Asus ExpertBook (Lunar Lake) review

The ExpertBook P5 starts at $1,100, which includes an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14-inch QHD+ IPS display (the only option). My review unit, the high-end option, costs $1,300 for a Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. You can configure additional storage with the extra M.2 expansion slot. My review unit had a second 1TB drive configured.

The ExpertBook P5 is a very conventionally designed 14-inch laptop. It’s a dark gray color scheme, with only a silver bar housing a pretty generic logo breaking it up. The lines are minimalist, befitting today’s most common aesthetic among most laptops. The Dell XPS 14 is a lot more modern inside and out, with its more streamlined chassis and internal construction. The Apple MacBook Pro 14, while a lot more expensive, also sports Apple’s fastidious design. Ultimately, the ExpertBook P5 is OK, and that’s about it.

In terms of build quality, Asus touts its durability testing such as meeting MIL-STD 810H military tests, and I’m sure it’s a well-built laptop. But I have to say, the keyboard deck has some flex, and the very thin lid bends easily under even light pressure. The XPS 14 and MacBook Pro 14 are much more rigid, as is the HP OmniBook X and pretty much every other laptop I’ve reviewed lately.

In terms of portability, the ExpertBook P5 also isn’t a standout. It’s not particularly thin or light, compared to comparable 14-inch laptops. Its top and side display bezels are reasonably thin but the bottom chin is a bit chunky — and, again working against a quality feel, the bezels are plastic. It’s a portable machine, but you won’t be choosing it based on that dimension alone.

Perhaps the more important design attributes focus on features of interest primarily to businesses. Most of those are around security and reliability, such as the Asus ExpertGuardian functionality that provides various security features at an OS and hardware level. The BIOS is locked down and resilient, and SafeGuard can back up work-related files to a second SSD, including encrypted key files. There’s also the aforementioned robustness promises, although as I mentioned, it wasn’t readily apparent as I tested the laptop.

The keyboard is a standard island layout, with black keys sporting highly visible and bold lettering and backlighting. There’s plenty of key spacing and the keycaps are nice and large, while the switches are a bit loose even for me — I don’t like switches that require a lot of pressure to engage — and they’re a little clunky. It’s not my favorite keyboard.

The touchpad is mechanical, and it’s large enough. It, too, isn’t my favorite. Its button clicks are quite harsh and loud, and completely unlike the much better haptic touchpads on the XPS 14 and MacBooks. There’s also no-touch-display option, which likely won’t matter to all that many but is something I miss when it’s not there.

The star of the show here is the new 17-watt Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, an 8-core (four Performance and four Low Power Efficient cores), 8-thread chipset. It’s a member of the Lunar Lake generation, or Core Ultra Series 2, depending on how you want to designate it. The entire purpose of this chipset is to catch up with Qualcomm and Apple in the efficiency game, while still providing strong performance. And that’s a challenge, because the Qualcomm Snapdragon X and Apple’s M3 chipsets are strong competitors.

Really, the Core Ultra 7 258V is tuned more like the Meteor Lake U-series, which runs at 15 watts and, in the Core Ultra 7 155U, has 12 cores and 14 threads. On paper, it’s less powerful than the 28-watt Core Ultra 7 155H that sports 16 cores and 22 threads. And then there’s the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite and 10-core Snapdragon X Plus, the 12-core/24-thread AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370, and the 8-core CPU/10-core GPU Apple M3 to contend with.

All of these chipsets are aimed primarily at demanding productivity users and, with their more common integrated graphics not really suited for creators or gamers. In our comparison group, only the Asus ProArt PX13 has a discrete GPU, and that shows up in the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light benchmark. Even as an entry-level GPU, it blows away this field.

As we’ve seen, all of these laptops are more than fast enough. The real question then becomes: How efficient are they? That’s where the real battle lies, and Windows laptops makers have been struggling to catch up with Apple’s incredibly efficient machines built around Apple Silicon. Lunar Lake is supposed to bridge the gap, at least until Apple’s M4 chipset arrives.

Unfortunately, the ExpertBook P5 isn’t the best indicator. It has a reasonable amount of battery capacity at 63 watt-hours and an IPS display, compared to the Zenbook S 14 with the same chipset, an OLED display, and a slightly larger 72 watt-hour battery. There’s nothing specific to the laptop itself that would hold it back, so when compared to the Zenbook S 14, I would have expected similar battery life.

The ExpertBook P5 has one display option, a QHD+ (2560 x 1600) IPS panel that runs at a blistering 144Hz. I’m not exactly sure why the refresh rate is so high, given that it’s not a gaming laptop, but I suppose it does make for a smooth Windows 11 experience.

According to my colorimeter, the display is indicative of the very good IPS panels that manufacturers have been using for several years. I rarely review a laptop with a bad IPS display, even against the great OLED and mini-LED options available. This one was bright at 482 nits, had good colors at 99% of sRGB, 77% of AdobeRGB, and 79% of DCI-P3 with accuracy coming in at a Delta-E (color difference) of 1.18 (1.0 or less is considered excellent). And contrast was very good at 1,510:1.

Sure, the Zenbook S 14’s OLED display had much wider colors at 100% of sRGB, 96% of AdobeRGB, and 100% of DCI-P3, but its accuracy was unusually bad for OLED at a Delta-E of 4.92. And it wasn’t as bright at 313 nits.

The point is that the ExpertBook P5’s display is more than good enough for productivity users. It won’t please creators or media consumers. That’s where OLED wins. But for most people, it’s a good display.

Audio is provided by two downward-firing speakers. They’re good enough for watching a YouTube video and hearing notifications, but that’s about it. Use some headphones.

We liked the Zenbook S 14 quite a bit. It’s not as fast as we hoped, but it had strong battery life, a quality build, and a great OLED display. I was hopeful that the ExpertBook P5 would offer the same qualities, only with a slant toward businesses. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

To begin with, the build quality just isn’t what it should be. In particular, the lid feels fragile. The ExpertBook P5 is reasonably affordable, but that’s not acceptable. And battery life was disappointing, and that’s the whole purpose of Intel’s new chipset. I can’t recommend this laptop.