ExpertBook B9: Asus business laptop bets on OLED and lightweight magnesium-lithium

Standing out in the world of business laptops is not easy. Commercial customer prefer more muted design when it comes to the appearance, and sometimes they also want to keep the unit pricing down in order to save cost. No wonder that most of the excitement happens in other sectors like gaming laptops or consumer ultrabooks.

Asus is a well known player in these sectors, with brands like ZenBook and Republic of Gamers (ROG). In the more "boring but dependable" world of business laptops, the Asus PCs are known as ExpertBooks. A brand that is not unknown, but certainly less present than HP EliteBook, Dell Latitude or Lenovo ThinkPad.

Of course, Asus does not give up on this prominent market. The newest attempt to win over the commercial accounts is the Asus ExpertBook B9 OLED. This Asus laptop is being introduced at CES 2023, and it certainly has some features that could get people excited, even about a business laptop.

For one, it is made out of magnesium alloy - and not just any alloy, a magnesium lithium alloy. Asus claims it is more lightweight than many 13 inch laptops. However, since the manufacturer chose not to give us any specifications on the weight, we can't verify if this is true. Embedded in this chassis is a 14 inch OLED screen, which has a resolution of 2.880 x 1.800 (2.8k). Asus bets big on OLED being the signature feature of this productivity notebook.

In order to keep the employees working instead of searching for a dongle, Asus provides a full set of legacy ports, including USB A, HDMI and even a RJ45 port for wired Internet connection. The Asus laptop has a mechanical camera shutter, a fingerprint sensor and a signature Asus feature: The virtual touchpad numpad. Speaking of the touchpad: Asus claims it is 26.8 % larger compared with other ExpertBook systems.

The new Asus ExpertBook B9 is based on the latest Intel Core processors of the 13th Core i generation with up to 64 GB of memory. In order to keep these powerful chips cool and the laptop quiet, Asus has implemented a cooling system with two fans, a rarity for business laptops of this size - and certainly a way to stand out.