Asus ExpertBook B9450 review: lightweight, long working laptop

There are two reasons to buy the ExpertBook B9450: the weight and the battery life.

Pick up the Asus ExpertBook B9450 and you will wonder where the rest of it is. Asus considers it the lightest 14-inch commercial laptop in the world, and it’s light. When I carry it around, I feel like I am not wearing anything. My test unit is 2.19 pounds, but models are as low as 1.91 pounds.

However, in the 0.6-inch chassis, Asus still managed to include some decent specs. Models start at $ 1,699, and the base contains 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a Core i7-10510U with Intel’s UHD Graphics 620. The model I use, which costs $ 1,799, has the same processor, but bumps the storage up to two 1 TB drives.

But the ExpertBook’s battery life is just as (if not more) impressive than its weight. In my testing, it took an average of 10 hours and 47 minutes – and that was during multitasking with a decent amount of Chrome tabs and apps at 200 net brightness. This means that the ExpertBook is not the most durable business laptop I have ever tested (the $ 3,000 Dell Latitude still holds the crown), but it is certainly in the honor.

This is my quick use of the ExpertBook. These are the two striking features (in addition to the storage capacity). Together, this makes it an excellent option for business users who need a portable device with plenty of storage space, but potential buyers should note that the processor is mostly suitable for basic office tasks. More on that in a bit.

One problem with such thin and light laptops is that they sometimes feel thin. However, the ExpertBook is surprisingly solid; it is made of several layers of a magnesium-lithium alloy material which, according to Asus, is 17 percent less dense than a ‘conventional’ magnesium-aluminum alloy. The company also says that the B9450 MIL-STD 810G has passed military standards, testing various factors such as port durability, spill resistance and shock resistance. I would believe it. Although I did bend a bit in the keyboard lid and screen, it was nothing compared to what I saw from other ultra-thin units like the Vaio SX12.

Aside from durability, the ExpertBook feels very high. There are metal stains in the finish that give the whole thing a bit of a heavenly look in some light.

One design note: Like a number of Asus laptops, the ExpertBook has an ErgoLift hinge, which means the screen folds under the keyboard deck when you open the laptop and lift it off the ground. It has a number of benefits – it’s supposed to increase cooling and typing more comfortably – but it also means that if you use the ExpertBook on your lap, you’ll be digging a sharp hinge into your legs. I know not everyone spends as much time on the couch as I do, so your mileage may differ.

The last impressive thing is the useful port selection: you have two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, one HDMI 2.0 port, one Micro HDMI to LAN port and one 3, 5 mm combo-sound jack. Many manufacturers have had trouble even adapting USB-A on ultra-thin machines, so I’m under the impression that I’m seeing full HDMI here.

Other fun things: there’s a fingerprint scanner under the arrow keys, the Windows Hello webcam has a physical shutter and a dead switch, and the touchpad has Asus’ NumberPad 2.0 feature, which allows you to use an LED numpad pulling up with the touch of a sensor. And there are a number of business-specific features, including a TPM 2.0 chip and a preloaded suite called Asus Business Manager, where you can encrypt your local chips, change the system registry, and customize various other things.

It all sounds great, so what’s the catch? There is actually only one, but it is one that will matter to many people. This is the processor. The Core i7-10510U is a quad-core processor that is significantly lower powered than the chips you can see on the best laptops on the market, such as the Dell XPS 13.. It is far from a work cell.

Now the ExpertBook is only good for basic office work – emails, Google Docs, Slack, Zoom calls, stuff like that. I never heard the fans turn on during my usual multitasking in Chrome, nor did I experience any performance issues. If this is the day you do all day, the ExpertBook is for you. But if you think you will ever have to bother with this, especially tasks that use the integrated graphics, you will want to look elsewhere.

I tried running our traditional video output test in Adobe Premiere Pro to illustrate the performance difference between this model and other ultra-portable items you can buy, but the program crashed during each experiment. I let Asus know about this and investigated it.

So I finally offered some light games. The ExpertBook ran Rocket League at maximum settings at 40 fps (where the 11th Gen XPS 13 with a Core i7 i7-1165G7 set 111 fps, and the 10th Gen XPS 13 with a Core i7-1065G7 70 fps). On League of Legends, it averaged 85 fps (up to the 11th Gen XPS’s 205 fps and the 10th Gen’s 160 fps). It averaged 31 fps on Ear WatchUltra settings and 10 fps at the lowest Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which I mostly came across out of curiosity). These frame rates are significantly lower than you might expect from both XPS models, as well as much more affordable 14-inches like Asus’ own ZenBook 14.

To repeat: the ExpertBook is nowhere near a laptop. This is just to illustrate the processing power you sacrifice for the extra portability, battery life and storage that the ExpertBook offers (and of course to note that if you think you ever want to play even comfortable games, think of getting something else).

However, one thing I would like to commend Asus for: the cooling of the ExpertBook is great. During several Premiere export attempts and a long game session, the CPU’s temperature remained very constant in the high 60s and rarely jumped above 70 degrees Celsius. This is impressive, especially for such a thin device. (The XPS 13 spends a lot of time in the high nineties.) On the other hand, the fans made so much noise that they could be heard from several rooms – people around me would have been worried if I had tried these tests in an office. . This is another reason to get away from this if you have to do games or media work from time to time.

The audience for the ExpertBook B9450 is somewhat specific. But that does not mean it is small. If you’re someone who doesn’t care much about processing power, but cares about portability, battery life, and storage, this laptop is worth $ 1,799. Not only is it the lightest you can buy in this size, but it is one of the few products in its weight class with dual storage spaces. It will be difficult to find all three of these features in many other 14-inch laptops at this price point. Add a nice build quality and the handy numpad feature, and I think it’s a laptop that many homeworkers and road workers would love.

Just make sure you know what you’re getting – because the low-power processing arm and deafening fans are definitely not ideal for everyone.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge