IFA 2022 | Asus ExpertBook B5: Lightweight 16 inch laptop for the enterprise market with a numpad

In the business laptop segment, there are a few market dominating players - Dell with its Latitude, HP with the EliteBooks and Lenovo with the ThinkPad brand. Naturally, others want a piece of those sales as well, for example Asus with its own ExpertBook series.

To conquer the office buildings, Asus is using an interesting mix of features: A large screen combined with a low weight. The new Asus ExpertBook B5 has a trendy 16:10 16 inch screen, but with a low weight of only 1.4 kg. Notably though, this low weight is only with a small 50 Wh battery - configurations with the optional 84 Wh battery will weigh more.

Apart from the battery, the ExpertBook B5 contains up to two M.2 SSDs, up to 40 GB RAM (8 GB on-board, 1x SO-DIMM) and a current Intel processor of the Alder Lake generation. In this case, it is always a P28 chip, with the vPro processor Intel Core i7-1270P as the top option. Asus is also relying on Intel for the GPU, as the Asus ExpertBook B5 B5602C can be configured with the Intel Arc A350M.

The volume of the 16 inch chassis is otherwise used by Asus for a dual fan cooling system, a 1.5mm travel keyboard with a numpad and many ports, including RJ45 and a microSD slot. Notably absent though is WWAN.

That is unlike many other business laptops - typical for this device class however is the bad entry level option for the screens, as the base WUXGA (1,920 x 1,080) has a bad color gamut. At least, there is a 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,400) OLED screen as an alternative option.

The Asus ExpertBook B5 will be available in the fourth quarter of 2022.