On paper, the Asus Expert BBook Ultra is everything that I could want in a
laptop. Great performance thanks to an Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processor.
Incredibly thin and light with the non-tandem OLED screen version coming in
at under a kilogram. Oh yeah, did I mention a tandem OLED screen with ASUS
claims up to,400 nits peak brightness? And ASUS also claims 24 hours of battery
life. Though, even in a sponsored video like this one is, we do have to point
out that in our standardized testing, we got 12 hours, which is still more than
enough to get you through the typical workday. Let's take a closer look. Oh,
right. First, at the accessories, you get one power cable. Ooh.
Ah. 90 W power brick, which ASUS claims will
give you 50% battery in just 30 minutes.
and the expert book itself.
I [music] cannot wait to see this. Oh,
yeah. Good point. Very, very highly
recycled and recyclable packaging. Apparently, the finish on this, which
ASUS calls super nanoeramic,
is five times the durability of the industry standard. And they say they
tested it by passing over it 100,000
times. Wow, it feels really cool. It's
almost like a soft touch plastic except
it's not plastic. Apparently, this is quite similar to the finish that OnePlus
used on the OnePlus 15, which has been quite wellreceived. It's kind of trippy.
And because it's made of an aluminum magnesium alloy, it also doesn't even
feel that metallic. It's like the most premium feeling plastic ever, if that
kind of makes sense. like it doesn't sap away so much heat from you, but it could
help conduct heat away from the components. Man, it's light. Whoa. And
you can really feel how much of the weight is in this tandem OLED screen
when you flip it up cuz it I mean there's two OLED layers in there in
order to improve longevity as well as peak brightness. Look at that. That's
crazy. They're using Gorilla Glass Victus for the touchcreen, which we
already know we like for its scratch resistance and its shatter resistance,
but on top of that, they're using Gorilla Glass Matte, which is supposed
to dramatically help reduce glare. And I
mean, you guys have seen what things look like when I'm holding a screen on
this set. Dude, that's incredible. Look
how diffuse that is. And this is on a black screen. I don't even have it on
yet. Built-in fingerprint sensor, by the way. I guess while we wait for it to
boot up, this is a good time to talk about the specs. It's available with up
to a Core Ultra X9 CPU, up to 64 gigs of
LPDDR5X memory, although you probably won't want to spring for that one in the
current climate. Up to 2 TB of storage,
and up to Wi-Fi 7. One of the most impressive things about it, though, is
of course the thermal solution. [music] ASUS says that they can do 50 watts peak
and 45 watts sustained on this processor, which for graphics intensive
workloads [music] could make a major difference to
performance. Oh, I guess we should look at ports, too. Over on the left, we've
got [music] Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, as well as a 10 GB
per second USB typeA and a 3 and 12 mm jack. And over on the right, we've got
another Thunderbolt 4 port as well as another USB typeA. Really goes to show
you they never had to take these ports away from us. This thing is so thin.
Nice big trackpad. Oh. Ooh. Not sure how
I feel about this design choice. The trackpad goes all the way to the edge.
What's cool about that is it creates [music] an easy lift spot for a one finger lift.
What's weird about it is it creates kind
of a Huh. Well,
yeah, maybe it doesn't matter. I thought maybe it would matter, but yeah, I guess
it doesn't. I guess I don't touch there. Cool idea, then. Since we're looking at
the bottom, they've got fancy fans and they draw air over multiple components
inside to keep the whole thing cool. They wanted us to [music] mention that.
Seriously though, like I'm
I don't know how to convey how impressive this is. Like here, Glenn,
can you hit the light that is reflecting off this screen right now? [music]
>> That's the light that is pointing at this screen right now. Are
you kidding me? That's it. Like,
I'm not That's not incidental. That's the one. Like if I adjust this even with
a light right behind me, even on a black
screen, that's incredible. It runs at 2880
by800. So that's a 16x10 aspect ratio up
to 120 hertz. And I already mentioned
before, but it bears mentioning again, up to,400
nits of peak [music] brightness. So
let's check out some HDR content that
Oh, that's fun. haptic trackpad. Oh, that's
really nice. So, they went and they put the motors right under the trackpad so
you get a really nice satisfying feel. Would like to see a little bit more
granularity in the touch sensitivity, but I am really liking this keyboard.
It's so funny because I actually wouldn't have noticed if the chassis
didn't feel so unique and so good, but the keys are smooth, which
just I don't know. It's fine. It just threw me for a bit of a loop.
Surprisingly good [music] travel all things considered, right? This is a
really thin device.
It's really clever. >> You can you can hear it, right? But can
you see it flexing?
>> It's pretty good. >> Wow. Anyway, it's got a lot more going
for it than just that. The Intel Core Ultra Series 3 is probably the most
important product that Intel has launched in the last few years at least.
It's competitive in terms of performance and battery life. And maybe more
importantly, it has what looks like Intel's best integrated GPU ever by far.
It's still based on Battle Mage, but it's a new generation with up to 12 XC3
cores. And uh we're about to try it out.
Let's fire up some Cyberpunk, shall we? And like look, sponsored video, have
your doubts, whatever. I don't blame you. But you can see it. This is a
normal screen at this angle. All right. This thing with just, you know, enough
performance to use for productivity on the road and even some light gaming on
the road, but also Thunderbolt 4, you could like throw a GPU on it when you're
at home. Like, have I even mentioned how many CPU cores it has? I think we've got
the Core Ultra X7 skew, right? Yeah. So,
we've got 16 cores, but you can get this with up to a Core Ultra X9, which is
also 16 cores, the one that this will ship in. That actually makes sense
because this is still a thin and light design, even if they did put a bunch of
work into the cooling system. And [music] actually, it's got a number of
different modes that it can operate in. There's whisper, balanced, and
performance mode. And truthfully, I don't know which one we're in right now. There we go. Standard mode, whisper
mode, performance mode. This is
performance mode.
Not bad, actually. And if you had told
me back when Cyberpunk came out [music] that I would be playing it looking like
this on onboard graphics on a thin and light, I'd have told you that you're
high. Like, is there a little bit of stutter? Yeah. Are we using a bit of
frame gen? Uh-huh. But if you'd told me I'd be able to do it at all, I'd have
been like, "No." If I had to guess, I'd say I'm probably getting about 24
cinematic frames per second right now. You know what? I'm still giving myself
credit here, cuz my 1% lows are anywhere from like 25 to 30. Let's have a look at
our settings, though. Ray tracing. Yeah. Okay. We could do that. Or hear me out.
Let's just not. Oh yeah, buddy. Quite a
bit smoother. And that's with frame gen. And we're running at native res, which
we do not have to do. So, hear me out. Let's drop the res down a Oh, dude. Oh,
we didn't even have HDR on before.
Dude, this looks sick, dude. Just lose a
little bit of resolution. Play around with the settings a little bit. This
OLED screen is crazy. Oh, yeah. I guess
we could listen to the speakers. Oh, and I'm dead. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.
Sorry.
Not bad. Six drivers, I think they said.
>> Not funny. >> Huh. Damn, that's pretty big sound out
of a pretty small laptop. I'd like to see how it does in a slightly lighter
game in like, you know, standard mode. Let's play some Counter-Strike 2. While
we're waiting, Asus wanted us to highlight some of the security features of this laptop, including that it meets
US NIST guidelines for resilient system firmware and recovery from BIOS level
attacks. Also, it has that fingerprint sensor and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Self- encrypting drive, storage support. Cool. It's way quieter than the standard
profile. How about whisper mode? Yeah.
So, we'll do like heavy Google Maps, you know? Hey, there's the studio. Cool
studio, bro. Yeah, whisper mode's very quiet, even when you're like doing a
little bit of stuff. Super quiet in whisper mode. Oh, this is
cool. Got a little cover for the webcam.
I like that it has a nice clear indicator. I have another laptop that
just has kind of like a matte black one, so sometimes it's hard to tell. Okay,
now we're getting into like pretty playable territory, like 60 50 FPS.
Okay. Yeah. Now I'm getting like 65 80
FPS. >> Oh, apparently we're going this way.
The directional sound is like actually kind of trippy off this thing.
What's the point of crosshairs and the bullet doesn't go where you point it?
Hate this game so much. All right, let's try the webcam. Apparently, Panther Lake
has a much better ISP than the previous generation, so that should help make
better cameras. All right, and that's the webcam and hopefully the microphone
as well. Not the best I've ever seen. Certainly
far from the worst. Here it is with a
pretty difficult backlight. And here it is with a production crew.
What's up, y'all? We don't have pricing yet, but this isn't coming out for at
least a couple more months, so there is still time to do that. And wow, is it
ever in a good place right now, considering that it's not even ready for
release yet. We even talked about like fingerprint resistance. [music]
I don't think I could put a fingerprint on this thing if I tried.
Who has super greasy, gross hands? Put a fingerprint on it. I dare you.
[snorts] And this is ShortCircuit. Subscribe.
[music] Thanks again to ASUS for sponsoring this video and to you for
watching.