Asus ExpertBook P5 Laptop Review

We’ve been very impressed with the Lunar Lake laptops that we’ve seen so far, but the Asus ExpertBook P5 is the first business laptop that we’ve seen with Intel’s new technology. Being a business notebook means it’s been torture tested much more than consumer notebooks and has a superior warranty and support. Asus has also added a few extra, business-oriented bells and whistles. It’s aimed at SMBs, home workers and mobile professionals so, is it something that these important, target markets can trust and will it appeal to an even wider audience?

Asus ExpertBook P5 Specs

Features, Ergonomics and Design

The P5’s ‘Misty Grey’ metal chassis feels very robust. You have to apply significant twisting force to flex the screen, the main body is completely rigid and the robust hinges securely lay the screen down flat. It’s attractive despite the greyness and it feels smooth and high quality. I also like how the new ExpertBook logo on the lid elevates the styling, like a badge on a super car, while remaining very corporate friendly.

Opening it up reveals a refreshingly matte (reflection-free) IPS screen. It has a high, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution which displays a crisp and clear Windows Desktop with good colour reproduction – although vibrancy doesn’t rival OLED displays. There’s some noise in monochromatic gradients but I’ve seen much much worse. Colour gradients exhibit some light stepping. It’s not an HDR screen, but contrast is above average. You can see plenty of details in dark areas but they can get lost in bright areas.

The 144Hz refresh rate (which can drop to 60Hz for power saving) makes fast-moving objects noticeably smoother than normal (and much smoother compared to many, blurry business laptops). However, the rather-slow pixel response time means it’s not blur free.

Above the P5’s screen is decent, Full HD webcam. It can get a little grainy in low light (the model on its Zenbook S 14 sibling performed better) but it’s still very good for webconferencing. There’s a nice, stripey webcam cover and it’s Windows Hello compatible for facial-recognition log-in.

The microphone array – which marries with Asus’ trainable, Ai audio enhancements – is one of the best we’ve used. It does a very good job of capturing clear audio, even in noisy environments.

Below the screen is an impressive Scrabble Tile keyboard that feels very high quality and comfortable to type upon for extended periods. The up-and-down arrow keys are squished, but they’re isolated at the bottom right and don’t cause issues. The power button doubles as a Windows Hello fingerprint reader.

The trackpad is smooth and accurate with very nicely weighted buttons. Like many manufacturers, Asus adds gestures that let you ‘easily’ adjust volume, brightness and playback but, mercifully, it’s easy to turn all that off – I find that the only practical function of trackpad gestures is to randomly adjust the volume and toggle mute on-and-off repeatedly. Your mileage may vary.

Other features include Asus Ai ExpertMeet. This provides tools like Ai-generated meeting subtitles, transcriptions and summaries (for live and recorded meetings) plus, watermarking of video calls with adjustable logos, messages and business cards. It works very well indeed.

There’s also a NIST SP 800-155-compliant BIOS which defends against firmware attacks; SafeGuard backup which can securely mirror all your files on a second (optional) SSD; and compatibility with Asus’ Business Manager fleet-management tools.

Connectivity and Ports

That’s, perhaps, a bit lopsided but it’s a very good complement of wired connectivity. Inside, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. I’d like to see Wi-Fi 7 but 6E ain’t bad.

Features, Ergonomics and Design Score: 4.2 / 5

Performance

Inside the P5 is an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) ‘Lunar Lake’ processor. It’s the Ultra 7 258V variant which wields four Performance cores and eight Low-Power Efficient cores that operate between 2.2 and 4.8GHz. There’s also an integrated NPU and integrated, Intel Arc octa-core GPU which runs at 1.95GHz. Combined, this makes it capable of running Microsoft’s excellent CoPilot+ Ai assistant features. All of this is combined with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB NVMe hard drive.

In the PCMark 10 benchmark, which uses all components of the system, the ExpertBook P5 scored 6,833 which is above average for any laptop and particularly impressive for a business ultraportable. (Score: 3.1 / 5)

It didn’t fare so well in the Cinebench rendering tests, though. The P5 managed 1,625 in the quick R15 test and 10,558 in the longer R23 test. That’s rather low and reflects the compromise of Lunar Lake’s removal of HyperThreading in favour of improved power efficiency and responsiveness. You’ll be able to do occasional rendering, but an alternative like Venom’s BlackBook Zero is worth a look, if you need more. (Score: 1.8 / 5)

Another positive of Lunar Lake is the improved performance of the integrated graphics which now facilitate a modest amount of gaming. It still struggles badly with eye-candy-rich, ray-tracing titles as scores of 1,929 (average 9fps) and 711 (average 7.1fps) in 3DMark Port Royal and Speed Way illustrate (respectively). But, at least it can run those tests now. You’ll struggle to get playable frame rates using such flamboyant settings though.

Things slightly improved in the AAA-game-title mimicking Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme benchmarks, though. Here, the P5 managed 4,397 (average 25.2fps) and 1,112 (average 19fps), respectively. You’ll need to significantly dial down settings and resolution to keep things smooth in such games, but they’ll be playable.

In the 3DMark Night Raid test, which apes casual games and competitive shooters, the ExpertBook scored 35,804 which is an average of 227fps which will please many workers, if not their bosses.

In the new, Call of Duty Blops 6 benchmark, the ExpertBook averaged 55fps with the slowest one per cent of the benchmark dropping to 46fps (1% Low score). While things can occasionally get juddery, that’s just about playable. When dropping all settings down to minimum and setting the resolution to Full HD – as competitive, online players would do – performance boosted slightly to a 72fps average and a 58fps 1% Low Score. That’s nice and smooth.

I found things could still, occasionally get a little jerky, but the main issue was the screen, the 144Hz refresh rate can’t fix the slow pixel response time which hurts your eyes with motion blur when things get fast and frantic.

I also ran other 3DMark benchmarks which will become important in our 2025 reviews. For now, here they are for reference:

UL Procyon Microsoft Office: 6,824
UL Procyon Microsoft Office Multi-Platform: 238,000
UL Procyon Adobe Photoshop Editing: 6,351
UL Procyon Adobe Premiere Video Editing: 11,595
UL Procyon Ai Vision (CPU): 71
UL Procyon Ai Vision (GPU): 244
3DMark Steel Nomad: 858
3DMark Steel Nomad Lite: 3,262
3DMark Solar Bay: 15,288

I haven’t had time to run UL’s Procyon tests to the list yet, but I’ll add them later.

Cooling

I’m impressed with the ‘ExpertCool’ Cooling system in Asus’ ExpertBook P5 which draws air in from the base and shoots it out of the sides. This will particularly please those who intend for it to live in a docking station, with the lid closed.

It’s mostly near-silent and only gets slightly warm, with a whisper-quiet, fan whoosh, when under duress. Under heavy load, it will get warmer and a little louder, but it’s still relatively quiet and cool for a thin laptop. When we ran the Cinebench R23 30-minute stability test, the P5’s performance dropped by less-than 0.3%, so there are no thermal throttling issues.

Portability and Battery Life

Being a business laptop, the ExpertBook P5 doesn’t just feel very well made, it’s backed-up by a military-grade, MIL-STD-810H certification which includes tests for temperature and humidity fluctuations plus vibration. Asus has also rated it to withstand 120cm drops and the keyboard is spill resistant.

Asus also offers you $500 compensation if it fails while under warranty. We always like to see vendors putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to warranties. The aluminium chassis and quality hinges tell me that this will have few issues being lugged around by workers.

It weighs just 1.27KG and the 65-Watt Power Brick (which can get very warm) adds just another 326g so, it’s very light.

You won’t need to carry the charger around much anyway, as the P5 ran our PCMark 10 Modern Office test for a very impressive 19 hours and 26 minutes. The battery can also be set to fast-charging mode where it will go from 5% to 60% in under 50 minutes.

All of this will place it in our Top 5 Best Portable Laptops group test when we next update it.

Price, Value and Availability

Asus’ ExpertBook P5 launches today and costs an attractive $2,799. While it’s not lowest laptop price tag around, for a business-class machine, it’s one of the cheapest. There are other (mostly lesser) SKUs launching but you’ll need to check Asus’ online store for specs and prices as, at the time of writing, the pages weren’t published yet!

Overall

Business laptops can have it tough when it comes to our scoring system as many of the core benefits come in the form of long-term reliability and support, which are hard to test for. However, our Best Business Laptop group test takes account of this and adds points for core requirements for business users (including, weight, battery life, matte screen etc). With everything factored in, the Asus ExpertBook P5 becomes our new, Number 1 Best Business Laptop – congratulations Asus!

However, its pricing and business credentials will also make it very attractive to anyone who wants a reliable, ultraportable laptop too and, as such, it also wins a well-deserved Highly Recommended Portable Laptop award.

Ultimately, it’s a great portable workhorse that will please workers, MSPs (Managed Service Providers) who buy fleets of them and SMBs alike.

Last Updated on April 26, 2025 by Nick Ross