ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400) review – surprisingly good performance from one of the lightest laptops out there

No more budget offerings. ASUS is now going head-on for the top dogs in the business world. This means that devices like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the Latitude 14 9420 are being threatened. What is the name of that threat? ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400). Not only is it a premium device, but the manufacturer goes as far as stating that it is the lightest 14-inch business laptop on the market right now. Depending on the configuration, the device can stop the scales at just 880 grams.

Speaking of configurations, the machine can be equipped with up to the Core i7-1185G7, and 32GB of LPDDR4x memory. Well, there is more than meets the eye, for sure, so we will explain all of the available features in this review.

One of these features is the 1080p IPS display. Its bezels are extremely thin, with the bottom one being virtually nonexistent when the laptop is in an open position. A huge contribution to that has the ErgoLift mechanism, but again – we’re going to talk more about that later on.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-expertbook-b9-b9400/

Contents


Specs Sheet

ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400) - Specs

  • AUO B140HAN06.B (AUOA48F)
  • Color accuracy  2.0  0.8
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • M.2 Slot
  • 2x 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 RAID  See photo
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 Home, Windows 10 Home
  • Battery
  • 66Wh, 4-cell, 33Wh, 2-cell
  • Body material
  • Magnesium-Lithium alloy
  • Dimensions
  • 320 x 203 x 0.9 ~ 14.9 mm (12.60" x 7.99" x 0.04")
  • Weight
  • 0.88 kg (1.9 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.0b
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • optional
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Array Microphone
  • Speakers
  • Harman Kardon Audio System
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, you will find the mandatory paperwork, as well as a 65W USB Type-C charger. Interestingly, the charger box can be used as a laptop stand, as you can see in the image below. Some optional accessories include a sleeve, an ASUS Mini Dock, and a Micro HDMI to RJ-45 adapter.


Design and construction

One question quickly arises once we take the ExpertBook B9 in hand. How did the company manage to secure MIL-STD-810H certification with a chassis that is 14.9mm thin, and weighs less than a kilo? Well, the secret is in the material – magnesium-lithium alloy. A thin sheet of this alloy provides enough structural strength and has a very little toll on the overall weight of the product. With that said, the lid seems to be pretty bendy, which may be good for force absorption upon impact, but definitely feels a bit weird. However, the base is pretty resistant to flexes.

Ultimately, this laptop’s lid can be opened with one hand. This is a solid effort from the engineering team of ASUS. And while it is open, you can see the matte display, surrounded by very thin bezels. Practically, the bottom one becomes non-existent, because of the ErgoLift mechanism, that lifts the backside of the base from the ground. As a result, you get slightly better ergonomics when typing, while the cooling fan gets more fresh air to breathe.

Interestingly, the top bezel houses a 720p Web camera with a privacy shutter, and an IR face recognition sensor, which enables Windows Hello authentication. Furthermore, the device has a proximity sensor, that locks/unlocks the device when it detects your presence.

Another biometric authentication option here is the fingerprint reader. it is located to the right bottom corner of the keyboard. Speaking of which, you get a backlight, a decent key travel, and clicky feedback. Also, the unit is spill-resistant, which is great for the clumsier of us. Something that we don’t particularly like here is the size of the Arrow keys.

Moving to the touchpad, we see a pretty wide unit, that offers a smooth gliding experience, as well as accurate tracking. If you look closely, you can see that the top two corners have icons printed in them. On the right, there is the NumberPad function key, while the other is a Calculator app shortcut.

Turn the laptop upside down, and you will see the two speaker grills, hiding a couple of Harman/Kardon-tuned runners. In addition to that, there is a ventilation grill for air intake, while air exhaust happens through a vent on the back. Essentially, it fires the hot air directly towards the bottom of the screen.

Ports

On the left side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.0b connector, and something we haven’t seen for a long time – a micro HDMI connector, that extends to a LAN port. This leaves the right side for the Kensington lock slot, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, and an audio jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

To take this laptop apart, you need to undo 11 Torx-head screws. After that, just pry the bottom panel, starting from the front.

Inside, you will see the larger 66Wh battery pack. If you need to take it away, first, remove the connector from the motherboard. Then, undo the four Phillips-head screws that hold it to the chassis.

When it comes to memory, you can choose from 8, 16, or 32GB of soldered LPDDR4x RAM. Although you won’t be able to upgrade it down the line, it is good to know that it runs in quad-channel mode. Storage-wise, there are two M.2 PCIe x4 slots, which support RAID.

As for the cooling, here we see a rather thick heat pipe, connected to a heat sink, and a fan of medium size.


Display quality

ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)’s display has a Full HD IPS panel, model number AUO B140HAN06.B (AUOA48F). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 55 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

It has comfortable viewing angles. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 343 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 330 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1580:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 99% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display can reproduce dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 38 ms

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

The light coming from ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)’s backlight does not flicker. This makes it comfortable for use during long periods, without harming your eyes in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400) configurations with 14.0″ AUO B140HAN06.B (AUOA48F) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)’s Harman Kardon speakers produce a very good quality sound. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Work/ExpertBook/ExpertBook-B9-B9400/HelpDesk_Download/?model2Name=ExpertBook-B9-B9400

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This laptop’s 66Wh battery delivers 16 hours and 54 minutes of Web browsing, or 13 hours and 20 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.


CPU options

This laptop can be paired with a Core i5-1135G7, Core i5-1145G7, Core i7-1165G7, or Core i7-1185G7.


GPU options

Even though there is quite a roster of CPU options, the choice of graphics card falls down to the processor your laptop comes equipped with. This means you are “stuck” with the Iris Xe Graphics G7 with either 80 or 96 EUs.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS204 fps154 fps84 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS146 fps96 fps74 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-1185G7 (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)3.51 GHz @ 96°C @ 41W3.09 GHz @ 96°C @ 31W3.05 GHz @ 93°C @ 28W
Dell Latitude 13 73203.65 GHz @ 98°C @ 48W3.35 GHz @ 98°C @ 39W2.63 GHz @ 79°C @ 23W
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th Gen3.53 GHz @ 96°C @ 44W3.23 GHz @ 96°C @ 36W2.78 GHz @ 91°C @ 26W
Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 23.67 GHz @ 100°C @ 48W3.36 GHz @ 100°C @ 39W2.54 GHz @ 74°C @ 20W
Fujitsu LifeBook U9311X3.08 GHz @ 98°C @ 35W2.75 GHz @ 97°C @ 27W2.26 GHz @ 82°C @ 18W
MSI Summit E15 (A11x)3.32 GHz @ 94°C @ 38W3.19 GHz @ 95°C @ 36W3.05 GHz @ 95°C @ 33W
Dell Latitude 14 74203.66 GHz @ 98°C @ 47W3.04 GHz @ 97°C @ 30W2.17 GHz @ 76°C @ 16W
MSI Prestige 14 (A11Sx)3.80 GHz @ 94°C @ 53W3.48 GHz @ 95°C @ 42W3.22 GHz @ 91°C @ 35W
Lenovo Yoga 9i (14)3.08 GHz @ 92°C @ 42W3.14 GHz @ 96°C @ 34W2.28 GHz @ 76°C @ 19W

Surprisingly, this 14.9mm thick, less than a kilo light notebook, manages to maintain a frequency of 3.05 GHz for long periods of time.

Comfort during full load

Indeed, this means that the fan spins as fast as possible, which results in some noise. And while the hotspot on the keyboard is not that high, we find it worrying that the heat coming out of the device is concentrated in the top right portion of the screen.


Verdict

You know, premium business notebooks are not a rarity these days. Pretty much every manufacturer out there has at least one offering in this segment. However, it is pretty hard to nail it. Well, ASUS is pretty close to doing it with its ExpertBook B9 (B9400). It is absolutely packed with features, spanning from the software-enhanced noise cancellation, located in the easy-to-use MyASUS app. From there, you can pick between three performance presets, delivering either the best out of the hardware or a completely silent operation.

Another surprisingly good factor that may tilt the scales in favor of this device is the I/O. It includes two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, an HDMI 2.0b port, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, and a micro HDMI connector, for LAN port expansion. Utterly amazing, considering the 14.9mm profile of the device, or its sub-kilo weight.

Oh yes, this brings us to ASUS’ claims that this is the lightest business 14-incher out there. Well, it is true if you find yourself a version, equipped with the smaller 33Wh battery. In fact, we are pretty positive, that the brand has actually developed such an option just for bragging purposes. Nevertheless, the larger 66Wh battery will bring the weight of the laptop from 880 grams up to 1010 grams, but as a result, you get fantastic screen-on times. You will be able to browse the Web for nearly 17 hours while watching videos will drain the juice for a bit over 13 hours.

ASUS ExpertBook B9 (B9400)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a very good contrast ratio. Thankfully, it covers 99% of the sRGB color gamut. With the help of our Gaming and Web design profile, the color accuracy becomes standard-matching, which will let online presenters, designers, and more use the laptop in a professional manner. What is even better, is that it doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment, making it comfortable and safe in this aspect.

One unfortunate, yet inevitable setback would be the lack of memory expansion. We say inevitable because most of the thin and light notebooks out there just bail out of offering a SODIMM slot or two. Thankfully, you can rely on a quad-channel setup with up to 32GB of LPDDR4x RAM in total. Plus, the storage options make up for the lack of memory upgrades, with two M.2 PCIe x4 slots. And you know what? They support RAID as well!

At the end of the day, ASUS has made a huge claim with this laptop. It has the performance, looks, and structural integrity to beat many premium laptops on the market. In fact, we think that the reason to pick another device, like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th Gen, would be down only to personal preference.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-expertbook-b9-b9400/

Pros

  • Up to 13 hours of Web browsing on a single charge
  • Great input devices
  • 99% sRGB coverage and accurate color representation with our profile
  • Noise cancellation
  • 2x M.2 PCIe x4 + RAID support
  • Two Thunderbolt 4 connectors (both can be used for charging)
  • IR face recognition, fingerprint reader, and proximity sensor
  • Quad-channel memory
  • No PWM


Cons

  • Lacks an SD card reader
  • Memory is soldered to the motherboard

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