ASUS Expertbook P5 (P5405) Review

The ASUS Expertbook series is mainly aimed as a business laptop. The model lineup is known for being reliable and having a long battery life. However, the downside is that it’s mainly aimed at productivity tasks, nothing more.

With the new ASUS Expertbook P5 though, the ever-reliable business laptop is now more capable than before, and it can do more than just get work done reliably. Powered by the latest Intel Core Ultra chipsets, we were able to experience just how capable this laptop can be.

Better yet, it might just be your next business laptop.

Design and Construction

In terms of styling, ASUS retained the Expertbook’s minimalist styling as compared to the new Zenbook. It features an all-aluminum design with a matte finish, giving it a prim and proper look. The only distinguishing styling cue is a small rectangular “ASUS Expertbook” badge that’s recessed into the lid.

The aluminum chassis lends to a premium feel. Thankfully, the lid is quite fingerprint-resistant, meaning you don’t have to keep wiping it every time you use it. The laptop itself is quite lightweight, weighing just 2.8 lbs (1.27 kg) despite having a 14-inch display. However, it’s not the thinnest business laptop out there measuring 1.49cm (0.59 inches).

The thickness is forgiven, though as there are a bunch of ports available at your disposal. On the left side, you’ll find a pair of USB-C ports (Thunderbolt 4), a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm audio port.

On the right side, you’ll find the other USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port. Those should be more than adequate for most business users, but if you need more ports, you can always bring a USB hub with you.

Opening the lid, which you can do so with one hand, reveals the 14-inch display. It has thin borders all around, and at the top center, you will find the webcam with a privacy cover. We’ll talk more about these later on. One thing to note is that the hinge of the screen flexes a lot.

Moving on to the keyboard, the keys on the Expertbook P5 don’t make the best sound. However, they are very comfortable to type with and have adequate key travel. There’s good spacing between the keys too, allowing me to type rather accurately. In fact, a good chunk of this review was written using this laptop.

Interestingly, ASUS added blue stripes underneath the F1 to F4 keys, which coincidentally are also the volume control and the mic mute and unmute buttons. The keys are backlit too, but only light up the letters. No RGB colors here too, this is a business laptop after all.

Perhaps one of my favorite features of the Expertbook P5 is the large touchpad. The smooth surface never caught my finger, and there were no accidental clicks too. There were a bunch of gestures too including adjusting the volume by sliding up and down on the leftmost portion.

Of course, having a mouse would still be better. But from my experience, I didn’t need to bring one around.

Display and Multimedia

If you’re used to OLED panels, well don’t expect too much on the display of the ASUS Expertbook P5. It uses a 2.5K resolution matte anti-glare IPS panel with 2560 x 1600 resolution. Meanwhile, maximum brightness is rated at 400 nits. Here’s the kicker though, it comes with a 144Hz refresh rate.

Typically, most business laptops only have 60Hz or even 90Hz refresh rates, but it’s great that ASUS decided to fit a high refresh rate display onto this laptop. This makes everything happening on screen a lot smoother, especially when you’re just watching videos or catching up with your favorite series.

It’s also great when you’re playing games on this laptop. Yes, you can play games on this and not just on the lowest graphic settings too, but more of that later on.

The colors aren’t that impressive, especially compared to OLEDs, but for an IPS panel, it is decent. The blacks aren’t that deep, and the colors feel a bit muted. Even the wallpaper I chose, which is a photo I personally took, looks muted. Still, this is intended for everyday work use. Not exactly the kind of laptop you’d use for professional video and photo editing.

What surprised me was the pair of speakers. Tuned by Dolby Atmos, they sound amazing for laptop speakers, and they’re really loud. You have a decent sound stage if you’re sitting in front of the laptop, and there’s decent bass too.

At max volume, they can easily fill up my room. You can even tune the balance of the speakers in the settings via the Dolby Access application. For personal preference, I kept it at Dynamic though.

As for the webcam, it’s decent at best. Nothing to write home about except it records at 1080P.

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, our review unit of the ASUS Expertbook P5 runs an Intel Core Ultra 7 chipset and comes with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. If you find the 1TB of storage lacking, you can add more since the laptop comes with two M.2 slots. Though there’s no sticker on the laptop, it does also have an Intel Arc 140V GPU.

Windows 11 comes standard on this laptop as well. In addition, the laptop does have an Intel® AI Boost NPU; this is a CoPilot+ laptop, after all.

As a business laptop, it can do almost everything you can think of. Have multiple tabs of Chrome open, Spotify, Discord, Excel, Word, and more. It is even good enough for light photo and video editing through Adobe Lightroom and Premiere. With CoPilot+, you can also take advantage of all the features it comes with too. But what’s really surprising is the laptop’s ability to play games.

For this review, I installed Genshin Impact and the new Tokyo Xtreme Racer to try out. Usually, Genshin Impact will have a hard time running on the highest settings, but the Experbook P5 handled it well. All I had to do in the graphic settings was to turn off motion blur. The rendering distance wasn’t maxed out either, but the laptop handled the game easily.

There were no lag or framerate drops even when I was battling in domains. It also made exploring the world quite enjoyable. Not to mention the speakers and the 144Hz display gave me quite an immersive gaming experience.

As for Tokyo Xtreme Racer, the graphic settings were set to high (ultra being the highest), but I did have to turn some graphic settings down to have smooth gameplay. Driving around, I did encounter some framerate drops, but I was able to have a nice gaming experience. Overall though, it was an impressive feat considering ASUS does market this as a business laptop.

The laptop did slightly heat up when we were playing games, but it wasn’t hot to the touch. Instead, it only felt warmer, and this did not affect gameplay at all.

To give you a better idea about the performance of this laptop, check out the benchmark scores below. Now do set your expectations, this isn’t an ROG after all.

Battery and Connectivity

For the battery, the ASUS Expertbook P5 packs a 63WHrs Li-Ion battery pack. Although the size might be average, it’s more than enough, especially if you’ll just be working.

When just browsing the net and writing this article, the battery went down from 100 to 92 percent after one hour of use. For reference, I was connected to Wi-Fi with the backlit keys turned on and the screen brightness maxed out. I was also listening to Spotify and had multiple tabs opened in Chrome.

It does drain quite fast when you’re gaming or under full load. After an hour of playing Genshin, the charge went from full to 74 percent. So, if you’re going to be playing after work, I recommend bringing the 65W charger with you. Alternatively, you can bring a power bank capable of charging laptops and an equally fast USB-C cable if you want to pack light.

As for connectivity, the Expertbook P5 comes with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.

Conclusion

Overall, the ASUS Expertbook has definitely leveled up with this latest model. It’s still the familiar business laptop we’ve come to know from ASUS, but now it has a bit more tricks up its sleeve too. It can now combine work and play in one, especially with its 144Hz display. It might not be able to run triple-A titles at max, but lighter games won’t be an issue.

It’s not perfect though. The 14-inch screen still uses an IPS panel and the hinge does flex a lot, but these are some of my personal nitpicks with this laptop. For the general users, this shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Then we have the price. The ASUS Expertbook P5 starts at PHP 82,995USD 1,420INR 123,082EUR 1,368CNY 10,349 here in the Philippines, which makes it decently priced for what it’s capable of. However, at the same time, you could also get a gaming laptop with a lot more power at a similar or slightly higher price point.  The downside of picking the gaming laptop over this is that a gaming laptop is not exactly something you would bring to a corporate meeting. It wouldn’t be as compact or lightweight either.

At the end of the day though, it all depends on your needs. If you want a laptop that can do work and play decently, then you definitely won’t go wrong with the ASUS Expertbook P5.

What we liked:
* Long Battery Life
* Great Performance
* 144Hz Display
* Beautiful sounding speakers

What we didn’t like:
* Display color is dull

ASUS ExpertBook P5 specs:
14-inch WQXGA LED display, 2560 x 1600 resolution
Intel Core Ultra 7
Intel Arc 140V GPU
32GB LPDDR5X RAM
1TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
WiFi 6E
Bluetooth 5.3
63WHrs battery
65W USB-C charging