Hands-on review: Asus Expertbook P5 (P5405CSA-NZ0242) notebook

The Asus Expertbook P5 is a 14" notebook PC designed for everyday use. It's armed with an Intel Core Ultra 258V processor with an on-chip Arc Graphics 140V GPU (graphics processing unit) and an Intel AI Boost NPU (neural processing unit).

Out of the box, you could be forgiven for thinking that the little notebook PC was plastic. It's actually made from a very lightweight alloy that gives it a more premium feel to the touch. It's a robust piece of kit, as well, despite its slight appearance- measuring only 31.2 x 22.3 x 1.49 cm and weighing 1.29 kg.

As well as the notebook, the package also contains a charging cable with a very handy USB Type-C connector and a fabric protective slipcase. The review machine came with Windows 11 Professional installed.

Under the hood, the Expertbook P5 P5405CSA-NZ0242 is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 258V processor. There are other options with both higher and lower-spec processors. The Core Ultra 258V is one of Intel's second-generation mobile chips, with an integrated AI NPU (neural processing unit) and an Intel EVO GPU as well as the CPU.

Benchmarking the notebook performance with PCMark achieved a very reasonable score of 7164. The individual test scores for Essentials at 9732, Productivity at 10416 and Digital Content Creation at 9842) showed a 10% improvement on last year's Intel Core Ultra 155H scores. The Core Ultra 258V promises better performance across applications and lower power consumption, equating to better battery life. 

The Intel Arc Graphics 140V on-chip GPU delivers reasonable graphics performance. It's not a gaming device, but the 3Dmark score of 2008 suggests that you should be able to get at least 30fps out of most of today's games using ARC's XeSS AI upscaling. 

The Expertbook has 32GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory-on-package RAM running at 4266.7Mhz with clock speeds of 92-80-80-180. This should be more than enough for the office and mild creative activities that the notebook is designed for.

Storage was catered by a 1TB Western Digital SN5000S NVMe PCIe Gen4.0 x4 SSD which scored an impressive 6300MB/s read speed and 6000MB/s write speed with Crystal DiskMark. There's also a vacant M.2 2230 slot for future upgrading.

On the sides of the notebook there are 2x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 slots, which I tested with a Kingston XS1000R SSD, achieving impressive 1050MB/s read and 951MB/s write speeds. The 2x USB Type-A 10Gbps slots achieved similar results with a 1052MB/s read and a 947MB/s write. 

There's also an HDMI 2.1 output for an external monitor or TV, and an audio jack and a slot for a Kensington lock. For wireless connectivity, the Expertbook P5 has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.    

The 14" WQXGA 2560x1600 144Hz display is crisp and clear. It's not a touchscreen, which is fine by me as I'm not a fan of greasy finger marks on monitor screens.

The big selling point is the integrated AI neural processing unit, Intel AI Boost. Whilst it's early days, the onboard NPU allows AI processing to be carried out locally, without having to export your data to who-knows-where on the Internet. The Asus Expertbook P5 is the first Asus Copilot+ PC for work. As the Windows operating system starts to make more and more use of AI in its day-to-day use, having a dedicated NPU takes the workload off the CPU and GPU. 

Asus ExpertMeet uses AI to control noise-cancelling audio and the AI camera. AI can also be used to automatically generate meeting minutes. And because of the onboard NPU, all the meeting information stays on the machine and is under your control.

Other software, such as Audacity, with the Intel OpenVino AI toolkit to tap into the power of the NPU. I used the Expertbook with Audacity to isolate the vocals and instruments in some songs to make my own karaoke tracks, something that only a few years ago would have taken an audio engineer hours to prepare. 

This next generation of AI-enabled Intel devices provides corporate users with the data security they need. By providing local AI functionality important and sensitive data is not being shared via anonymous servers.

Another feature worth mentioning is the MyAsus App. As with all Asus devices, the MyAsus app will keep your Expertbook up to date. You don't have to worry about driver or firmware updates, you just open the app, and it'll tell you if there are any available updates to install. With just the press of a button, the app does it all for you.

The Asus Expertbook P5 (P5405CSA-NZ0242) performed well during testing. The small device is robust. The Intel Core Ultra 258V processor, with its onboard GPU and NPU, makes the Expertbook a portable powerhouse, topped off nicely by 32GB of DDR5 memory and a terabyte of fast solid-state storage.

The Asus Expertbook P5 retails for AUD $2,799 and is available in Australia now, with the P5405CSA-NZ0207X New Zealand model retailing for NZD $2,999 and available in early December.