You want something like the ExpertBook P3 to live up to its name. The first part is certainly taken care of (we don't want to speculate about the 'P3' portion of the equation). Performance is more than adequate for the average office, though a lack of an OLED display and just 16GB of RAM mean you'll only give this to the design intern if you hate them a little. Its biggest competition? Apple's M3 MacBook Air but if you must have Windows, you must have this one.
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Design
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Display
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Performance
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Features
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Value
Asus’ ExpertBook range has long been an excellent way to get yourself through the average workday, and the new ExpertBook P3 is no different. Solidly capable hardware, Asus’ always-excellent display panels, and a durable chassis make the P3 a contender for being your next PowerPoint-sharing office rig.
The only sticking point is the price. Depending on your office IT setup, your money could be better spent on an M3 MacBook Air or similar. It’s possible to tuck one of Asus’ new office machines into your cart for R19,600, a couple of hundred bucks less than Apple’s own office darling. If everyone you work with is fond of pricey coffee and online activism, maybe opt for Apple’s machine. The ExpertBook P3 is here to work.
Old New Reliable
The ExpertBook P3 doesn’t reinvent anything in terms of design. This 14in workhorse is a silver-grey slab of lightweight metals that only stands out when you have it in hand. It feels… sturdy and dependable, like that one guy at your job who knows how everything works and never complains.
The impression is helped along by the unremarkable but highly functional keyboard and trackpad. Keys are satisfying to depress, while the oversized trackpad offers more room to navigate. Sure, you could pair the P3 with an external mouse, but we never saw any need to.
There are enough ports to keep you tapping away in the office without resorting to other peripherals, unless you’re partial to an external monitor. A full-sized HDMI is your friend there, while two USB-C ports on the left side handle most other connections. One of these is dedicated to the power supply, but you don’t always need external power. The 50Wh battery will keep you up for a while. A USB-A and expandable Ethernet port occupy the right edge, along with a Kensington lock. Yes, there’s also a 3.5mm input for your wired office headphones.
No games, please
The sense of stolid reliability extends to the internals. Windows 11 Pro was installed on our review unit, and Windows performance, as ever, is as good a reflection of office-hour use as anything else you could use. Asus drops an Intel Core i7-13620H in the mix, with 16GB of RAM and — we were surprised to note — 500GB of solid-state storage. It’s that last stat that firmly cements this as a practical laptop in our minds. If fun and games were on the menu, there’d be more storage.
If media consumption is your aim, then the ExpertBook P3’s 14in display will happily oblige. A native 1,920 x 1,200 resolution and crisp presentation combine with excellent colour rendition to ensure that your spreadsheets will never look better. The content from your favourite streaming service will be similarly well-treated. Gaming media, on the other hand, had better need little more than the Intel UHD graphics solution, so hopefully you’re a fan of SNES emulators. At least the pixel art will look better than it ever did on an old CRT.
Get to work
Everything else about the Asus ExpertBook P3 is geared towards high-performance office work (or very well-camouflaged goofing off). Asus steps up its security game with a TPM 2.0 security chip behind the fingerprint sensor (which also doubles as the power button).
The 1080p webcam integrated above the screen is backed by AI features (in the form of Asus’ AI ExpertMeet software), while a physical shutter lets you block off the camera so your boss doesn’t see that you didn’t bother with pants for this meeting. AI also gets involved in noise-cancelling during those ‘important’ meetings.
There’s an obligatory Copilot key on the keyboard, since Microsoft is entirely convinced that the world will use AI to make itself progressively dumber. Summoning the AI is simple enough; convincing it to do something useful is entirely up to you.
Asus ExpertBook P3 (P3405CVA) verdict
The Asus ExpertBook P3 isn’t the most exciting laptop we’ve ever encountered. If we were talking about a gaming setup, that might be a point against it. But in the workplace, you don’t really want exciting (unless your job is disarming landmines with a pogo stick). It’s solid, dependable, and works hard, all while not trying too hard to call attention to itself. It’s Bill from that unspecified department that always manages to fix problems in minutes. That’s not a bad thing.
The only drawback that we can see is the competition from Apple’s MacBook Air range. Similar pricing means it’s very easy to discard the ExpertBook P3 as a choice if the prevailing office culture favours Tim Cook’s fruit-flavoured machines. But if you’re in a Windows workplace, your IT guy will probably love setting you up on the company network on this machine. There are no real surprises. Just quiet, quick productivity.
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Macbook Air 13 M4 presently on sale for R19,499 to 19,999. So, give this Expertbook a miss at this price and specifications, or shell out a couple of thousand extra for the Zenbook 14 OLED.