I have had the Asus ExpertBook P5 with me for a few weeks and this is what my experience was like with the first business laptop powered by an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) processor. Build And Design I have mixed feelings about the design and I’ll tell you why. The glass touchpad feels nice to use. It is not haptic, like the one I recently used on the Asus ProArt PX13. The Chiclet-style keyboard feels good to use as the keys give very nice feedback while typing (something that I’ve gotten used to now after using multiple business laptops). The aluminium laptop chassis is classy and seems to be well crafted. It has clean lines and refined edges. Shiny accents on the edges of the bottom half give the laptop a premium feel. What really annoyed me was that the laptop didn't lay perfectly flat on the table, something you do not expect from the crème de la crème of business laptops. The lid opens up pretty easily, though. All I needed was just one finger. I found the hinge to be smooth and easily operable. Asus says that the aluminium chassis is internally reinforced which makes it perfect for daily commute and rough use. Weighing at merely 1.3 kilograms, the ExpertBook P5 complies with the MIL-STD 810H toughness standard, essentially doubling down on the tough laptop claim. Given that this laptop is aimed at people who would not use it as their personal system and therefore won't be as careful with it as one should be, being tough and durable comes in handy. There are a total of three places where you can find the EXPERTBOOK branding – the lid, at the bottom of the display and near the vents. Speaking of vents, they are present at the back while the air inlet happens at the bottom. The vents are surprisingly quiet even when the laptop is undertaking some intense workload.  Coming back to the lid, it opens up to a fabulous 180 degrees. Now, there is no particular utility to this feature except that you can open it wide all the way till it is completely flat on the desk. Display The laptop has a 14-inch 16:10 IPS LED non-touch display which is bright and vibrant enough to make those Excel spreadsheets look great. As far as multimedia is concerned, the P5 does just fine. The 144Hz refresh rate does come into play as it elevates the overall user experience, especially if you plan on playing some games on this laptop. Connectivity And I/O PortsThe laptop almost has all the I/O ports you could possibly need in a business laptop. The ExpertBook P5 lacks an SD card reader which for some reason made me upset. SD card readers are important and come in handy when you least expect it. We have two USB A 3.1 Gen 2 ports (10 GBPS), two USB C Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack and a Kensington lock. The laptop comes equipped with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth. Security Features Given that this is a business laptop, Asus has provided a dTPM chip, a Kensington lock and a physical webcam shutter. In order to log in, users can use the gold ol' password, fingerprint sensor or Windows Hello via the laptop's IR camera. Performance Let’s keep the AI aspect aside and focus solely on the Intel Lunar Lake 258V processor for a while. The Asus ExpertBook P5 houses an 8-core 8-thread Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor which clocks a max speed of 4.8 GHz. The processor does not have hyperthreading and uses Intel’s Xe2 Arc 140V GPU and NPU on the die itself. (Unfortunately, as per the Intel CEO, this design was just a one-off and won’t be seen in future Core Ultra processors). Here is the processor spec sheet for the ExpertBook P5: Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU up to 4.8 GHzGPU: Intel Arc 140V Graphics Memory : 32GB LPDDR5X RAM (non-expandable, soldered) Storage: WD 1TB Gen 4 SSD As far as performance goes, there are three modes in the Asus ExpertBook P5. We have the Whisper Mode, Standard Mode and the Performance Mode. What you need to know is that the names are pretty self-explanatory and I had the laptop on Performance Mode throughout. The 3nm TSMC process used in the Lunar Lake SoCs promises efficiency and that is what you get in this laptop, more or less. The 8-core CPU in the ExpertBook P5’s Core Ultra 7 248V processor comprises four Lion Cove P cores and four Skymont E cores. I have displayed the Benchmarks here for a better understanding of the Core Ultra 7 248V’s performance. The CPU definitely performs well when it comes to efficiency. There is no sign of throttling and the temperatures are under control too. While doing daily tasks on the laptop such as writing stories, streaming videos on YouTube, light video editing, editing images in Photoshop and browsing the web, there was no lag whatsoever.  The 140V Intel Arc GPU uses four Xe2 cores and is good for light tasks. This includes Photoshop, Canva and streaming UHD content. The GPU also supports XeSS (super scaling) which comes in handy if you want to play games on this laptop. The NPU in the laptop felt more like a novelty. You can be glad that you have a dedicated NPU in the laptop for AI workload but the important question is whether you will be willing to pay that premium for a piece of hardware that doesn’t do much for you (yet). I kept the testing fairly simple. I ran Cinebench R24, GeekBench, 3D Mark, PC Mark and Crystal Disk Mark for synthetic benchmarking and I ran Adobe Premiere Pro wherein the laptop rendered a 60-minute long 4K video in just around 30 minutes. Battery In my own experience, the battery life of the Asus ExpertBook P5 is respectable. With a runtime of close to 14 hours in a regular office work environment which involves having numerous browser tabs open, listening to music on YouTube and working on apps like Microsoft Office, Outlook and Photoshop simultaneously, I am willing to take a stand for the Intel Lunar Lake processor and its commitment to improved battery life. However, it seems the Zenbook S14 battery lasts a bit longer in comparison. This might be because of the fact that it has a 15 per cent larger battery (ZenBook S 14’s 72 Wh battery vs ExpertBook P5’s 63 Wh battery). The battery is enough to take on everyday tasks with effortlessness. Software Experience As expected, the Asus ExpertBook P5 has bloatware. (cue the broken trumpet soundtrack). The crème de la crème AI-powered business laptop continues the long-running tradition of Windows bloatware and we are okay with it not because it is good but because we are used to it now. The bloatware can be uninstalled via the control panel which makes for an extremely thin silver lining. The P5 has its own ‘AI applications’ which are supposed to make life easier for working professionals. These apps are still in Beta which means I cannot (yet) pass a judgement as to whether they are useful or not. I will, however, say that these applications are interesting. We have an application called the ASUS Suite which has a bunch of functions for users. One such function allows users to make audio recordings which can later be transcribed as well as summarised. We have a function which puts name cards on video call screens for easier conversations. I would not disregard these features completely as some of them are quite handy. These ‘AI functions’ use cloud processing and are still not on the edge which was a bit disappointing, to be honest. Verdict: Is The Asus ExpertBook P5 Worth It? In my experience, the ExpertBook series of laptops is a long line of extremely potent powerhouse devices that can take on any task imaginable in an office environment. These are tough machines with powerful hardware and user-friendly software. The ExpertBook P5 seems to carry forward this legacy. This laptop was built for efficiency and that is exactly what it delivers. The battery life is one aspect that truly impressed me. 14 hours of non-stop work on a Windows laptop? Yes, please. One more thing that I not only noticed but also admired about the P5 is the almost inaudible fan noise. Rendering 4K footage on Premiere Pro without hearing fan noise is an experience I’ve never had before. As far as AI features are concerned, Asus provides the ExpertMeet suite of software on the laptop. I had to download multiple files from the Asus site to set it up but finally, when it was done, the end product felt like something I’d already seen before. We have features like live transcriptions, translation and summarisation. The transcription tool can also identify different speakers and transcribe accordingly. Users can also run third-party software like Audacity and Stable Diffusion if they wish to and the dedicated AI Boost NPU can take care of it. Users also have the option to put name tags on video calls. Is it faster than discrete GPUs? Not at all. However, they are capable of handling AI workloads just fine. That being said, I feel the AI features in the laptop are still primitive and there’s quite a distance to travel before these features become useful. Asus also banks heavily on the security features in the ExpertBook P5. Features such as the self-healing BIOS, Absolute Persistence 2.0, Microsoft Security Level 3 certification and the IR camera that locks up the laptop the moment you walk away from it, are a few of the attributes that make the P5 an extremely lucrative option for professional computing. Club this with Intel’s new 3nm Core Ultra 7 Lunar Lake processor, new Gen 2 Intel Arc iGPU, 32GB dual channel RAM and a fast Gen 4 PCIe NVME storage and we have ourselves a contender to stand up against Apple's MacBooks and Qualcomm's Snapdragon-powered laptops. This laptop is not available in retail channels and can be procured via channel partners. Asus told us the pricing starts at Rs 1,01,700 (plus taxes) for the Core Ultra 5 variant.

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