Asus South Africa today launched the new ExpertBook P5, the Taiwanese manufacturer’s next Copilot+ laptop to land in SA. As you’d expect, it’s teeming with AI features thanks to the Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) chipset under the hood. It also benefits from prolonged battery life. At least, that’s how Asus tells it.
This is the first time Asus has made its ExpertBook range available for retail and the company hopes the ExpertBook P5 will build its reputation in the executive sphere and prove it doesn’t only know how to make great gaming-focused gear.
Circling back to business
To that end, the ExpertBook P5 ticks plenty of boxes. Weighing 1.29kg and measuring 1.49cm, it isn’t the lightest or smallest laptop we’ve come across but you’ll be thankful it isn’t bigger and doesn’t weigh more when you’re lugging it around to meetings and every time you have to remove it from your bag at an airport.
Most of that weight comes from the aluminium chassis which Asus says allows the ExpertBook P5 to meet the US MIL-STD 810H military durability standard – great news if you’re in the habit of working in the mud or flinging your laptop against walls.
The P5 sports a 14in ‘2.5K’ (read: 2,560 x 1,600) display that, for some reason, hits 144Hz. We’re certainly not complaining and neither will the executives who buy this. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, a higher refresh rate makes it better.
Promoting synergy
In South Africa, the ExertBook P5 is available with an Intel Core Ultra 5 or Core Ultra 7 chipset paired with 16GB or 32GB of RAM and 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage. Those specs mean it’ll breeze through every spreadsheet, text document, or conference call. The Intel chipset’s NPU will handle any on-device AI tasks, including Asus’ AI ExpertMeet suite of features which will transcribe, summarize, and translate meetings for you.
The last bit that’s worth mentioning is the battery life. Qualcomm made a big splash with its Snapdragon chipsets and how power-efficient they are. Intel didn’t take that lying down and its new Core Ultra chipsets are apparently just as efficient. Asus claims you’re looking at 28 hours of ‘all-day’ power away from a plug.
The Asus ExpertBook P5 is already available for pre-order from Asus’ online store or Computer Mania with an asking price of R20,000 (Core Ultra 5) and R26,000 (Core Ultra 7).
