In 2026, after more than half a year has passed, AI applications across various fields go beyond just online large language models.
Another area that’s receiving more and more attention is the rise of what’s commonly known as “lobster farming” with OpenClaw,
where “AI localization” is being widely discussed and deployed — meaning running AI on your own personal devices.
Being able to deploy or run local models on personal computers has become increasingly important.
The development of various localized AI assistance tools is also progressing rapidly.
The reason is simple: as large language models (LLMs) become widely used,
issues of information privacy and security have started to receive widespread attention and discussion.
After all, many people may not have realized at first that casually uploading meeting minutes to services like ChatGPT to generate summaries
could put their data at risk. Especially when it involves commercial or corporate confidential information that might leak as a result.
In response, ASUS has quickly launched a brand-new Ultra series in its commercial laptop ExpertBook lineup.
The new products are powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 processors.
This new model continues the ExpertBook tradition of being designed specifically for enterprise, business needs, and professional IT, with comprehensive interfaces and high reliability.
The series integrates Intel’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU), focused on handling AI workloads,
delivering up to 50 NPU TOPS (trillion operations per second) of top-tier AI processing power,
with total platform AI performance reaching up to 180 TOPS.
This provides users with highly efficient computing and smooth information processing, comprehensively boosting productivity through AI.
The version under review features a 16:10 3K resolution anti-glare OLED touchscreen and Intel® Arc™ B390 graphics,
making it more than capable of deploying offline AI without any issues.
Come follow Fox’s footsteps and take a look at this flagship commercial laptop from the ASUS ExpertBook series.
ASUS ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA)
B9406CAA comes pre-installed with Windows 11 Pro operating system.
The CPU is the brand-new Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 processor, available in Ultra X9 / Ultra X7 / Ultra 7 / Ultra 5 options.
This series of CPUs integrates the Intel Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and supports Intel® Deep Learning Boost technology.
The X series indicates it is equipped with the Intel Arc B390 graphics chip, featuring 12 Xe3 cores.
The unit Fox is introducing today is the Intel Core™ Ultra X7 358H with 4 P-cores + 8 E-cores
16 threads at 1.90 GHz (18M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz).
It delivers 180 TOPS of total platform AI performance.
Memory configuration is LPDDR5X-8533 64GB onboard.
Storage is a 2TB M.2 2280 NVMe™ PCIe® 4.0 SSD.
On the connectivity side, it follows current mainstream design with Thunderbolt™ 4 support and PD 3.0 charging,
aligning with the EU’s push for unified charging standards across brands.
The ASUS ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA) doesn’t skimp on the display either.
It is the first to feature a 14-inch 3K tandem OLED (Tandem OLED) touchscreen with a 16:10 aspect ratio.
Designed specifically for professionals’ work needs (comparing large amounts of data, data analysis, reviewing reports, financial management),
it expands the visible area and improves work efficiency.
This makes long hours of use more comfortable for professionals.
This touchscreen can be equipped with Corning® Gorilla® Glass Victus® at the highest level and features a matte anti-glare finish that can reduce screen glare by up to 80%.
HDR peak brightness reaches up to 1,400 nits. The unique dual-layer structure design, according to official data, can increase brightness by up to three times compared to regular OLED screens while reducing power consumption by 40%.
This provides a more comfortable viewing experience for business users who need to stare at the screen for extended periods.
The graphics chip is the Intel® Arc™ B390.
The performance of the Core Ultra CPU with integrated graphics is comparable to a Core Ultra paired with a discrete RTX 4050 (low-power version).
Even without a discrete GPU, it can still handle content creation, multitasking, and mobility,
while delivering powerful total platform AI computing power.
ASUS ExpertBook Ultra also features fast charging technology.
It uses USB-C as the charging interface and supports the latest PD 3.0 PPS fast-charging chargers.
The accessories include a USB-C charger rated at 90W.
This is slightly higher than the common 65W, but it provides better performance in AC mode.
If using a non-original charger, pay special attention to whether multi-port output can still deliver 90W,
and whether the charging cable supports the PD 3.0 PPS protocol.
Only then can the laptop reach its maximum performance in AC mode.
ASUS ExpertBook Ultra adopts an entirely new exterior design for the ASUS business series.
It is available in two colors: Misty Black / Dawn Gray.
For the 14-inch models, to balance lightweight design and structural strength,
the chassis uses Nano Ceramic Technology with 9H-level scratch and stain resistance.
This all-metal 14-inch laptop starts at about 0.99 kg,
with a body thickness of just 1.09 cm, maintaining high reliability within a lightweight and sturdy design.
The product itself has passed 11 major categories totaling 24 rigorous MIL-STD 810H U.S. military durability tests,
living up to the consistent reliability of the ExpertBook product line.
These include high altitude, high temperature, low temperature, humidity, solar radiation, temperature shock, vibration, sand and dust, shock, freeze-thaw, and ship vibration tests.
And it doesn’t sacrifice any commonly used ports.
Especially the RJ-45 physical Ethernet port (implemented via interface expansion), which is very important for security management.
The camera continues the clever physical privacy shutter design.
This classic feature has almost become standard equipment on ASUS ExpertBook commercial models.
If you’re in a highly sensitive location within the company, simply closing the slider prevents the camera from being hijacked and used for spying — intuitive and reassuring.
In the new design, it is perfectly hidden within the screen glass panel, looking even more elegant.
In addition, the ASUS ExpertBook Ultra is equipped with an infrared camera that supports facial recognition,
which can be used with Windows Hello for quick unlocking of the laptop.
The keyboard features a full-size backlit keyboard with 1.5 mm key travel.
You can type accurately even in dim environments, maintaining high productivity.
In terms of specifications, the keyboard emphasizes spill-resistant design, supporting up to 66 cc.
But this is only preventive — it’s not an invitation to pour water on it.
The most important audio control shortcuts for meeting functions are specially marked,
making it easier to quickly control volume and mute in business environments or online meetings.
The newly designed glass-surface haptic feedback touchpad (Haptic Touchpad) provides the same feedback feel no matter where you click on the touchpad,
delivering an excellent touch experience.
According to official data, this touch panel’s sensitivity can be adjusted via software settings,
and the frameless design makes operation more intuitive.
In the top-right corner of the keyboard is the power button of this ExpertBook Ultra.
It integrates a biometric security feature — a fingerprint sensor — into the power button.
Just press the power button to power on and log in simultaneously, while also protecting the user’s privacy.
To prevent accidental presses, ASUS thoughtfully increased the actuation force to over 200g, differentiating the button feel from the other keys.
The ExpertBook Ultra commercial computer is equipped with ASUS ExpertGuardian
and complies with NIST SP 800-193 enterprise-level security protection standards.
It provides real-time protection from the moment the power button is pressed, effectively defending against firmware-level malicious attacks before entering the Windows system, offering commercial customers the most complete and reassuring security protection.
In Fox’s personal opinion, the best design point of this Ultra series is the redistribution of the I/O interfaces on the left and right sides.
On the left: power/charging indicator, Thunderbolt™ 4 USB-C x 1 (full-function),
USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, HDMI v2.1 (TMDS), and audio jack.
Thunderbolt™ 4 supports 40 Gbps data transfer speeds, 4K display output, and fast charging (USB PD 3.0).
Combined with the HDMI interface, it can simultaneously drive three external 4K displays — truly desktop-level capability.
(Adding the laptop screen, you can view four screens at the same time), greatly improving work efficiency!
On the right side there is another Thunderbolt™ 4 USB-C x 1 (full-function) and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A.
Basically, this time you can charge or expand from either side with complete flexibility.
You’re no longer limited to charging or connecting an I/O hub from only one side like in the past.
The cooling fan exhaust is located at the rear.
This design is extremely friendly regardless of whether the user is left- or right-handed.
AI ExpertMeet
It is integrated into the ASUS Expert Panel.
This makes it easier to call up various functions needed during meetings.
AI Meeting Recording: Captures the full meeting content, converts audio to text, and summarizes by speaker.
AI Translation Subtitles: Provides real-time translated subtitles during various online meetings, calls, or recordings, enhancing communication efficiency.
AI Audio Noise Reduction: Uses large deep-learning models to accurately identify and eliminate background noise, making voices clearer.
AI Camera: Automatically centers faces in the video frame and optimizes image quality and brightness to ensure the best appearance.
Watermark: Displays a customized business card on the screen so the other party can clearly see the information, or adds a screen watermark to protect the content.
These functions can run smoothly during online meetings thanks to the NPU core’s computing power.
Online meeting quality is significantly improved, and since the AI functions can run locally, security control is also enhanced.
Compared with previous versions, Fox personally believes the newly upgraded AI ExpertMeet Intelligent Meeting features perform even better.
In recent years, people have gradually started paying more attention to the security risks brought by large language models (LLMs).
Some terms that many people didn’t notice at first, such as uploaded information being used for AI training and recognition,
could potentially cause commercial or corporate confidential information to be exposed online by the AI.
Under these circumstances, offline AI and local AI tools are receiving more and more attention.
ASUS’s AI ExpertMeet Intelligent Meeting leverages the powerful computing capability of the ExpertBook Ultra
to easily complete offline meeting recording and summarization — a very convenient and easy-to-use tool.
As long as you have a meeting audio recording file, you can use this tool to convert it into a transcript.
Compared with the past, when conversion and multi-speaker recognition could take a long time,
many people might still feel that using an LLM for summarization is just a matter of minutes (while sacrificing company secrets).
But now, thanks to the powerful Intel computing platform, even a 30-minute recording can generate a transcript in just a few minutes,
and all of this can be done completely offline without an internet connection.
Moreover, through Intel’s highly integrated AI platform for computing resources,
it can more efficiently allocate NPU and GPU computing power.
For example, speech recognition for generating transcripts primarily uses the NPU as the main computing core,
while tasks like distinguishing different speakers or generating summaries use the GPU’s Neural units for computation.
Although typos or semantic recognition errors may still occur,
it has made significant progress compared with previous versions.
ASUS also provides a Pro version subscription.
If you encounter very complex tasks, you can subscribe to use online computing power for assistance.
Speaking of which, Fox will also take apart this ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA) for everyone to see.
This has always been Fox’s tradition — no matter what, we have to show the internal layout.
After opening the D-cover, you can see that the layout of the ASUS business series is simple and clean.
There are no large numbers of cables crossing the motherboard; the only thing crossing the board is the wireless network card antenna.
All interface cards and connector sockets are designed to be visible and replaceable at first glance.
(Don’t doubt it — there really are laptops where you have to remove the entire motherboard just to replace the RAM or SSD.)
This planning greatly improves disassembly and reassembly convenience, making it extremely friendly for IT personnel and repair technicians.
The ASUS ExpertBook commercial laptop series continues this design philosophy, demonstrating professional and user-centered thinking, which is also reflected in this flagship business machine, the ExpertBook Ultra.
According to official data,
the ASUS ExpertCool Pro advanced full-width cooling system adopts a triple exhaust design,
increasing central air pressure by 12% and actively cooling the SSD and CPU.
Even with the laptop closed, it can still release up to 50W of powerful performance in Turbo mode, maintaining stable and smooth operation.
There are structural reinforcement metal plates next to both the left and right fans.
This shows that ASUS also specifically considered strength when designing the ExpertBook.
The network card is hidden under the cooling fan and is directly onboard.
In Device Manager, you can see it uses the Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE211.
This is the successor to the Intel® Wi-Fi 7 BE200 that Fox previously unboxed. The BE200 only supported Wi-Fi 7 R1.
The main upgrade is certification for the Wi-Fi 7 R2 version, and the Bluetooth portion has also been upgraded to Bluetooth 6.0 specifications.
The SSD is a SanDisk PC SN5100S NVMe SSD.
It is a QLC 3D SSD module supporting PCIe® 4.0 x4 specifications.
Maximum sequential read speed reaches 7,300 MB/s, and maximum sequential write speed is 6,700 MB/s.
In this compact body, this is the only available slot, with no additional expansion space.
(However, at the current moment, most people probably wouldn’t rush out to buy a new SSD module for expansion anyway.)
The battery specification is a 70Wh (8,976 mAh) 4-cell lithium-polymer battery.
Paired with the high energy efficiency of the Intel® Core™ Ultra processor, it can provide users with up to 26 hours of battery life.
The most important aspect of a business laptop is whether everything runs smoothly for business purposes.
This time we only tested the relevant PCMark 10.
The scores are provided for reference.
After all, the ultimate goal of a business machine is not to chase peak high performance,
but rather to focus more on overall system reliability and stability.
Overall, Fox’s favorite ExpertBook has always been the B9 series.
And now ASUS has given this series a brand-new product name — ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA).
The CPU is manufactured using Intel’s advanced 18A process, providing an energy-efficient and high-performance chip solution.
The high-performance Core™ Ultra Series 3 architecture CPU Intel Core™ Ultra X7 358H + Arc B390
(the highest configuration can go up to the Intel® Core™ Ultra X9 processor 388H + Intel® Arc™ B390)
The NPU architecture further provides top-tier 50 NPU TOPS (trillion operations per second) of AI processing power,
and delivers up to 180 TOPS of AI processing capability across the entire platform.
It fully realizes the convenience of All-in-One for both external and internal work, and provides the foundation for smoothly running offline AI models.
In terms of durability, it has passed the more stringent “MIL-STD 810H U.S. military-grade standard tests” as well as ASUS’s internal quality tests.
It offers a more noticeable performance boost compared with competing platforms, and battery life also performs even better.
From every perspective, it is currently one of the top choices among flagship AI commercial notebooks.
Next, Fox will try to set up a local (offline) AI platform on this computer
and thoroughly squeeze out the limits of this laptop. We’ll open a new article for everyone to see at that time ~ looking forward to it.
Learn more at the official store: ASUS ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA)
