Intel’s latest Core Ultra chipset, Lunar Lake, is a direct response to the impressive performance and efficiency of Apple’s M3 chip. As part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative, Lunar Lake-powered laptops have quickly gained popularity for their powerful capabilities. In our Asus Expertbook P5 in-depth review, we see if Intel’s newest CPU architecture improves the performance of a business laptop.

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While the Lunar Lake chipset boasts a fast neural processing unit, battery life remains a crucial factor for users. Intel’s previous generation, Meteor Lake, faced criticism for its relatively short battery life compared to competitors. The Asus ExpertBook P5, one of the first Lunar Lake-powered laptops on the market, will be closely watched to see if Intel has addressed these battery concerns in its new chipset.

Design and Build

The ExpertBook P5 is a fairly standard 14-inch laptop with a conventional design. Its dark gray color scheme is broken only by a silver bar with a generic logo, while the overall look remains minimalist, in line with most modern laptops. In comparison, the Dell XPS 14 offers a sleeker, more contemporary design, and the Apple MacBook Pro 14, though more expensive, reflects Apple’s meticulous approach to aesthetics. The ExpertBook P5, in contrast, feels average in its design. Even compared to Asus’ other offerings, the design feels a bit lacklustre and is obviously meant to be fleet laptops – devices that will be bought in large numbers by large businesses for their workforce.

Asus emphasizes the ExpertBook P5’s durability, boasting MIL-STD 810H military certification. However, the build quality feels somewhat lacking. The keyboard deck exhibits some flex, and the thin lid bends easily under light pressure.

In terms of portability, the ExpertBook P5 doesn’t particularly stand out. While its top and side bezels are reasonably thin, the bottom bezel is somewhat thick, and the plastic material doesn’t enhance the premium feel. It’s not an especially light or thin machine compared to other 14-inch laptops, so portability isn’t its strongest selling point. Again, this is as a result of trying to keep the costs down to make it more compelling to be used as business laptops.

What the ExpertBook P5 does focus on, however, are business-oriented features like security and reliability. Asus’s ExpertGuardian system offers security at both the OS and hardware level. The BIOS is locked down and resilient, and SafeGuard provides the ability to back up important files to a secondary SSD, including encrypted keys. While these features are useful for professionals, the laptop’s build quality didn’t fully reflect its supposed toughness during testing.

The keyboard features a standard island layout with large keycaps and backlighting. However, the keys feel somewhat loose and clunky, making typing less satisfying. The keys also seem very inconsistent, meaning that some feel softer than others. We’re not sure if this is a quality control issue or because it is a pre-production version of the laptop. Asus did confirm that it is a pre-production version of the machine, but we’re not sure how much will change with the production version.

The mechanical touchpad, while adequately sized, also falls short. Its harsh, loud clicks don’t compare to the smoother haptic touchpads found on the XPS 14 and MacBooks. Additionally, the lack of a touchscreen option may not bother everyone, as this is meant for business, but it’s a feature that’s missed when absent.

Display and Sound

The ExpertBook P5 features a QHD+ (2560 x 1600) IPS display with a 144Hz refresh rate, which enhances the smoothness of the Windows 11 experience, though it’s not a gaming laptop. The display is bright at 482 nits and offers good colour reproduction with 99% sRGB, 77% AdobeRGB, and 79% DCI-P3. Its contrast ratio is impressive at 1,510:1, making it a solid choice for productivity users.

While OLED displays, such as the one on the Zenbook S 14, offer a wider colour range and richer contrast, the ExpertBook P5’s IPS panel outshines in brightness and accuracy. OLED panels tend to be better suited for creators and media consumers, but for most users, the P5’s display is more than sufficient.

The laptop’s audio, however, is less remarkable. Its two downward-firing speakers are adequate for casual tasks like watching YouTube videos or hearing notifications, but they fall short for any serious media consumption. For a better audio experience, especially for music or video, it’s recommended to use headphones.

Software and Performance

The highlight of the ExpertBook P5 is its new 17-watt Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, part of the Lunar Lake generation, also known as the Core Ultra Series 2. This 8-core, 8-thread chipset (four Performance cores and four Low Power Efficient cores) is designed to balance strong performance with energy efficiency. It aims to rival Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X and Apple’s M3 chipsets, both of which excel in efficiency.

The Core Ultra 7 258V operates similarly to Intel’s Meteor Lake U-series, which runs at 15 watts. While it has fewer cores and threads than the 28-watt Core Ultra 7 155H, it still delivers a decent balance of power. However, it faces stiff competition from the Snapdragon X Elite, Snapdragon X Plus, AMD Ryzen 9 HX 370, and Apple M3, all of which are geared toward demanding productivity users.

In terms of performance, none of these chipsets feature integrated graphics suitable for creators or gamers, and the only standout in the group, the Asus ProArt PX13, benefits from its discrete GPU. For CPU performance in thin and light laptops, the ExpertBook P5 with the Core Ultra 7 258V sits somewhere in the middle compared to other Meteor Lake U and H chipsets.

In terms of AI performance, the Lunar Lake NPU is rated at up to 48 tera operations per second (TOPS), compared to just 10 TOPS in Meteor Lake. This makes it capable of meeting the 40 TOPS requirement for Copilot+ functionality, similar to Qualcomm and AMD’s latest offerings. However, while NPUs are designed for efficient AI operations, discrete GPUs remain the faster choice for intensive tasks. The ExpertBook P5 doesn’t significantly stand out, but it offers solid performance for most users.

A final piece of performance we must highlight is when it comes to general machine software. There are some major issues with the software performance that you wouldn’t expect with this type of machine. First and foremost is the Bluetooth performance. As previously stated, the speaker audio in the laptop isn’t the best and you are most likely going to use headphones all the time. That being said, using Bluetooth on this laptop has been extremely frustrating. Walking more than 3m from the laptop while connected will often lead to audio stuttering (and no, its not an issue of the wireless headphones, which was fine connected to all other devices). Even worse, when you return closer to the laptop again, the stuttering will never go away. It is pretty much a deal breaker. Lastly, the touchpad would freeze every now and again for 10 to 15 seconds, which was extremely annoying to deal with.

Battery

As we’ve seen, all of these laptops are more than fast enough. The real question then becomes: How efficient are they? That’s where the real battle lies, and Windows laptops makers have been struggling to catch up with Apple’s incredibly efficient machines built around Apple Silicon. Lunar Lake is supposed to bridge the gap.

Unfortunately, the ExpertBook P5 isn’t the best indicator. It has a reasonable amount of battery capacity at 63 watt-hours and an IPS display. There’s nothing specific to the laptop itself that would hold it back, so you would have expected similar battery life.

Conclusion

There is not a single person we can recommend the Asus Expertbook P5 to. While it is relatively affordable compared to similarly powered laptops, there are just too many flaws. The build quality is below what you expect from Asus, the battery life is not good enough for the hardware it is powering and several software issues mar it from being a viable option.