ASUS ExpertBook B5 review: a reliable business laptop with impressive battery life

ASUS ExpertBook B5 is a modern ultraportable laptop, which is focused on the corporate segment with all the features and advantages. First of all, it is a durable, reliable and lightweight case with reinforced elements in the design that meets military standards MIL-STD-810H. And the laptop keyboard has protection against water splashes. One of the most important features of business laptops is its battery life. ExpertBook B5 can easily withstand more than a working day without the need to recharge. Also to the advantages of the laptop is a very bright display with natural color reproduction. The performance of the laptop is at a high (considering the segment) level, that is, the laptop copes with any office work tasks without problems, but it is not suitable for working with heavy graphics. ASUS ExpertBook B5 has an additional DDR4 SO-DIMM slot for RAM and a slot for a second M.2 drive, as well as RAID0/1 support, so the upgrade options are wider than we are used to seeing in such portable models.

5 reasons to buy ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE):

• Reliable case with reinforced elements and a keyboard with splash protection
• Bright IPS screen with natural color reproduction
• Impressive battery life
• High performance in work tasks
• Good upgrade options, given the form factor

2 reasons not to buy ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE):

• You need a laptop for video editing or 3D modeling
• Very high price

Fast transition:

1. What's in the box?
2. What does ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE) look like and what about the design features?
3. Is the laptop comfortable to use?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What about performance, battery life and sound?
6. In the dry balance

What is in the box?

ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE) comes in an absolutely standard small mustard-colored box with a minimum of printing and a sticker with the main namesake characteristics on the side. The box contains the laptop itself, a compact 65 W power supply unit, a power cable, an adapter from micro-HDMI to RJ-45 (a feature of most ASUS corporate laptops) and documentation.

What does ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE) look like and what are the design features?

All current ASUS ExpertBooks have a restrained appearance, as it should be in the corporate segment. But the materials of ASUS ExpertBook B5 are somewhat different from the older models ExpertBook B7 and ExpertBook B9, which were almost entirely made of magnesium-aluminum alloy. In today's model, only the working surface is made of it. And the top and bottom covers are aluminum. The laptop is dark blue with a matte finish. It looks nice, but the top cover collects fingerprints a little bit, so it will be necessary to wipe it periodically. On the top lid there is the ASUS logo in the middle and a small logo of the ExpertBook line in the upper left corner. Nearby there is an LED, it signals to others that you are busy at the moment.It turns on either automatically during conference calls or can be activated by pressing Fn+1.

One of the features of the ASUS ExpertBook line of laptops is a durable reinforced design. In this case, all ports and hinges are reinforced with steel brackets and enlarged screws for additional reliability.

Considering that the ASUS ExpertBook B5 is a 13.3-inch ultraportable laptop, the number of ports is quite good. On the right side there is a Kensington Lock, full-size HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, a combined 3.5 mm audio jack and a power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner.

On the left are two Type-C Thunderbolt 4 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort support, LEDs and Micro HDMI to LAN with a fixed MAC address for easy administration in corporate networks:

At the back there are cooling system holes, two hinges and two small rubber inserts on which the laptop rests in the open position.

On the front there is a cutout traditional for ultrabooks for more comfortable lifting the lid:

The screen bezels are quite thin, although not record-breaking, with a screen-to-body ratio of 78％. The screen itself is not touch-sensitive and has an anti-reflective coating. Above it is a webcam with an LED indicator and a physical curtain, as well as microphones.

The bottom of the laptop has many holes for ventilation. At the back there is one rubber insert almost the entire width of the laptop, in front there are two more rubber legs for a secure position on the table. Closer to the front of the laptop there are stereo speakers on the sides. The bottom cover is attached with ten screws with a standard Phillips slot, so it will not be very difficult to remove it. This will make it possible to replace or add a second M.2 SSD. They can work in RAID0/1 modes. There is also one free slot for RAM. Quite good, as for such a compact model.

The dimensions of the laptop are 309x210x17 mm, and the weight is about 1.1 kg, so carrying it with you every day does not cause any problems. It will fit in any backpack or bag. Materials, build quality is very high. Lids and work surface do not bend. In addition to reinforced connectors and hinges, the laptop meets the requirements of the American military standard MIL-STD-810H and passes additional ASUS tests. Details about the testing methodology of the entire ExpertBook line can be found here.

Is the laptop comfortable to use?

ASUS ExpertBook B5 is equipped with ErgoLift hinges, already familiar to ASUS laptops, thanks to which part of the working surface near the display unit is slightly raised. Thanks to this, the keyboard is located at a small, more convenient angle for the user. And for the cooling system there is more space for cold air intake. The maximum laptop can be opened 180°, perhaps in some non-standard situations it will be useful. ASUS ExpertBook B5 can be easily opened with one hand, and the display unit is quite securely fixed in the desired position. Although it can shake a little if you accidentally touch it with your hand.

The keyboard dimensions and layout are absolutely standard for ultraportable models: without an additional numeric block, with reduced arrows and a number of function keys, which ends with the Delete key (not with the power button, as it happens in some models). Home, End, PgUp and PgDn are duplicated with arrows through Fn. Both Shift are long, Enter is "one-story". So in general, it will take a minimum of time to get used to.

The keys are quite large and have a full stroke of 1.5 mm, so it is very convenient to use the keyboard. There is also spill protection, the keyboard is able to withstand up to 66 cm3 of liquid. There is a white LED backlight, all characters are well illuminated. There is only one brightness level, but it is enough. It is quite comfortable, does not blind in the dark.

The touchpad has good sensitivity and pleasant coating and in general it is quite enough when working with documents. Although I would like its physical dimensions to be a bit bigger. The touchpad is combined with the NumberPad 2.0 touch digital unit. It is activated by a touch button in the upper right corner. And the button on the left is responsible for the brightness of the characters (pressing) and launching the calculator (swipe in any direction from the button).

How good is the screen?

In Ukraine, ASUS ExpertBook B5 will be available with two display options. In each version it is a 13.3-inch IPS display with the usual 16:9 aspect ratio and FullHD resolution (1920:1080). They promise 100% coverage of the sRGB color space and Pantone certification. The only difference is the maximum brightness: 300 or 470 cd/m². We got a brighter version for review. The screen has a matte anti-reflective coating, so the laptop is quite comfortable to use on the street. The viewing angle is maximum, and the color display is quite natural. Hardware measurement showed that the maximum brightness really almost reaches the declared indicator: 453.828 cd/m², black field brightness - 0.383 cd/m², and static contrast ratio - 1185:1. The color gamut of the screen really almost coincides with sRGB, the calibration is very good: the color temperature and RGB components are close to the reference values:

What about performance, battery life and sound?

The ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE) laptop meets the certification requirements of the Intel Evo program. In short, these requirements includeat least 9 hours of battery life, fast charging support, display resolution not lower than FullHD, Wi-Fi 6 support and Thunderbolt 4 .ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE) has 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake Core i5 and i7 processors. Our configuration uses the already familiar Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor. This is a quad-core eight-thread 10nm SuperFin processor with a base frequency of 1.2 to 2.8 GHz depending on TDP. In Turbo Boost mode, the frequency can reach 4.7 GHz. TDP is up to 28 watts. Built-in graphics accelerator - Intel Iris Xe, has 96 executive units, the maximum frequency can reach 1300 MHz. There is no discrete graphics, which is obvious, given the class of the laptop. RAM - 16 GB DDR4-3200 MHz is soldered on the board. There is one free SO-DIMM slot for RAM, in total up to 48 GB is supported. Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (Wi-Fi 6) and Bluetooth 5.0.

In synthetic tests, ASUS ExpertBook B5 demonstrates the results expected for such a system: quite high in processor tests and mediocre in graphics tests. The laptop is designed for office tasks and it copes with them very well, as well as with photo and video editing at the basic level. Of course, we are not talking about serious editing or 3D modeling.

In our variant of ASUS ExpertBook B5 there is one PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe v1.4 SSD Samsung PM991 with 512 GB installed. This is not the fastest model. The declared maximum read speed is up to 2200 MB/s and write speed is up to 1200 MB/s. What is absolutely not critical for the business model. You can easily replace it or add another one and combine them into a RAID 0 or 1 array.

SSD speeds are slightly higher than stated. Reading - about 2300 MB/s and writing - 1400 MB/s:

The cooling system in ASUS ExpertBook B5 is without any design features. It includes a radiator, a heat pipe and one fan. But it turned out to be surprisingly effective, although this is also due to the energy-efficient processor. In the AIDA64 stress test during the maximum load from the very beginning the components heat up to about 90° and the processor loses performance. In about a minute the cooling system adapts to the load, the system operates with maximum efficiency, and the temperature of components stays around 60°. In office applications the cooling system is not audible. Under load, the noise is minimal. The case above the keyboard becomes only a little warm.

Of course, corporate notebooks are almost never used for games, but in case someone has such an idea. Not the latest games are quite playable. At minimum-medium settings in DOOM 2016, Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition, Spec Ops The Line you can get quite stable 30 FPS.

ASUS ExpertBook B5 is equipped with a four-cell 66W*h battery, ASUS promises up to 14 hours of battery life. A full charge from the bundled 65W power supply takes about 2 hours and 30 minutes. As expected, the laptop turned out to be very durable. It can work without recharging for more than a working day, so you can not take the power supply with you to the office at all. In more detail, the usage scenario is approximately the following: brightness a little below 50%, a browser with a bunch of tabs, instant messengers, periodic use of Photoshop for cutting photos and streaming audio in headphones. In this mode, the laptop lasted about 11 hours, which is impressive.

Multimedia capabilities are not the strongest point of the laptop: stereo speakers do not impress either with volume or quality. But it is quite enough to watch an episode of your favorite TV series or a video on YouTube. There is a separate Dolby application for tuning.

The set of proprietary software consists of several applications. The main one is MyASUS, which is used in all laptops of the company. It has the standard functionality for such applications: system monitoring, switching of performance and charging modes, system update, setting of the functional key row, AI-noise reduction.

ASUS Business Manager is one of the more profile applications for the business segment. It is designed to configure corporate security tools. Blocking from changes of BIOS, registry, USB interface, creating an encrypted partition for corporate data and File Shredder for final deletion of selected files.

In the ASUS ExpertWidget application you can configure actions or functions on the combination of Fn+1, 2, 3, 4. These can be standard turning on and off wireless interfaces or changing the performance mode, as well as launching programs.

To summarize. Three things you need to know about ASUS ExpertBook B5 (B5302CE).

• ASUS ExpertBook B5 is a compact, lightweight and reliable laptop with a reinforced design and keyboard protection against water splashes.
• The laptop configuration perfectly copes with office tasks, there are some upgrade options.
• One charge is enough for more than a whole working day.

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