ASUS has been in a launch spree lately as the company just launched laptops with the 11th Gen Intel Core processors, and the company has been expanding laptops in almost every price segment in India. On similar lines, recently, ASUS announced entry into the Commercial PC market in India with the Expert Series line up of laptops — ExpertBook P2, ExpertBook B9, ASUSPRO ExpertBookP1 series, and more. I’ve been using the ExpertBook P2 for some time now and this is the full review of the ASUS ExpertBook P2.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Box Contents |
| Design |
| Display |
| Performance |
| Software |
| Speakers |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- ASUS ExpertBook P2 laptop
- Charging cord, AC Adapter
- HDD toolkit
- Quick Start Guide
- Warranty Information
Design
Unlike ultrabooks that have launched in recent times with a sleek design and narrow bezels, the ExperBook P2 is a lot familiar to the business laptops from a few years back — thick bezels with sharp edges and plenty of I/O, which is important for a business user. The choice of materials used on this laptop makes it more durable than some other laptops in this segment. The lid is made of aluminium alloy, providing structural rigidity, and there is a Steel support Brace as well that provides additional structural support. On top of it, the ExpertBook P2 is MIL-STD 810G certified which means it has been quality-tested to handle physical impacts like drops, knocks, and spills, and exposure to extremes of altitude, temperature, and humidity. The hinge is built-well as well and allows for a full 180-degree movement.
Weighing at 1.6 kilograms (with battery), the ExpertBook P2 is not the slimmest laptop out there and owing to the plenty of I/O and a large battery, it was expected. Coming to the physical overview, to the left, you’ll find 1x DC jack, 1x RJ45 LAN port, 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2, 1x HDMI port, 1x USB Type-A port, LED indicators, and to the right, you’ll find 2x USB Type-A ports, Kensington lock, 1x VGA Port, 1x 3.5mm jack, and 1x microSD card reader. ASUS hasn’t skimped on the I/O on this laptop, which is a good thing.
Display
The ExpertBook P2 sports a 14-inch FULL HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) LED-backlit display with a 60Hz refresh rate and it is an anti-glare panel. It supports HDR video playback and has a 45% NTSC colour gamut. Although the product page of this laptop mentions “Immersive NanoEdge display”, there are noticeable thick bezels, especially on the bottom part.
Moving on, in my previous reviews of some ASUS laptops, I’ve mentioned that display quality ain’t that great, and sadly that hasn’t changed with the ExpertBook P2 as well. While the panel is fairly bright and sharp with decent colour accuracy, the viewing angles are bad. If you start tilting the display to a certain angle, you’ll notice the washed away colours, and the viewing angles are simply not good which makes the multimedia experience strictly average on this one. While this display might get the job done for most business users, in my opinion, the panel quality could have been better.
Performance
Under the hood, the ASUS Expertbook P2 is powered by the 14nm 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10210U processor (Cometlake) with 4 cores/8 threads. It is paired with 8GB 2667 MHz DDR4 RAM, 512GB SATA NVMe PCIe Gen3 SSD M.2. There are 2 RAM slots (only one of them is occupied) and you can add up to 32GB of RAM to this laptop, based on your requirement.
As for the day-to-day performance, the 10th Gen Intel Core i5 on this laptop handles tasks thrown at it with ease. Casual tasks like editing documents on Microsoft Word, Excel, browsing with multiple tabs open, playing music in the background, etc was a breeze and this laptop did not show any signs of slowness. Multitasking was smooth as well and it was a pleasure using this laptop for day-to-day tasks.
Coming to intensive tasks like gaming, video editing, etc, the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce MX110 GPU handled it quite well. While the MX110 is not the latest GPU out there, the graphics performance was better than laptops with Integrated GPU. The GPU was able to handle casual games fine, but it is not for serious gaming. You’ll notice frame drops and occasional stutters in graphic intensive games like Modern Combat 5 eSport FPS, GTA V, etc.
As for the storage, our review sample came with 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 M.2 SSD and out-0f-the box, the 512GB SSD is partitioned into OS (189GB) and Data (286GB) drives. It achieved a peak read speeds of 1785 MB/S and a peak write speeds of 963 MB/S which is impressive.
Check out the synthetic benchmark scores of this laptop below
Software
Our unit of the ExpertBook P2 came pre-installed with Windows 10 Pro and since this is a business laptop, there’s a dedicated ASUS Business Manager tool. It includes File Shredder, My Logo, Secure Guard, Secure Storage, System Backtrack and this laptop also comes with MyASUS feature that includes System Diagnosis, Battery Health Charging, Fan Profile, Splendid
Tru2Life, Function Key Lock, Wi-Fi roaming optimization, and more.
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- File Shredder – Allows you to permanently delete files and empty the Recycle Bin
- My Logo – Allows you to change the system BIOS design and logo
- Secure Guard – Device Lock and System Restriction
- Secure Storage – An encrypted virtual partition on your local drive
- System Backtrack – Helps you create a system restore point
This laptop is also available in DOS and Windows 10 Home option.
Keyboard, Trackpad, and Fingerprint Scanner
The ExpertBook P2 features a backlit chiclet keyboard with long-travel keys and features a convenient SensePoint pointing nub in the middle of the keyboard that lets you easily control the onscreen cursor. The accuracy of the keystroke was good, but the backlit is subtle which is to be noted. That said, I liked the keyboard design on the ExpertBook P2 and did not face any issue as such.
Similarly, the trackpad has dedicated left-click and right-click buttons and the buttons are responsive as well. The gestures are a hit or miss and it could be better.
Right next to the trackpad, there’s a fingerprint scanner as well with support for Windows Hello Fingerprint. The scanner is fast and accurate and works as expected.
Connectivity and Webcam
On the connectivity front, there is support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax (2×2)), RJ45 LAN and Bluetooth 5.0. During the testing, the laptop was connected to a 200Mbps Wi-Fi network and it was stable all the time. I didn’t notice any disconnection issue and it worked as expected.
Moving on to the webcam, it is an HD 720p CMOS module and comes with an integrated privacy shield that simply slides over and covers the camera. The quality of the 720p webcam is just average and should get the job done for casual video calls.
Speakers
As for the speakers, the ExpertBook P2 features built-in 2W Stereo Speakers with Digital Array Microphone and has the ASUS SonicMaster Technology. The quality of the speakers is strictly average – they are tiny and are not the loudest out there. It could have been better.
Battery Life
Backing up the ExpertBook P2 is 3 -Cell 48 Wh lithium-polymer battery and it promises to offer up to 13 hours of battery life. With my usage that involved constant browsing, accessing social media feed, editing documents, etc, I got over 6.5 hours of battery life on a single charge which is impressive. Similarly, the charging times are pretty quick too – 6% to 100% took around 1 hour and 53 minutes. Overall, battery life is impressive for a business laptop and is the highlighting feature I’d say.
Pricing and Availability
The ASUS ExpertBook P2 is priced at Rs. 58,697 onwards and comes in DOS/Windows options. It is available for purchase on Amazon.in, Flipkart, Croma.com, Croma Retail Stores, RelianceDigital.in, Reliance Digital Retail Stores, and leading Commercial PC channel partners.
Conclusion
The ASUS ExpertBook P2 packs the right set of specs and features Commercial PC. It scores high with the impressive battery life, very good build quality, smooth performance, security features, etc. However, it falls short in the display, webcam quality, trackpad which could have been better. Overall, I’d say that the ExpertBook P2 is a versatile business-oriented laptop.
Pros
- Built like a tank; MIL-STD 810G certification
- Smooth performance
- Features a dedicated GPU
- Impressive battery life
Cons
- Display quality could be better
- Sub-par speakers
- Average webcam quality