ASUS ExpertBook P5 (P5405) Review – Business Powerhouse

Unboxing

ASUS has brought us a new ExpertBook laptop to look at – the new ExpertBook B5 is among the first to feature the redesigned chassis and an all new look inside and out, starting with the box itself. Opening the box and you’re greeted with the same packaging layout as most other ASUS laptops, though this one is particularly packed with accessories – including the laptop sleeve tucked within the top half of the box.

Here are all the items available in the packaging:
– Type G (UK) AC cable
– 65W USB-C charger
– USB-A to LAN adapter
– ASUS WT300 optical mouse
– Laptop user guide
– Laptop quick start guide
– Optical mouse user guide
– Laptop sleeve
– The ASUS ExpertBook P5 (P5405) laptop

As a quick side note, the laptop packaging includes a free wireless optical mouse which is the ASUS WT300 mouse. A brief usage gives us the impression that this mouse works decently in terms of ergonomics, and it even comes with two selectable DPI settings (by clicking the mouse wheel and right click). It’s also available as a standalone model that costs RM79 on its own.

Walkaround

First off, the lid has been redesigned with a simple ASUS ExpertBook badge, ditching the previous design that integrated a small LED indicator that, according to the company, can indicate to other workers that you’re busy in a conference. That idea perhaps didn’t take off, but in any case – inside you do get a fluid QHD+ 144Hz matte display along with a webcam array that incorporates an infrared (IR) sensor for Windows Hello face recognition, among other uses.

The ExpertBook B5’s keyboard has some unique features that you don’t find in regular Zenbooks or Vivobooks, like the two ExpertWidget hotkeys on the F10 and F11 key that can be used to launch specific apps or activate various functions; and the basic conference controls are all highlighted in F1-F4 keys for easy reference. The power button comes integrated with both the power LED and the fingerprint sensor.

As for the touchpad, it shares the same system controls found in Zenbooks, including volume controls (swiping along the left edge), brightness controls (right edge), and playback controls (top edge). Swiping inward from the top right corner also activates the ScreenXpert software, though it’ll redirect you to Microsoft Store at first since it’s not pre-installed by default.

Under the laptop you can find the intake grille, downward-firing speaker grilles, and you can also spot the exhaust hidden behind the display hinge. It’s a single-fan setup, and that’s more than adequate given that only one chip (that includes CPU, GPU and RAM) requires cooling. The bottom cover can be removed once you unscrew all the Phillips head screws to access the upgradable internals.

Moving on, the front view of the laptop reveals two microphones that you usually see next to webcams inside the laptop. The reason being, this laptop is designed for multi-person conferences – so placing the microphones up front allows the laptop to better pick up voices all around the laptop instead of just in front of the primary user. The hinge design is fairly standard (though closing the lid is done through magnets instead of springs), and allows for a full 180° opening.

In terms of I/O, you get a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports where both the HDMI 2.1 port and the USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) Type-A port sit in between – the USB port also supports up to 7.5W of offline charging per the USB BC 1.2 standard. Next to them is the headphone jack, and on the opposite side you get just one USB-A port rated at the same speed, sans offline charging capabilities. Note that ASUS also includes a USB-A to LAN adapter if you need to use a wired internet connection.

Specifications

ASUS ExpertBook P5 (P5405CSA-NZ0226X)

Full specifications available on specifications page.

Chipset / CPU	Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (4P+4LPE – 8 cores, 8 threads)
RAM	32GB LPDDR5X-8533 (on-package)
GPU	Integrated: Intel Arc Graphics 140V (8 Xe Cores)
NPU	Intel AI Boost NPU (47 TOPS INT8)
Storage	SSD 1: Western Digital SN5000S 1TB SSD (SDEQNSJ-1T00-1002 – PCIe 4.0, M.2 2280) SSD 2: Empty, M.2 2230
Display	BOE NE140QDM-NX4 16″ IPS, anti-glare non-touch 2560×1600 (QHD+ 16:10) 144Hz refresh rate / 25ms response time* 100% sRGB, 8-bit (16.7M colors) 400 nits brightness *specification obtained from panel datasheet
Keyboard	1.5mm key travel 19.05mm keycap pitch White backlit Spill-resistant
Touchpad	ASUS ErgoSense touchpad Volume, brightness & playback gestures
Audio	Downward-firing stereo speakers Dolby Atmos Support
Webcam	1080p IR camera Windows Hello support Mechanical webcam shutter
Biometrics	Fingerprint (power button) Facial recognition (webcam + IR)
I/O	Left: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort, 65W USB PD) 1x HDMI 2.1 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A w/ 7.5W offline charging 1x 3.5mm combo jack Right: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (Intel AX211, M.2 2230)
Battery	63Wh 3-cell Li-ion
Power Supply	65W, USB-C charger
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (Copilot+ PC)
Dimensions	312.0 x 223.2 x 14.9-16.4 mm
Weight	1.27kg

Performance

Storage

For our unit’s configuration, the ExpertBook P5 comes with a Western Digital SN5000S 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, which is the same model we found on the Acer Swift Go 14 AI we reviewed recently. However, there is a big difference in single-thread low-queue sequential and random write performance, where the ExpertBook ended up scoring just half the speed of the Acer laptop. Read speeds are less affected, but there are some discrepancies in random performance as well.

CPU

In terms of CPU performance, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V – found in several other laptops we reviewed in the past – lacks in multi-core grunt, though single-core is much more competitive against its rivals from both Team Red and Team Snapdragon. Using Performance mode exacts 19% more multi-core performance in Cinebench 2024, though the improvement is less pronounced in Cinebench 2020 representing a quick multi-core workload instead of a sustained one.

GPU

The same Core Ultra chip also packs Intel’s latest Xe2 (Battlemage) architecture that allows it to propel ahead of competition in terms of GPU performance. There is one exception: Steel Nomad Light is where the AMD chip managed to get ahead of all Core Ultra 7 258Vs in this chart, but in other cases Team Blue gets a convincing lead over the Ryzen AI 9’s Radeon 890M graphics. Oddly, this laptop in particular lags behind in 3DMark Speed Way test, and we’re not sure why.

System

Moving on to Novabench: the ExpertBook P5 leads against the other two Lunar Lake-powered laptops, albeit that’s pretty much down to the superior storage performance. Both the AMD Ryzen AI and Qualcomm Snapdragon chips (on native ARM) performs much better on the CPU front thanks to more processing cores, and it’s worth noting that even the Meteor Lake-based Vivobook S 14 OLED vastly outperforms all Lunar Lake chips in this test.

As for the PCMark 10 Modern Office test, the ExpertBook P5 sits in the middle of the pack, though generally all are very close to the margin of error. One thing the Core Ultra 7 258V brings is much improved Productivity scores, though Essentials seemed to fall behind by a small margin. Digital Content Creation, meanwhile, see no discernible changes.

Battery

In terms of battery life, the ExpertBook P5 broke a new record – this is the longest-lasting laptop we’ve ever tested, lasting a whopping 20 hours and 34 minutes in a single charge. That’s despite the laptop packing a relatively modest 63Wh battery and running at 144Hz refresh rate (since it doesn’t switch automatically on battery) – most thin-and-light laptop use 70-75Wh battery these days, so it’s very impressive on ASUS’s part to pull this off.

Another way of looking at the laptop’s endurance is through the Procyon battery life test, which is compatible to both x86 and ARM-based laptops. For reference, the Acer Swift Go 14 AI laptop we tested recently scored nearly 15 hours – and this ExpertBook still outlasted that.

Software

Here’s one of the new software ASUS has included in the new ExpertBook P5 that I found genuinely useful for business workers. The AI ExpertMeet software – currently in beta – uses onboard NPU to process transcriptions from recorded meetings or even live meetings, and going through the app we found that the software uses Meta’s LLaMA 3 8B, OpenAI’s Whisper, and Argos Translate for the app’s functionalities.

While the live transcription feature works fairly great for both on-device content (for teleconference) and live recording (physical meeting), the transcription feature for recorded meetings can be pretty time-consuming for process. That’s despite the software using both CPU and GPU (which has higher processing TOPS overall), we found that it can take as long as the recording itself to process the transcription, while the summarization feature can take up to 10 minutes for a 2-minute clip.

Still, it’s worth noting that this is still a beta software, but based on my initial experience with it, I do think this is one of the few times where NPU and AI has genuinely proved its worthiness among the sea of gimmicky features and countless AI hype marketing that tries to look for a barely-existent problem to solve.

All of the features above can be quickly activated by clicking on the icon at the System Tray, and there’s also other features like the Screen Watermark that can be useful if you’re sharing confidential or embargoed information to other workers in a meeting. There’s also a ‘System Boost’ button that clears up extra RAM, but it’s not going to do much given that this laptop already comes with 32GB of RAM available – and you’re hardly ever going to max it out.

Another neat feature is the inclusion of two customizable hotkeys located at the F10 and F11 key, which can be assigned to several functions. By default, F10 triggers the ExpertWidget app (shown above) while F11 toggles the touchpad; but you can configure either buttons to launch any apps, folders, website. You can also assign the Screen Rotation feature that allows you to instantly flip the display upside down if you want to share on-screen content to someone else in front of you.

The Good

There’s a lot of good things to be said about the new ASUS ExpertBook B5. For starters, the performance is generally solid – short for middling multi-core performance – but as far as daily driving goes, the Core Ultra 7 258V with its 32GB RAM is more than enough to keep your daily work going without a hitch. And just like other business-focused laptops, it comes with upgradable SSD slots as well, though it’s just a M.2 2230 slot which may limit your options.

I’d rate the speakers as very good, given that it sounds great right out of the box; it’s also capable of outputting lots of volume in a conference setting. Oddly, it seems like adjusting the EQ manually via Dolby Access app make it sound worse (with higher mids) than selecting a preset, but otherwise I have no complaints.

On the software side of things, both the ExpertWidget and AI ExpertMeet app truly expands the functionality of an otherwise bog standard business laptops with the usual security enhancements added on top. I can see both being truly useful in daily driving for business workers, especially with the transcription feature that works decently well in my first impression. The most important aspect of this is the on-device capabilities – any conversations, especially confidential ones, won’t get shared into any online services when you can do it without an Internet connection.

Finally, to top it off – the battery life of this laptop is simply unmatched. Lasting 20 hours on a single charge would’ve been unheard of in a Windows laptop just two years ago, and it’s quite amazing just how fast Windows PCs have improved on efficiency fronts to match even the Arm-powered laptops and MacBooks alike. To both ASUS and Intel, good job!

The Bad

In terms of downsides, there are a few but they’re mostly minor ones. One such shortcomings applies to all contemporary Lunar Lake processors, and this laptop is no exception – the CPU multi-core performance is not up to par against its competition, though given the intended audience of this laptop I think it’s not going to be a deal-breaker for most.

Another issue I had with this laptop is the maintenance aspect of things. While it is great that the laptop uses standard Phillips screws, I wasn’t able to open the bottom panel due to how tightly it was embedded into the chassis – I have a full iFixit kit and the guitar picks were too thick to slip into the virtually non-existent panel gap of this laptop. Perhaps a pop-out mechanism like some of its TUF or ROG laptops could help with this?

Also, oddly enough the laptop is still not yet available with Wi-Fi 7. That being said, since the module is a discrete M.2 unit, you should be able to upgrade down the line if it’s ever needed; ASUS also notes that Wi-Fi 7 will be available by default sometime in Q1 2025. For what it’s worth though, Wi-Fi 6E is perfectly adequate for virtually all of the networks today since Wi-Fi 7 is still very much on the bleeding edge of networking right now.

Verdict

According to ASUS, this particular configuration of the ExpertBook P5 (P5405) will cost RM6,859 apiece – note that this price can change depending on fleet sales. Still, I can confidently say this laptop has raised the bar of what a business laptop should be capable of, and that’s not something that can be easily done when technological breakthroughs in laptops are especially rare these days.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the ExpertBook P5 (P5405) laptop for this review.