At Gadget magazine, a travel laptop has for years meant a MacBook Air or a Dell XPS. The Asus ExpertBook Ultra is at home in that company. A combination of a 3K OLED display and a sub-1kg chassis makes the case before we opened a single application.
What is it?
The Asus ExpertBook Ultra places on-device AI and sustained performance at the centre of a business laptop experience.
Under the hood, an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H processor with 32GB of RAM handles demanding workloads with genuine ease. After opening multiple applications and a browser tab collection that would make a librarian nervous, the machine remained cool and composed. Literally.
Thermal management is better than average for this class, keeping the chassis cool enough and the fan unobtrusive during ordinary use. Switch to a performance profile for heavier lifting and there is more noise, but it is a fair trade.
The14-inch 3K OLED display is excellent: text is crisp, colours are well-balanced, and brightness is maintained in office lighting without washing out. A 120Hz variable refresh rate adds a fluidity to scrolling and navigation that we noticed immediately. The anti-glare treatment is effective without dulling the image: a combination that proves elusive on many panels in this category.
The touchscreen adds useful flexibility, particularly for quick navigation between tasks. However, the design undercuts itself in the hinge: it does not fold flat, which limits what you can actually do with touch input. For a device pitched squarely at professionals who need flexibility on the road, that is an odd omission at this price point.
On-device AI features are woven in through Asus’s MyExpert tools, which handle tasks like document summarisation, translation and meeting assistance without routing everything through the cloud. This is made possible by an integrated NPU designed specifically for local AI processing.
In practice, summarising a lengthy document and pulling out the key points is quick enough to feel practical and even powerful. For professionals handling sensitive information – legal, financial, medical, and so on – the privacy argument for local AI processing is not trivial. Such capability does not always justify the breathless billing it receives from manufacturers, but here it earns its place.
The magnesium-aluminium chassis keeps the weight just above 1kg, which is light enough that carrying it between meetings stops being something one thinks about. Build quality feels solid without tipping into the overbuilt heaviness that plagues some enterprise machines. The keyboard offers 1.5mm key travel – enough to make extended typing sessions comfortable – and a surface coating resists the kind of wear and smudging that turns cheaper keyboards into something you’d rather not touch with bare hands.
The haptic touchpad is one of the more pleasant surprises. Feedback is consistent across the entire surface, and each press feels precise. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of detail that adds up to a good daily experience.
The six-speaker audio system is better than it has any right to be for a laptop this slim, but at the price one would expect its clear, balanced sound for calls and media. AI-assisted noise cancellation on the microphones performs well in filtering background noise.
The webcam, by contrast, is functional but forgettable. Actually, it is hard to forget: at 1080p Full HD, the webcam is a weak point, delivering only adequate video quality when premium is expected.
Connectivity covers the practical bases: Thunderbolt 4, USB-A, HDMI, and strong wireless performance. The inclusion of a USB Ethernet adaptor in the box is a thoughtful touch for anyone who has spent time in a conference room where the Wi-Fi decides to become philosophical at the worst possible moment. Biometric login and hardware-level security protections round out the package for corporate users.
Battery life is a real strength. The ExpertBook Ultra gets through a full working day without complaint, even under heavier use and with the screen driving on brights. Charging from 20% to 95% in roughly an hour makes topping up between tasks practical too. Asus claims up to 24 hours under ideal conditions. That kind of figure probably requires laboratory conditions, but real-world endurance is still well above average.
ExpertLumi, an integrated lighting feature that activates during boot, login and shutdown, adds a polished visual moment to powering the machine on or off. It is the kind of detail that some users will appreciate as a cool finishing touch although others may well regard it as a solution to a problem nobody raised.
How much does it cost?
The ExpertBook Ultra, in this configuration with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, carries a recommended retail price of R59,999 in South Africa. It is available through Incredible, Takealot, Evetech and Computer Mania.
Does it make a difference?
The ExpertBook Ultra is competing in a bracket where buyers have choices and tend to know exactly what they want. It beats out many rivals by offering a coherent whole: display, performance, build quality and local AI processing all pull in the same direction, rather than the usual story of two or three strong suits offset by a weak point. The pedestrian webcam is a real compromise, but the kind of thing one factors in rather than being a deal-breake. For professionals who spend long hours in front of a screen, travel frequently and need a machine to be reliably fast, this laptop holds up its end of the bargain.
What are the biggest negatives?
- The hinge does not fold flat.
- The webcam is adequate for a video call but unremarkable for a machine at this price.
What are the biggest positives?
- The 3K OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate is among the better screens available on a business laptop.
- Performance under sustained workloads is consistent.
- Battery life and fast charging make this a machine one can take out for the day without anxiety.
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”. Jason Bannier is deputy editor of Gadget.