ASUS ExpertBook P5 14" P5405 Misty Gray 2024

The ASUS ExpertBook P5 P5405 is a featherlight business laptop with a gorgeous 14" 144Hz display, all-day battery, and a durable build. Its Core Ultra 5 CPU and integrated graphics handle office tasks effortlessly but stumble beyond that. Priced between $980 and $1,200, it's a sweet deal for mobile professionals who prioritize portability and screen quality. If gaming or heavy content creation is your jam, keep scrolling.

The ASUS ExpertBook P5 P5405 is a business laptop that tries to do a lot with a little. It's incredibly light at 1.27kg, yet still manages to squeeze in a gorgeous 14-inch display and a battery rated for an eye-popping 28 hours. ASUS is pitching this as an AI-powered productivity machine for professionals who need something durable and easy to carry. And honestly, for that crowd, it makes a lot of sense.

We're looking at an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V chip here, paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and integrated Arc graphics. Those aren't barn-burning specs, and our benchmarks place the CPU and GPU right around the middle of the pack. But the screen is a different story. That 2560x1600 panel with a 144Hz refresh rate and full sRGB coverage sits up near the top of our database, only bested by a handful of more expensive machines. If you spend all day staring at spreadsheets or editing documents, your eyes will thank you.

What really makes this ExpertBook interesting is the combination of that display, the ultra-light body, and the promise of all-day battery life, all wrapped in a chassis that meets military durability standards. It's built for the road warrior who would rather not lug around a charger. Just don't expect it to replace a workstation or gaming laptop. We'll dig into where it shines and where it falls short.

Under the hood, the Core Ultra 5 226V delivers exactly what you'd expect from an efficient 8-core chip: snappy response in Office apps, smooth web browsing with dozens of tabs, and enough muscle for light photo editing. In our database, its CPU score lands a bit above average, which means it'll handle most business tasks without breaking a sweat. But throw something heavy at it like a 4K video export or a large compile job, and you'll feel the lack of high-performance cores. The integrated Intel Arc 130V GPU is similarly mid-tier. It can drive that sharp display effortlessly for 2D work and even handle some older games, but modern titles will chug. Our GPU ranking puts it well ahead of the basic Intel UHD of yesteryear, but still miles behind any discrete chip.

Where this laptop truly impresses is the screen. 2560x1600 resolution on a 14-inch panel means everything is tack-sharp, and the 144Hz refresh makes scrolling and window animations buttery smooth. It's a standout feature in this price bracket, putting even some pricier ultrabooks to shame. With 400 nits of brightness and 100% sRGB coverage, it's also bright enough for most indoor environments and color-accurate enough for design work, though serious creators will still want a calibrated external monitor. The thermal design keeps things cool under typical loads, though ASUS's "ExpertCool" marketing is a bit much; it's a well-ventilated laptop, nothing ground-breaking.

The ExpertBook P5 P5405 floats in a $980 to $1,200 price window depending on the retailer. At the low end, it's a compelling deal for a 14-inch laptop with this kind of screen and build quality. You'd be hard-pressed to find a new machine under $1,000 that matches its display and portability. At $1,200, it's still reasonable but faces stiffer competition from laptops that might trade the high-refresh screen for a faster CPU or more storage. If you're shopping around, it's worth hunting for the $980 listing; that's where the value is hardest to beat.

For mobile professionals who live in Outlook, Teams, and PowerPoint, the ASUS easily justifies its cost. It's not the cheapest business laptop out there, but the combination of a top-notch panel, military-grade durability, and a featherlight chassis feels premium without the premium price tag you'd see from Apple or certain ThinkPad lines. And AI features like noise-canceling and meeting transcription, while not something we could benchmark, could be genuinely useful if you spend half your day in video calls.

The closest competitor is probably the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, which also targets pros with a thin design and similar specs. The Galaxy Book often comes with an OLED screen, which might have better contrast, but the ASUS counters with a faster 144Hz refresh rate and likely better battery life given the efficient IPS panel. The MSI Prestige series is another rival; some models offer more powerful CPUs, but they tend to be heavier. Then there's the elephant in the room: the Apple MacBook Pro M5 Pro. That machine will crush the ASUS in raw performance and battery, but it starts at almost twice the price and is noticeably heavier. If you're tied to Windows or need that featherweight carry, the ASUS holds its own.

Gamers and power users should look elsewhere, for sure. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 is a different beast entirely, a desktop replacement that laughs at the ExpertBook's benchmark scores, but it's a brick by comparison. The HP ZBook Ultra G1a is a mobile workstation with far more GPU muscle for CAD and rendering, but again, you're sacrificing portability and paying significantly more. The ASUS carves out a nice niche: it's for the business traveler who prioritizes screen quality and lightness over raw number-crunching.

The ExpertBook P5 is not for gamers, 3D artists, or video editors. The integrated GPU simply can't keep up with demanding graphical tasks, and the CPU, while efficient, isn't a powerhouse. If you need to render animations or compile large codebases, you'll want a laptop with a dedicated GPU and more processing cores, like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i or a MacBook Pro. Also, if you're someone who needs tons of local storage and RAM flexibility, this isn't ideal. The soldered 16GB and non-expandable 512GB SSD may feel limiting as your file library grows. Consider a workstation-class machine or a laptop with user-accessible upgrade slots. Finally, if a number pad is essential for your daily work, the 14-inch ExpertBook doesn't have one, so you'd be better served by a 15.6-inch business model.

If your daily routine involves jumping between meetings, crunching numbers in Excel, and answering emails from airport lounges, the ASUS ExpertBook P5 P5405 is one of the best companions you can buy. The display alone will make long work sessions less fatiguing, and you'll barely notice it in your bag. Battery life is genuinely long enough to leave the charger at home on most days. For this audience, it's a strong buy, especially if you can find it near the lower end of its price range.

However, if your workflow includes any amount of serious gaming, video editing, or 3D modeling, this laptop will frustrate you quickly. The integrated graphics are simply not built for that, and our gaming score of 19.7 out of 100 says it all. Students or creators who need a bit more horsepower should consider a laptop with a discrete GPU, like the Lenovo Legion line, or step up to a MacBook Pro if your budget allows. The ExpertBook is a specialist, and what it specializes in, it does very well. Just be sure its specialty matches your workload.