Asus ExpertBook B9450 review: lightweight and durable work laptop



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

Take the Asus ExpertBook B9450 and you’ll wonder where the rest is. Asus touts it as the world’s lightest 14-inch commercial laptop, and it’s light. While carrying it, I felt like I wasn’t carrying anything. My test unit weighs 2.19 pounds, but models go as low as 1.91 pounds.

Inside the 0.6-inch chassis, Asus still managed to include some decent specs. Models start at $ 1,699, and the base includes 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a Core i7-10510U with Intel UHD Graphics 620. The model I’m using, which costs $ 1799, has the same processor but is increasing. storage for up to two 1TB drives.

The Asus ExpertBook B9450 keyboard seen from above.

Asus claims the keyboard has a lifespan of up to 10,000,000 keystrokes, according to its durability tests.

But the ExpertBook’s battery life is just as impressive (if not more) than its weight. In my testing, this averaged 10 hours and 47 minutes – and it was multitasking with a decent load of Chrome tabs and apps at 200 nits of brightness. That means the ExpertBook isn’t the most durable business laptop I’ve ever tested (the $ 3,000 Dell Latitude still holds that crown), but it’s certainly in the hall of fame.

This is my quick take on the ExpertBook. Those are the two standout features (in addition to the storage capacity). Together, they make it a great option for business users who need a portable device with a bit of storage, but potential buyers should be aware that the processor is mostly suitable for basic office tasks. More on that in a moment.

The left side of the Asus ExpertBook B9450.

It’s a shame that all USB-C ports are on the same side.

One problem with laptops this thin and light is that they sometimes feel fragile. The ExpertBook, however, is surprisingly robust; it is made up of several layers of a magnesium-lithium alloy which, according to Asus, is 17% less dense than the “conventional” magnesium-aluminum alloy. The company also claims that the B9450 has passed MIL-STD 810G military grade standards, which test various factors such as wear durability, spill resistance, and impact resistance. I would believe it. While I do feel a bit flexible in the keyboard and screen, it was nothing compared to what I’ve seen from other ultra-thin units like the Vaio SX12.

Durability aside, the ExpertBook is of very high quality. There are metallic spots in the finish, which make the whole thing look a bit heavenly in some light.

A note with the design: Like a number of Asus laptops, the ExpertBook has an ErgoLift hinge, which means the screen folds under the keyboard when you open the laptop and lifts it off the ground a bit. . This has a number of benefits – it’s supposed to increase cooling and make typing more comfortable – but it also means that if you use the ExpertBook on your lap, you’ll have a sharp hinge that digs into your legs. I know not everyone spends as much time on the couch as I do, so your mileage may vary.

The Asus ExpertBook B9450 is open, tilted slightly to the right.  The screen displays the Asus ExpertBook logo on a blue and white background.

When the laptop is unfolded at an angle of 145 degrees, the bottom will rise 5 degrees.

The last awesome thing is the selection of useful ports: 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 3.5mm combo audio. jack. Many manufacturers have struggled to even install USB-A on ultra-thin machines, so I’m impressed to see a full-size HDMI here.

The left side of the Asus ExpertBook B9450.

The HDMI 2.0 port supports 4K video output.

Other fun stuff: There’s a fingerprint scanner under the arrow keys, the Windows Hello webcam has both a physical shutter and a stop switch, and the touchpad has Asus’ NumberPad 2.0 feature, which allows you to pop up an LED numeric keypad with a sensor. And there are a number of company specific features, including a TPM 2.0 chip and a preloaded suite called Asus Business Manager where you can encrypt your local drives, enable system registry editing, and customize various other items.

This all sounds good, so what’s the catch? There really is only one, but it’s the one that will matter to a lot of people. This is the processor. The Core i7-10510U is a quad-core processor that’s significantly less powerful than the chips you’ll see in the best laptops out there like the Dell XPS 13. It’s far from a workhorse.

Now the ExpertBook is perfect for basic office work – email, Google Docs, Slack, Zoom calls, that sort of thing. I never heard fans spinning during my regular Chrome multitasking, and I didn’t experience any performance issues. If that’s what you do all day, great – the ExpertBook is for you. But if you think you’ll ever need to do some hard work on this, especially tasks that take advantage of the integrated graphics, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

I tried running our traditional video export test in Adobe Premiere Pro to demonstrate the difference in performance between this model and other ultraportables you can buy, but the program crashed on every try. I let Asus know about it and they review it.

The Asus ExpertBook B9450 facing the canera, tilted to the left.

The cover and base panel are made from a magnesium-lithium alloy, which Asus says is 17% less dense than the “classic” magnesium-aluminum alloy.

So I ended up throwing light games instead. The ExpertBook worked Rocket league on maximum settings at 40 fps (where the 11th gen XPS 13 with a Core i7 i7-1165G7 put in 111 fps and the 10th gen XPS 13 with a Core i7-1065G7 70 fps). Sure League of Legendsit averaged 85 fps (at 205 fps of the 11th gen XPS and 160 fps of the 10th gen). It averaged 31 fps on OverwatchUltra settings and 10fps at the lowest Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which I ran mainly out of curiosity). Those frame rates are considerably lower than you might expect from both XPS models, as well as many much more affordable 14inches like Asus’ ZenBook 14.

To reiterate: the ExpertBook is nothing close to a gaming laptop. This is just to illustrate the processing power you sacrifice for the added portability, battery life, and storage that the PC offers. ‘ExpertBook (and of course, to note that if you think you’ll ever want to play even casual games, consider getting something else).

One thing I want to commend Asus for, though: the ExpertBook’s cooling is excellent. During several Premiere export attempts and a long gaming session, the CPU temperature remained very constant throughout the 60s and rarely exceeded 70 degrees Celsius. It’s impressive, especially for such a thin device. (The XPS 13 spends a lot of time in the ’90s.) On the other hand, the fans were making so much noise they could be heard from several rooms – people around me would have been alarmed if I had tried. these tests in an office. . This is another reason to avoid this if you need to play games or multimedia work every now and then.

The audience for the ExpertBook B9450 is somewhat specific. But that doesn’t mean it’s 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 among the lightest you can buy at this size, it’s one of the few products in its weight class that has dual storage slots. These three features will be hard to find in many other 14 inch laptops at this price point. Add in some nice build quality and the nifty numeric keypad function, and I imagine this is a laptop that many workers around the house and on the go will be happy to have.

Just make sure you know what you’re getting, as the underpowered processor and thunderous fans are definitely not ideal for everyone.

Photograph by Monica Chin / The Verge

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