s an increase of 21% and 31% over the Win 4. This game is more GPU dependent so the 890M is making a difference here.

Final Thoughts

Time to sum up our GPD Duo review. Having spent a few days with the GPD Duo my initial thoughts are very good. It did take a little getting used to a vertical dual display laptop orientation as I have a horizontal triple monitor setup in the office. But it did not take long to get used to it while I was setting up and running the benchmarks, playing some games, general usage and writing this review.

Apart from the issue with the second display being loose in presentation and tablet modes, which GPD have said will be fixed in the final model. I could not find any major issues with the design and usability. The performance is great for your day workload, playing AAA games at great settings and doing all this with a video for example playing on the other display.

My only kind of negative in my time of using the GPD Duo is the weight. This is a heavy device at 2.2kg. I took it home in a carrier bag with the GPD G1 and the carrier bag nearly gave way 🙂 Coming back to work after the weekend, I had it in my backpack and while it’s far easier to carry, it’s still over 2kg to carry around. Maybe I am too used to the smaller devices like the WIN MAX 2 or Pocket 3, but it’s something to take note of.

In our next part of our GPD Duo review we will dedicate it to the gaming side of the GPD Duo as I know that’s what everyone is interested in. We will be testing at different TDPs and different resolutions, as well as with and without the GPD G1 via OCuLink. If there is anything you would like to see in the article video, please let us know in the comments.

You can learn more about and pre-order the GPD Duo here.

Thanks for reading our GPD Duo review, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments and we will be happy to answer.