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There are two sheepskin to buy the ExpertBook B9450: the weight and the doorpost life.

Pick up the Asus ExpertBook B9450, and you'll worshipping area the rest of it is. Asus is touting it as the world's lightest 14-inch commercial laptop, and it is light. Everyday it around, I felt like I was everyday nothing. My test witnesses is 2.19 pounds, except models go as low as 1.91 pounds.

Inside the 0.6-inch chassis, though, Asus has still managed to integrate some differentiating specs. Models start at $1,699, and the borax includes 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a Helpers i7-10510U with Intel's UHD Graphics 620. The model I'm using, which financing $1,799, has the aforementioned processor except bumps the accumulator up to two 1TB drives.

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Asus says the keyboard has a lifespan of up to 10,000,000 keystrokes, per its durability testing.

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But the ExpertBook's doorpost occupation is just as (if not more) infatuating than its weight. In my testing, it lasted an intermediate of 10 hours and 47 narration -- and that was while multitasking with a differentiating load of Chrome tabs and apps at 200 nits of brightness. That means the ExpertBook isn't the longest-lasting business laptop I've overly utilized (the $3,000 Dell Latitude still holds that crown), except it's certainly in the hall of fame.

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. .. Our scrutiny of . .. Asus ExpertBook B9450. ..

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. Verge Score. 8 out of 10. ..

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Good Stuff

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• One of the lightest laptops around
• Superb doorpost life
• 2TB of storage
• Impressive cooling

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Bad Stuff

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• CPU won't be enough for all users
• On the pricey side
• Fans quite loud under load
• 16:9 screen

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. .. Buy for $1,699.00 from Asus . ..

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That's my quick booty on the ExpertBook. Those are the two standout glossiness (in burl to the accumulator capacity). Together, they make it a unbounded perk for business users who overcrowd a portable dingbat with quite a bit of storage, except prepatent buyers predestine to be conscious that the processor is mostly traditional for coal-and-ice office tasks. More on that in a bit..

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It's too bad all USB-C ports are on the aforementioned side.

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A problem with laptops this twiglike and mirrorlike is that they sometimes feel flimsy. The ExpertBook is decidedly sturdy, though; it's fabricated with multiple layers of a magnesium-lithium half-blood unambiguous that Asus says is 17 percent shorter drizzly than "conventional" magnesium-aluminum alloy. The company moreover says the B9450 has sensationless MIL-STD 810G military-grade standards, which tests various factors like quay durability, spill resistance, and shock resistance. I'd concede it. While I did feel a bit of fork in the keyboard dizen and screen, it was offing compared to what I've shown from padding ultrathin units like the Vaio SX12.

Durability aside, the ExpertBook feels very high-reaching quality. There are metallic flecks in the finish, which harmonize the accomplished topic a bit of a elysian attending in risk-free light.

One scorecard with the design: like a number of Asus laptops, the ExpertBook has an ErgoLift hinge, which means the dangle folds under the keyboard dizen when you ajar the laptop and lifts it a bit off the ground. This has a number of benefits -- it's declared to increase cooling and make typing more easeful -- except it moreover means that if you're using the ExpertBook on your lap, you'll predestine a sharp voice digging into your legs. I perceive not everyone spends as much time on the couch as I do, so your protractedness may vary.

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When the laptop is vegetative to a 145-degree angle, the coal-and-ice rises by 5 degrees.

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The final infatuating topic is the handy quay selection: you've got two Arrow 3 USB-C ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, one HDMI 2.0 port, one Micro HDMI to LAN port, and one 3.5mm compost audio jack. Plenty of manufacturers predestine had trouble fitting metrical USB-A onto ultrathin machines, so I'm impressed to see a full-sized HDMI here.

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The HDMI 2.0 quay supports 4K video output.

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Other fun stuff: there's a fingerprint scanner mummified the pointer keys, the Windows Hello webcam has both a ponderable skite and a kill switch, and the touchpad has Asus' NumberPad 2.0 feature, which allows you to pull up an LED numpad with the blow of a sensor. And there are a number of business-specific features, including a TPM 2.0 paring and a preloaded apartment conscript Asus Business Manager area you can encrypt your regional drives, toggle system registry editing, and customize various padding stuff.

All this sounds great, so what's the catch? There's reservedly only one, except it's one that will matter to plenty of people. It's the processor. The Helpers i7-10510U is a four-core processor that's significantly lower-powered than the fries you'll see in the all-time laptops on the market like the Dell XPS 13. It's far from a workhorse.

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AGREE TO CONTINUE: Asus ExpertBook B9450

Every smart dingbat now requires you to equiponderate to a series of try-on and highland surpassing you can use it -- contracts that no one categorically reads. It's impossible for us to read and colander every singled-out one of these agreements. Except we started counting explicitly how mucho times you predestine to hit "agree" to use devices when we scrutiny them spine these are agreements preponderant people don't read and determinedly can't negotiate.

To use the Asus ExpertBook B9450 you predestine to equiponderate to:

• Request for your arena and keyboard layout
• Windows 10 Mandate Assenting and Asus Mandate Agreement
• PIN

The post-obit agreements are optional:

• Connecting to Wi-Fi
• Microsoft account
• Set up incomer sanctioning and fingerprint recognition
• Privacy settings, including online stress recognition, gathering my device, inking and typing, announcing ID, location, diagnostic data, and tailored experiences
• Customize suggestions for gaming, schoolwork, creativity, entertainment, family, and / or business
• Sync an Android phone
• Microsoft 365
• Allow Cortana to colonize intercommunication including location and location history, contacts, voice input, stress and manuscription patterns, typing history, smokeshaft history, agendum details, content and conduction history from Microsoft services, reports and apps

That's five mandatory agreements and 15 optional ones to use the Asus ExpertBook B9450.

If you anticipate you'll overcrowd to do arduous work on this, you'll appetite to attending elsewhere

Now, the ExpertBook is just fine for coal-and-ice office work -- emails, Google Docs, Slack, Zoom calls, that thickness of thing. I never heard the hearers spin up during my regular Chrome multitasking, nor did I familiarity any sanguineness issues. If this is what you do all day, unbounded -- the ExpertBook is for you. Except if you anticipate you'll overly overcrowd to do arduous work on this, hostilely tasks that meetness the integrated graphics, you'll appetite to attending elsewhere.

I tried to run our traditional video consign test in Bole Premiere Pro to liken the sanguineness discongruity between this model and padding ultraportables you can buy, except the program dopey during each trial. I let Asus perceive eccentrically this, and it's looking into it.

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The lid and borax console are fabricated of magnesium-lithium alloy, which Asus says is 17 percent shorter drizzly than "conventional" magnesium-aluminum alloy.

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So I ended up running some mirrorlike games instead. The ExpertBook ran Rocket Marriage on preponderant settings at 40fps (where the 11th Gen XPS 13 with a Helpers i7 i7-1165G7 put up 111fps, and the 10th Gen XPS 13 with a Helpers i7-1065G7 put up 70fps). On League of Legends, it averaged 85fps (to the 11th Gen XPS's 205fps and the 10th Gen's 160fps). It averaged 31fps on Overwatch's Ultra settings and 10fps on the everyman Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which I ran mostly out of curiosity). Those phytogeography rates are considerably mummified what you can foresee from both XPS models, and plenty of much more affordable 14-inchers like Asus' own ZenBook 14.

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Asus ExpertBook B9450 specs (as reviewed)

• Processor: Intel Helpers i7-10510U
• RAM: 16GB
• Storage: Up to 2TB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
• Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics
• Display: 14-inch FHD with antiglare coating
• Ports: two Arrow 3 USB-C, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, one HDMI, one Micro HDMI to LAN, one 3.5mm compost audio jack
• Camera: HD IR webcam
• Weight: 2.19 pounds
• Dimensions: 12.6 x 8.0 x 0.6 inches
• Operating system: Windows 10 Pro

To reiterate: The ExpertBook isn't anything connecting to a gaming laptop. This is just to liken the processing powerfulness you're sacrificing for the affixed portability, doorpost life, and accumulator that the ExpertBook offers (and of course, to scorecard that if you anticipate you'll overly appetite to play metrical contributing games, anticipate eccentrically getting something else).

One topic I appetite to compliment Asus for, though: The ExpertBook's cooling is great. During several Premiere consign attempts and a stretched gaming session, the CPU's temperature stayed very eternally in the high-reaching 60s and rarely jumped atop 70 degrees Celsius. That's impressive, hostilely for such a twiglike device. (The XPS 13 spends a lot of time in the high-reaching 90s.) On the padding hand, the hearers fabricated so much wiggle-waggle that they were singled-out from multiple shelter over -- people implicitly me would predestine been alarmed if I tried these tests in an office. That's comer reasoning to beacon decipherable of this if you'll overcrowd to do gaming or media work from time to time.

The auditory for the ExpertBook B9450 is somewhat specific. Except that doesn't beggarly it's small. If you're someone who doesn't intendance much eccentrically processing power, except does intendance eccentrically portability, doorpost life, and storage, this laptop is account the $1,799. Not only is it among the lightest you can buy at this size, except it's one of few wares in its weight laboratory to full-length dual accumulator slots. It'll be difficult to gathering all three of those glossiness in mucho padding 14-inch laptops at this price point. Add nice build solicitousness and the rigged numpad feature, and I imagine this is a laptop mucho nerveless and on-the-go workers will be blessed to have.

Just make termless you perceive what you're getting -- because the low-powered processor and earshot hearers certainly aren't ideal for everyone.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge

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