Asus ExpertBook Ultra review: Premium ultraportable, for a price

The Asus ExpertBook Ultra is the Taiwanese giant’s latest business laptop, and it’s positioned as the ultimate ultraportable designed more for the C-suite executives rather than those actually working the floor.

There’s good reason for that of course, considering that they start at RM7,999. But while it’s certainly pricey—it rises to up to RM12,999 for its top spec with all the bells and whistles—this might be one of the few laptops that arguably isn’t overpriced per se, instead just priced that high because you are getting a lot of premium features for your money.

Another home run in design and portability

Asus has been one of the best when it comes to the uber thin-and-light ultraportable laptops for some time now, especially with their Zenbook lineup of laptops. The ExpertBook Ultra however isn’t a Zenbook, and by all accounts is part of their Asus Business division rather than their consumer one.

Nevertheless, it certainly seems to me at least that the ExpertBook Ultra has taken some inspiration from their Zenbook siblings, with the ExpertBook Ultra a much more premium offering compared to the business notebooks of yesteryear. For starters, this is a significantly lighter laptop than usual, weighing in at just 990g for the base model and 1.09kg for the one that we have for review.

This is great of course for its target demographic: the businessperson who occasionally works from their office but typically spends a lot of time travelling between meetings and meals too. And while I personally only have about a thousandth of the wealth your executive would, I too travel a lot for work and I’ve found that the ExpertBook Ultra is honestly great at keeping your bag light as your scuttle around town.

Another nice feature on the ExpertBook Ultra is its chassis. While built out of a magnesium aluminum alloy, there’s also a layer of what Asus is calling a ‘nano ceramic technology’ over it that gives it better wear resistance and 9H hardness, on top of its usual MIL-STD 810H durability. It’s nice to know that your laptop should be able to weather any storm, though it does have a slight sand-like texture to it that can get discoloured when rubbing off other items, albeit nothing a quick wipe with the palm can’t solve.

Excellent battery life

Our review unit came with an Intel Core X7 385H, a Panther Lake mobile processor that comes with four performance cores, eight efficiency cores and 4 more low power efficiency cores, as well as an Intel Arc B390 integrated GPU. This has been paired to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1TB SSD.

Overall performance is as you’d expect really. It has been tuned to be a more quiet machine, so don’t expect this to be a workstation PC that runs heavy loads for prolonged sessions. But for actual productivity work like working on word docs, Excel sheets, having multiple Chrome tabs open and even with Spotify in the background, it offers snappy and smooth performance with little to no issue. And while it does come a dual fan cooling setup, you’d be hard pressed to hear it in everyday settings.

Its benchmark scores are decent enough, again showing its snappiness in single core scores but a little less so under longer loads. The SSD that the ExpertBook Ultra comes with though is incredibly speedy. As for gaming, don’t expect triple-A gaming with ray tracing on, but it will do okay in titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 getting 50 to 70fps or so at low FHD settings, while eSports titles such as Dota 2 will have little to no issue at FHD settings.

The really impressive thing about the Asus ExpertBook Ultra though is its battery life. It’s 70Wh battery easily offers full day battery life at about 40-50% brightness for my usual work on multiple browser tabs and the occasional photo editing. During my work trip, I was even confident enough to take just the laptop out for the day, leaving the power adapter in my hotel room. And even then, I still had enough left for another half day before eventually seeing the low battery warning pop up.

Perhaps the best display on any business laptop out there

Truly though, what makes the Asus ExpertBook Ultra stand out nearly immediately after booting it up is its 14-inch touchscreen display. Our unit comes with the nicer Tandem OLED panel, offering a WQXGA+ resolution in a 16:10 aspect ratio with a peak HDR brightness of up to 1400nits, an up to 120Hz variable refresh rate, full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and has a layer of Corning Gorilla Matte and Gorilla Glass Victus over it.

In simple terms, this might just be the best display on a thin-and-light business laptop, thanks to the matte Tandem OLED panel. I took the ExpertBook Ultra on a work trip to Japan during my time with it, and I found myself having to work either outside or by a window with the rising sun in my face. Then in meeting rooms, I had bright overhead office lights directly above me. No issue whatsoever though, thanks to how bright and clear this screen is.

Of course, even CEOs need to have some time to wind down and relax, and even in this regard the ExpertBook Ultra does a fine job. If you fancy a movie, the matte Tandem OLED display is simply excellent, especially when paired with its six-speaker setup that offers surprisingly well rounded bass for something of its size.

Another couple minor things worth highlighting on the ExpertBook Ultra include its excellent keyboard, with a comfortable feel to it and little to no deck flex. Similarly, the haptic touchpad is nice and large, though the integrated edge on the bottom of the touchpad means no space to rest your thumb. There’s even a nice bit of flair to the ExpertBook Ultra with its ExpertLumi lighting under the display, breaking away from the usual plain look you might expect from a business laptop.

The I/O again is great for a thin-and-light ultraportable with its two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm combo audio jack on top of WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity.

Expensive, but not overpriced

Starting at RM7,999 for the base model ExpertBook Ultra with an Intel Core Ultra 5 and a regular OLED display, it’s probably the step up configuration at RM8,999 that actually is the better value here. This gets you a more powerful Intel Core Ultra X7, double the memory and storage as well as that gorgeous Tandem OLED panel. Of course, for the true C-suite executives out there, there’s also the RM12,999 spec that doubles the memory and storage again to 64GB RAM and 2TB.

Let’s be clear: it’s not cheap. That being said, I also don’t think it’s exactly overpriced, because you truly are getting one of the best business laptops out there. You’re getting a top notch display, excellent battery life, durable and robust build quality as well as a thin-and-light design that makes it easy to carry around.

The Asus ExpertBook Ultra might just be the best laptop a (business)man can get.

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