ASUS ExpertBook B9 (9400CB) Review – Lightweight Professional Laptop
We wonder how far can laptop goes when it comes to the portability, especially when a laptop is actually one of the essential companion when it comes to work, travel, productivity and leisure. Whether you are in a car, bus, plane or train, weight is a concern especially lugging things with you.
Lets enter the ASUS ExpertBook B9, one of the ExpertBook lineup and focuses on thin and light category workhorse laptop that is equally powerful in processing power, but still have some of its benefits and downsides.
Who is this for?
For those who needed something slightly powerful and light to carry, still able to deliver all your heavy document authoring while still able to entertain you with a few movies and a some social media posting and still lasts you though the office hours with a long battery life usage. This laptop selling point also focuses on security features such as a much secure login and TPM features under the hood.
Design & Ports
The ExpertBook B9 is almost entirely made of Magnesium-Lithium alloy which makes it lightweight at about 880 grams while maintaining a sleek profile that is easy to carry and store it in the bag without feeling much of the heaviness, to my experience its just like carrying a tablet with me. On top of that the laptop can lay flat on table at 180 degrees, 14.4mm slimness which makes it easy to show what is on the screen with another person. While the ExpertBook B9 actually makes almost no difference than the previous B9, we think that it is still pretty much appealing to the business users with the darker color tone with shimmering starlet dots all over the laptop which is still looking and feeling smooth when touching on it. The chiclet keyboard is a comfortable one to type on and the key travel is nice with a huge touchpad-ASUS NumberPAD that makes keying in numbers ease and fast.
Other known features under the ExpertBook series includes ErgoLift hinge that automatically tilts the keyboard to the most comfortable typing position, White backlight keyboard, MIL-STD 810H US toughness certification and webcam shield that comes with infra-red for better tracking and doubles as a Windows Hello Secure Login. For those who is concern about security on login, there is also a fingerprint scanner present located on the far right near below the keyboard. Aside that the ports are quite plentiful for a thin laptop, at least there is still 1 USB type A port for connecting your compatible accessories and drives along with a HDMI port, and 2 USB C Thunderbolt port, sadly it is located populated on the left side and some over the right would be great.
Display and Audio
The display is portrayed with a slim panel that compromises of a 16:9, 1080P LED display that covers 94% of the screen to body ratio which is comfortable to view with. It also has a quite good color display and good in contrast thanks to it’s 100% sRGB that is suitable on editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The display is entirely matte so it is pretty much suitable on most places and environments.
Audio wise, the speakers are actually bottom firing, but still able to put out clear and loud audio over wood table surface which still pack some punch, but dont expect great bass or treble, however vocal is excellent hence great for audio conferences and virtual meetings with your team mates.
Performance & Benchmarks, Upgrades
The laptop is packed with decent specifications to boot, an upgraded Core i7 12th gen processor, up to 32GB of DDR5 soldered memory and available one vacant slot of NVME drive for expansion and should you need storage, each NVME slot can be expanded up to 2TB each.
Opening up the bottom of the ExpertBook B9 reveals a quite clean arrangement of serviceable parts and although the heatsink good enough for all day use, but it may not be able to handle too much of heat dissipation and may result in throttle if you are going full swing with it, that said, light editing and authoring is much suitable, and maybe some light gaming also such as Genshin may pull thru around 1 hour session with ease (with 720P resolution). If moderately used, the laptop can run on battery around 10 hours no problem.
Our synthetic benchmarks also shows an overall expected results with good multi threading performance within the thin and light class category and this reflects further on tasks such as multiple document and browser opened and switching around is effortless and snappy at all times.
Technical Specifications
| Processor | Intel Core i7-1225U Ten Core Processor with Twelve Threads |
| Graphic Card | Intel Iris XE Graphics |
| System Memory | 32GB DDR5 5200MT/s Soldered to board, non-upgradable |
| Display | 14.0-inch, FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9, Wide view, Matte display, LED Backlit, 400nits, sRGB : 100% Screen-to-body ratio:94 % |
| Primary Drive | From 512GB NVME SSD with 1 Vacant slot (NVME) |
| Ports | 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A 2x Thunderbolt™ 4 supports display / power delivery 1x HDMI 2.0b 1x micro HDMI (RJ45 lan) 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6 AC combo Bluetooth 5.x |
| Battery and Charger | 66Wh Battery with 65w USB C adaptor |
| Operating System | Windows 11 PRO |
| Weight and dimensions | 32.00 x 20.30 x 0.90 @ 0.88KG |
Verdict & Thoughts
The ASUS ExpertBook B9 (9400CB) is one of the lightweight long lasting (in terms of battery life) that we tested and ASUS did not skim on when it comes to the build and quality that is implemented, especially on the performance portion where DDR5 module is used instead of the older DDR4. But with all of the great things inside, it is definitely costs higher, but judging from the overall hardware, at least this will last you for quite some time before considering for a next change of your portable work buddy. To further add up, ASUS gives a 3 year warranty for this laptop, ensuring peace of mind when using the laptop with a reliable service centres available throughout the country. Overall my love to the laptop is the light and easy weight that still mesmerizes me as a great companion during the review.
Pricing & Availability
It is now available with a pricetag starting from RM8000 onwards and widely available on major ASUS authorized dealers and enterprise dealers.
