Asus ExpertBook A7 laptop review, Digi Mart USA News: Notebookcheck has published a review of the new Asus ExpertBook A7, a business laptop with a slim silver or black metal unibody chassis that the reviewer says looks and feels premium, with no criticism of build quality or stability. The review unit, in silver, does not attract fingerprints, and the hinges open up to 135 degrees.
The laptop’s display is a matte 120 Hz OLED panel, but the reviewer found image quality to be a problem. The whole image looked extremely grainy, and the reviewer could not get a clear view of the subpixel array.
According to the review, SDR brightness of about 500 nits and a high contrast ratio were good, but HDR peak brightness reached only 550 nits, meaning there is little real HDR effect. Colour accuracy in the P3 colour space was described as excellent out of the box, though there is no sRGB profile.
PWM flickering was detected at 960 Hz at brightness settings of 90 percent and below, which the reviewer says is high enough that most sensitive users should not notice it.
Performance is a weak point. The review unit uses an Intel Wildcat Lake Core 7 350 with six CPU cores.
Single-core performance was described as reasonable compared with Intel and AMD rivals, but multi-core performance was low, making heavy multitasking difficult, and multi-core results on battery were about 35 percent lower. The integrated graphics, with two Xe3 cores, were described as among the slowest currently available, handling typical tasks and 4K video playback but making gaming hardly possible.
The cheaper base model with a Core 5 320 and 8 or 12 GB of RAM, depending on region, was not recommended by the reviewer because of memory bandwidth and app compatibility concerns.
Connectivity includes USB-C and USB-A ports, but the reviewer noted there is no USB 4.0 or Thunderbolt 4 support, and no Wi-Fi 7, although the Wi-Fi 6E module delivered good transfer rates. The 1080p webcam was described as adequate but not impressive.
The keyboard is backlit and precise, but its 1.0 mm key travel was described as shallow and significantly weaker than the typing experience on the ExpertBook Ultra. The haptic touchpad was praised as working very well.
Battery life was described as okay, with almost 16 hours in the reviewer’s Wi-Fi test at 150 nits and about nine hours at full brightness. The fans were noted as quiet overall but spinning up quickly with a slightly high pitch, reaching up to 38 dB(A) in Performance mode.
The reviewer’s test unit, priced at $1,399 and available directly from Asus, was described as expensive for these specifications, with a price above 1,600 euros noted in the review.
