The new Asus ExpertBook A7 costs $1500 despite its slow Intel Wildcat Lake processor
In our review, the new Asus ExpertBook A7 impressed us straight away with its build quality: The metal unibody chassis, low weight of 1.2 kilograms and slim base unit give it an exceptionally premium feel. Unfortunately, the rest of the specifications do not live up to this premium first impression.
The processor is merely an Intel Wildcat Lake chip. While the Core 7 350 in our review unit offers decent single-core performance, its multi-core performance is barely competitive with just six cores in total (two performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores). These processors are actually designed for inexpensive entry-level laptops, not an expensive business laptop.
But the processor is not the only area where Asus has cut corners; the rest of the feature set has also suffered. Although the Intel chip supports Thunderbolt, the manufacturer only includes slow USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports here, not even USB 4.0.
The choice of processor also comes with another drawback: Graphics performance is extremely poor. With just two Xe3 cores, Intel's integrated graphics solution is among the slowest iGPUs you can currently buy. Considering the high price ($1500 for our review unit with the Core 7 350, 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD), the Wildcat Lake chip in the ExpertBook A7 is difficult to justify.
Ultimately, the ExpertBook A7 is a very attractive business laptop, but its low performance, missing features and high price unfortunately make it disappointing overall.
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