Why the Windows laptop I recommend to most business users isn’t a ThinkPad or XPS

Asus ExpertBook Ultra

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source is a special laptop for me. It’s the first laptop I’m reviewing this year, and it’s the first Panther Lake-powered device I’ve used outside of an official Intel event. I’ve been eager to try one, and this machine is simply fantastic. From design to performance, it is a laptop that is sure to impress.

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Asus’ latest device is an incredibly lightweight laptop, clocking in at just 2.18 pounds and measuring 0.65 inches at its thickest point. It is so sleek that it doesn’t even feel like a laptop when you carry it around. It feels more like an actual notebook. 

It’s also perfectly balanced, passing the one-finger test with flying colors. Thanks to a small divot below the trackpad, you can lift the screen without the device sliding around.

Thoughtful engineering

The laptop is primarily made of a magnesium alloy, with Asus’ proprietary Nano Liquid ceramic coating, for a chassis that’s both light and durable. You might not be able to tell just by looking at it, but you can definitely feel the difference. The ExpertBook Ultra has a slight ruggedness.

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I also have to shout out the great keyboard. It uses chiclet-shaped buttons with 1.5mm of travel distance, making typing fast, comfortable, and, most importantly, satisfying. There’s enough feedback that you don’t have to push the key all the way in to register an input. It’s a style more often seen on mechanical keyboards, and it’s a big reason they’re so popular with gaming enthusiasts.

The ExpertBook Ultra’s sound system is equally impressive. Asus gave its machine a six-speaker system that includes dual magnetic woofers for deep bass and tweeters for clear, detailed high-frequency sound. No matter what I played, from music to spoken-word videos, the audio sounded lush and well-balanced.

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What really stood out to me, however, was the level of instrument separation. Listening to jazz and lo-fi hip-hop tracks, every element of the song, the drums, piano, and occasional trumpets, had its own space in the soundstage, equal to each other. Audio from these speakers carries across the room without much distortion, allowing me to clearly hear dialogue from 20 feet away.

Efficiency meets power

My review unit of the ExpertBook Ultra ran on an Intel Core Ultra X7 processor, 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD. This combination delivers exactly the level of performance you’d expect from a premium business laptop. 

In day-to-day use, the ExpertBook Ultra felt snappy. Apps opened instantly, browser tabs loaded without hesitation, and I could hop between multiple apps seamlessly. The generous amount of RAM ensured nothing slowed the device down, reinforcing the laptop’s focus on delivering no-compromise productivity. 

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Below is a table comparing the Asus ExpertBook Ultra’s benchmark results with other work-centric laptops I’ve tested. You’ll immediately notice that the Asus model boasts a significantly higher Geekbench multicore score than its competitors, signaling stronger multitasking performance and accurately reflecting what I experienced first-hand.

Its benchmarking scores also suggest the laptop is well-suited for content creation. During testing, I edited drone footage and high-resolution photographs without issue — the laptop handled those workloads comfortably. However, it may struggle with heavy tasks like complex 3D rendering since it operates on an integrated Intel Arc graphics card rather than a discrete Nvidia GPU. These kinds of tasks would be better suited to a more specialized laptop.