Why the Windows laptop I recommend to most business users isn’t a ThinkPad or XPS

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The Asus ExpertBook Ultra is a special laptop for me. It’s the first laptop I’m reviewing this year, and it’s the first Panther Lake-powered device I’ve used outside of an official Intel event. I’ve been eager to try one, and this machine is simply fantastic. From design to performance, it is a laptop that is sure to impress.

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Asus’ latest device is an incredibly lightweight laptop, clocking in at just 2.18 pounds and measuring 0.65 inches at its thickest point. It is so sleek that it doesn’t even feel like a laptop when you carry it around. It feels more like an actual notebook. 

It’s also perfectly balanced, passing the one-finger test with flying colors. Thanks to a small divot below the trackpad, you can lift the screen without the device sliding around.

Thoughtful engineering

The laptop is primarily made of a magnesium alloy, with Asus’ proprietary Nano Liquid ceramic coating, for a chassis that’s both light and durable. You might not be able to tell just by looking at it, but you can definitely feel the difference. The ExpertBook Ultra has a slight ruggedness.

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I also have to shout out the great keyboard. It uses chiclet-shaped buttons with 1.5mm of travel distance, making typing fast, comfortable, and, most importantly, satisfying. There’s enough feedback that you don’t have to push the key all the way in to register an input. It’s a style more often seen on mechanical keyboards, and it’s a big reason they’re so popular with gaming enthusiasts.

I usually don’t dwell on laptop trackpads, but ExpertBook’s deserves a special mention. It’s large, ensuring comfortable navigation, and each press produces a crisp, tactile click. The trackpad also has a neat feature. By placing your thumb at the bottom and a finger at the top, you activate a dedicated scrolling mode. This function lets you scroll through lines of text without needing the cursor. When it’s engaged, the pad vibrates and emits a subtle clicking sound.

Brilliant to see

Asus’ ExpertBook Ultra houses a stunning 14-inch 3K OLED screen that covers the entire DCI-P3 color gamut and is Pantone-validated. This means colors look rich and incredibly lifelike, to the point where it genuinely puts my HP Omen 4K desktop monitor to shame. Plus, its 91% screen-to-body ratio ensures that what you’re looking at is almost all display, with minimal bezels closing in on the image.

The panel reaches a peak brightness of 1,400 nits, enabling clear visibility even in bright conditions. Asus also applied Corning Gorilla matte to reduce glare by up to 80%, and the glass itself is protected by Corning Gorilla Victus, giving it extra durability and scratch resistance.

The ExpertBook Ultra’s sound system is equally impressive. Asus gave its machine a six-speaker system that includes dual magnetic woofers for deep bass and tweeters for clear, detailed high-frequency sound. No matter what I played, from music to spoken-word videos, the audio sounded lush and well-balanced.

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What really stood out to me, however, was the level of instrument separation. Listening to jazz and lo-fi hip-hop tracks, every element of the song, the drums, piano, and occasional trumpets, had its own space in the soundstage, equal to each other. Audio from these speakers carries across the room without much distortion, allowing me to clearly hear dialogue from 20 feet away.

Efficiency meets power

My review unit of the ExpertBook Ultra ran on an Intel Core Ultra X7 processor, 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD. This combination delivers exactly the level of performance you’d expect from a premium business laptop. 

In day-to-day use, the ExpertBook Ultra felt snappy. Apps opened instantly, browser tabs loaded without hesitation, and I could hop between multiple apps seamlessly. The generous amount of RAM ensured nothing slowed the device down, reinforcing the laptop’s focus on delivering no-compromise productivity. 

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Below is a table comparing the Asus ExpertBook Ultra’s benchmark results with other work-centric laptops I’ve tested. You’ll immediately notice that the Asus model boasts a significantly higher Geekbench multicore score than its competitors, signaling stronger multitasking performance and accurately reflecting what I experienced first-hand.

Its benchmarking scores also suggest the laptop is well-suited for content creation. During testing, I edited drone footage and high-resolution photographs without issue — the laptop handled those workloads comfortably. However, it may struggle with heavy tasks like complex 3D rendering since it operates on an integrated Intel Arc graphics card rather than a discrete Nvidia GPU. These kinds of tasks would be better suited to a more specialized laptop. 

Battery life is nothing short of phenomenal. The ExpertBook lasted over 16 hours on a single charge. Energy efficiency is a major focus for Intel’s Panther Lake processor series. Processors have improved greatly over the past few years, and this laptop is a perfect example of that progress. Charging speeds are equally impressive: after just 30 minutes plugged in, the battery climbed up to 60%.

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Laptops this thin that house high-end hardware often run hot. To keep temperatures cool, Asus equipped its device with the ExpertCool Pro system, an advanced cooling solution that utilizes three air outlets to increase internal air pressure. The result is a laptop that runs effortlessly cool.

ZDNET’s Buying Advice

You will have to wait a bit before you can get your hands on the ExpertBook Ultra. Asus told me that the ExpertBook with the Intel Core Ultra X7 CPU is slated to launch in April 2026, with pre-orders going up in the first quarter of 2026. Two color options will be available: Morn Grey and Jet Fog (black). A second model running the more powerful Intel Core Ultra X9 processor is expected to arrive later in Q2 2026.

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Asus hasn’t confirmed pricing yet, but the company is setting up the ExpertBook Ultra for the premium thin-and-light laptop market. The rep said that the new model will be going up against devices like the Dell Pro 14 Premium, HP EliteBook X G1i 14, and Lenovo’s 12th-Gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon. 

Based on current pricing for those rivals, I think it’s reasonable to expect the ExpertBook Ultra to land at around $2,400. Final pricing will be revealed closer to launch.