Asus ExpertBook A7 costs $1500 with a slow Wildcat Lake chip

What Notebookcheck found

Asus has launched the ExpertBook A7, a business laptop that Notebookcheck reviewed this week. The site reports that the machine costs $1500 in the configuration tested, which pairs an Intel Core 7 350 chip with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD.

The verdict is mixed. The reviewer was impressed by the hardware design but found the internal components hard to justify at that price.

A premium build with modest internals

According to Notebookcheck, the laptop's build quality stands out immediately. It has a metal unibody chassis, weighs 1.2 kilograms and has a slim base unit, giving it what the site describes as an exceptionally premium feel. The display is a 120 Hz OLED panel.

The processor, however, is where the problems begin. The Core 7 350 belongs to Intel's Wildcat Lake family, which the site says is aimed at inexpensive entry-level machines rather than costly business laptops. It has six cores: two performance cores and four efficiency cores that run at lower power. Single-core speed is described as decent, but multi-core output is barely competitive because of that limited core count.

Weak graphics and missing ports

The integrated graphics suffer from the same cost-driven choice. With only two Xe3 cores, the chip's built-in GPU ranks among the slowest integrated graphics solutions currently available, Notebookcheck reports.

Connectivity is also limited. Although the Intel platform supports Thunderbolt, Asus has fitted only USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and the review notes there is no USB 4.0. The site frames this as another area where corners have been cut.

Who should consider it

Notebookcheck's conclusion is that the ExpertBook A7 is a very attractive business laptop on the outside, but that its low performance, missing features and high price make it disappointing overall.

Buyers considering the machine should weigh whether the premium design and OLED display justify paying $1500 for hardware that, per the review, is typically found in far cheaper laptops. The full review with benchmark details is available on Notebookcheck.