For many business travelers, portability is king. Enter the Asus ExpertBook B9450 (starts at $1,699; $1,799 as tested), a super-portablebusiness laptopthat weighs just 1.91 pounds. This makes it the lightest 14-inch commercial laptop, an appealing draw on its own. But its superpower is astounding battery life, which hit 30 hours on our video-playback rundown test, a new PC Labs record. Atop these twin charms, it features a whopping 2TB of SSD storage, a comfy angled keyboard, and more ports than you'd expect. Though the ExpertBook sets two records, theLenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7remains our Editors' Choice for its superior build, while theHP Elite Dragonflyis our pick for 2-in-1s. Shoppers with demanding workloads should consider a more potent machine, but this strong effort from Asus is a major contender for portability-first shoppers.
A Professional Travel Partner
A major contributor to the ExpertBook's extreme light weight is the material used for its chassis, a magnesium lithium alloy. It feels high-quality to the touch, certainly better than plastic, but is much lighter than the typical metals used in most mainstream ultraportables. The whole chassis is painted an attractive navy blue with some sparkling metallic flecks, which adds a bit of style for a business laptop.
虽然ExpertBook的重量可能是最大的physical bullet point, it's not the only aspect of the design that makes it extra portable. The whole laptop is quite compact and thin, even with its 14-inch screen; on size, the chassis rivals many ultraportables with 13-inch panels. It measures 0.5 by 12.59 by 8.6 inches (HWD), easy to slip into any working space or bag with ease.
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Asus ExpertBook B9450 Review: Business Laptop With a Battery That Won't DieBy comparison, the X1 Carbon measures 0.59 by 12.7 by 8.6 inches and 2.4 pounds, while the 13-inch HP Elite Dragonfly comes in at 0.63 by 12 by 7.8 inches and 2.2 pounds. The Asus is trimmer than both, especially impressive considering the HP's smaller screen.
有一些更多关于设计值得discussing than just the small size and material. It features a drop hinge called "ErgoLift", which we've seen on other Asus laptops. It raises the keyboard at an angle as you pull the clamshell fully open. This creates a more comfortable typing angle, akin to a desktop keyboard, and gives the bottom vents a couple of inches of clearance for better cooling. The keys are comfortable to type on, with a pleasant amount of travel, and the angle does help.
铰链的设计还允许sus to keep the visible bezels thinner—the bottom bezel isn't actually all that thin, but it's dropped beneath the keyboard and out of sight. The side borders are thin, while the top bezel is somewhere in between, just thick enough to house a webcam lens.
As for the screen between the bezels, it's pretty straightforward. The IPS panel bears a full HD (1,920 by 1,080, or 1080p) resolution, with an anti-glare coating to reduce deflections. It does feel nice and roomy with the thin bezels, especially in comparison to the total footprint of the laptop—it boasts a 94 percent screen-to-body ratio, so there isn't much potential display real estate left on the design table. It looks sharp, with good colors, though the brightness doesn't especially wow me, even at the maximum brightness setting.
Extras for Experts
A bundle of "extra" features comes included in this type of laptop, from both hardware and software perspectives. In a wider sense, this laptop was developed as part ofIntel's Project Athena, an initiative between the chip maker and PC manufacturers to deliver portable, well-performing laptops for the modern working world.
That philosophy, of course, includes its components, which I'll get to below, but it's also a holistic approach that includes validating the performance, battery life, and durability (the ExpertBook is MIL-STD 810G certified) of the laptop, as well as providing useful extras. The HD webcam comes with a physical privacy shutter and an IR sensor for quick Windows Hello facial login, and there's a fingerprint sensor for login to the right of the touchpad.
The touchpad also features a built-in calculator, which you can activate with a touch button in the upper right corner of the pad. This turns the pad into an LED grid you can use to input numbers into a calculator or Microsoft Excel in lieu of a physical number pad. I did find the activation button a little finicky; it did not work on my first press 100 percent of the time. The proper activating press is somewhere between a touch press and a full click press.
On that note, the touchpad itself tracks smoothly, though there's noticeable flex on and around it when you click. The whole touchpad sinks in when you push, especially when activating the corner button, and the alloy between it and the keyboard noticeably bends. It's not likely going to break from this, and is part of the deal when you build a machine that'sreallythin and light. But it's not an inspiring feeling, especially if you are heavy-handed with your typing and laptop-handling.
Additional features include Intel Wi-Fi 6 support, Bluetooth 5.0, four far-field microphones, and TPM 2.0, while Intel vPro support will be added at a later date, according to Asus. The speakers are by Harman/Kardon and provide good-quality sound, even if the volume or bass can get particularly booming.
在软件方面,几个bolste华硕项目r the ExpertBook's utility, such as Business Manager and Control Center. These let you view hardware specs, use restore points, shred files permanently, update BIOS and software, manage power consumption, and more. All of this, and additional functionality like fan and charging modes, can be found through the pre-installed MyAsus app collection. You can also use MyAsus on mobile to screen-mirror, extend, transfer files, and more. All told, the ExpertBook lives up to its name with business-focused features and extras, both optional and integral to using your laptop.
Ports and Configurations
Connectivity plays a large part in making sure this device is a true productivity machine, able to take your peripherals, drives, and projectors in the office and on the go. The ExpertBook is generous with physical connectivity for such a trim machine, and includes two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support, a full-size HDMI connection, and a micro HDMI port on its left side. (The micro HDMI port is meant to be used with a specialized adapter cable, not included, as an Ethernet port.) On the right flank, you'll find the headset jack, plus a Type-A USB 3.1 port.
As far as configuration options go, there are only two flavors of the ExpertBook, which keeps things simple. Our model is the $1,799 Core i7 model, with 16GB of RAM and two 1TB SSDs. (The two SSDs show up as discrete drives.) That is a ton of storage for a system of this kind, maybe more than you even need, but it's actually a very good value for that much SSD capacity. On many competitor systems, adding as much storage would see the price skyrocket by hundreds of dollars, but the overall cost of this laptop remains very reasonable.
You can take the price even lower with the alternative Core i5 version, which starts at $1,699 and otherwise features the same specs. One spec option you do have is choosing between a 33-watt-hour or 66-watt-hour battery in either version—we have the latter, and as you'll see below, it makes a profound impact.
Performance Testing: Midrange Computing Power
This is a competitive field, with plenty of alternative portable business laptops to choose from. I've selected a group that's similar in size, performance, price, or some combination of those for the sake of performance comparisons. You can see their names and specs in the following table…
Productivity & Storage Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the PC's drive subsystem. This score is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better. Note that the Apple MacBook Pro is excluded from this Windows-based test.
The ExpertBook didn't do especially well or badly on PCMark 10, though it did end up at the back of the pack. It's not very far behind, though, showing the system's general aptitude for everyday home and office tasks. This sets the trend of results for the ExpertBook from the outset—it can get the job done, and it isn't slow, but it's not the fastest machine around nor a productivity workhorse. For the price, that may turn you off, but its portability is hard to write off for those who don't have the most strenuous workload. As for the storage, this system's SSD is slightly faster than the others, providing very quick boot and load times.
Media Processing & Creation Tests
Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open source Blender demo movieTears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here. The Photoshop test stresses CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.
As stated, the ExpertBook did well enough, but not great, on these tasks. All of these business laptops are not the best equipped for media creation or editing, and the ExpertBook was on the lower end of the group. It's not incapable here and will do in a pinch, but this U-series processor is not made to power through sustained, strenuous multi-threaded tasks.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores. Again the Apple MacBook Pro is excluded from this (and the next) Windows-based test.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess.
The ExpertBook was unable to finish Superposition on the High preset; the program kept crashing on repeated tries (likely due to a lack of VRAM). Still, the conclusion doesn't change based on that. None of these laptops, with their integrated graphics, performed well on these benchmarks. Substantive 3D tasks are generally too demanding without a discrete graphics card, so this system is not for anyone who uses intensive 3D applications. All but the simplest games are also out of the question, though that's less of a concern on a laptop that'ssupposedto be for work.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in Airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Blender Foundation shortTears of Steelused in our Handbrake test—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.
Yes, you are seeing that correctly. The Asus ExpertBook lasted for an astounding 30 hours while playing video, the longest battery life PC Labs has recorded to date. This is quite literally more than the often-touted "all-day battery life," and very impressive.
It's a perfect match for the super-portable form factor, making the pitch of a great travel companion that much more appealing. If you plan to take the ExpertBook on long trips frequently (especially, transoceanic flights), are away from your desk for long periods through the day, or tend to just keep it in your bag for long stretches without plugging it in, it will still have the juice you need when you open it up.
Now we wouldn't expect that kind of battery life from the machine in harder-charging everyday use. And, depending on the ambient lighting where you work, you may not be satisfied with using the ExpertBook at 50 percent screen brightness like our test mandates. But that is nonetheless an extraordinary battery showing.
A Top Pick for Frequent Business Travelers
There's a lot to like about the Asus ExpertBook, though I would say its target audience is relatively specific. Average business workers at a desk all day don't need something as wildly portable or as long-lasting. They may be better served putting the portability money toward a beefier processor; those who don't leave their desk much or need more power might want to opt for an overall less expensive laptop. For those whodoneed top-tier performance, such as content creators, engineers, and those dealing with big datasets, amobile workstationor a thicker power laptop is more fitting.
That leaves the slice of business users who need maximum portability—perhaps as the top priority—and can settle for moderate performance. That's not to say plenty of people don't fall under that banner, and it's hard to find too much to complain about with the ExpertBook for those users. It is light, is mostly comfortable to use, includes a variety of useful ports, and has a battery that lasts an eon. And there's aboatloadof storage. The ExpertBook isn't our unequivocal business-laptop recommendation (that would be the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 among clamshells, or if you want a convertible, the HP Elite Dragonfly), but it fills its role well. And if its extreme battery life is a sign of things to come from Project Athena laptops, we say: Yes, please.
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A record-setting battery-life monster, the Asus ExpertBook B9450 is a super-light "Project Athena" business laptop with loads of handy connectivity. You can find speedier and better-built laptops, but it's a great choice for long-haul travelers.
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