ASUS ExpertBook A7 (14″ Intel) Review: Good Laptop, Tough Sell

The ASUS ExpertBook A7 is a neat little laptop. It’s slim, lightweight, beautifully put together, and has a premium feel you’d expect at this price. It also has a gorgeous 14” OLED display, a polished aluminium chassis, and a decent assortment of features that make it suitable for both business and everyday use. There is a lot to like about this laptop, but one thing makes it hard to recommend: its price.

At AED 7,599, the ExpertBook A7 is an expensive proposition, especially considering the hardware inside. Our review unit comes equipped with Intel’s Core 7 350 processor, based on its new Wildcat Lake architecture, alongside 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Despite the Core 7 branding, this is essentially a mid-range processor designed for light productivity workloads and power efficiency, rather than demanding tasks. It’s a sensible configuration for a business laptop, but at this price, I would have expected a little more.

To put things into perspective, Apple’s 15” MacBook Air M5, with the same 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, now costs AED 6,299. That’s AED 1,300 less for a larger display and considerably more processing power.

Of course, the ExpertBook A7 does have a few advantages of its own, including a beautiful OLED display, more connectivity options, and a selection of business-oriented features. And if you prefer Windows over macOS, the comparison to the MacBook might not matter much anyway. Still, at AED 7,599, I struggle to see why someone would choose this over other premium ultrabooks.

Specifications

How Good Are the ExpertBook A7’s Design and OLED Display?

ASUS has done a fine job with the overall design and build quality of the ExpertBook A7. It’s a clean, minimalist-looking laptop with a CNC-machined aluminium unibody that feels sturdy and premium to the touch. Our review unit came in Lunar Silver, although an Eclipse Black option is also available. Nothing particularly unique about the design (besides being a little MacBook-esque), but the fit and finish are excellent, and I quite like the understated aesthetics ASUS has gone for.

However, I sorely miss one thing from the ExpertBook Ultra I reviewed earlier this year: the gorgeous ceramic coating. The Ultra’s ceramic-coated finish had a unique texture that felt like a combination of matte and fine sandpaper. It was slightly grippy, resisted fingerprints and smudges remarkably well, and just felt fantastic in the hands. The ExpertBook A7, being a lower-tier model, doesn’t get the same treatment and instead uses a more conventional aluminium finish. It’s still very well made, but I would have loved to see that ceramic make its way here, especially considering the price.

Weighing just 1.2kg and measuring around 10-11.8mm in thickness, the ExpertBook A7 is incredibly portable. It’s easy to carry around, doesn’t take up much space in a bag, and feels surprisingly light. The overall construction is solid, too, with no noticeable flex or creaking from the chassis. The edges are a little sharp, but they haven’t bothered me during regular use, so I wouldn’t consider them much of an issue.

The hinge is also excellent. It opens smoothly with a single finger and keeps the display firmly in place without wobbling around. This is an improvement over the more expensive ExpertBook Ultra, which had an annoyingly loose hinge that made the display move with even the slightest adjustment.

As for connectivity, ASUS has squeezed in a decent selection of ports despite the laptop’s slim profile. You get two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports that support charging and display output, one USB-A 3.2 port, a full-sized HDMI port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. That’s more than enough for everyday use, and the HDMI port is a welcome addition for business professionals who regularly connect their laptops to projectors or external displays during meetings.

Coming to the display, the ExpertBook A7 features a 14” OLED panel with a resolution of 2880×1800, a 120Hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 colour coverage, and 500 nits of brightness. It also supports DisplayHDR True Black 600, which should give you a good indication of the quality of this panel.

And yes, it looks fantastic. The colours are vibrant without being oversaturated, the picture is sharp, and the deep, inky blacks that OLED displays are known for are all present and accounted for. Whether you are browsing websites, working on documents, or watching movies, the display is a pleasure to look at. The 120Hz refresh rate also makes Windows navigation and animations feel smooth.

The display also has a matte anti-glare coating. Most OLED laptops use glossy panels, which look great but can become annoying under bright lighting. The matte finish on the ExpertBook A7 does an excellent job of reducing reflections without taking away much of the OLED panel’s richness and contrast. The blacks remain deep, and the colours retain their punch, unless you shine a particularly bright light directly onto the screen (like a window), in which case the coating does affect the contrast. But under normal conditions, I think this is an excellent implementation.

Brightness is plenty, too, and I had no trouble using the laptop in a well-lit room. Viewing angles are excellent, as expected from an OLED display, and I didn’t notice any graininess or text clarity issues that can sometimes plague matte-coated panels.

The speakers are reasonably good, too. There isn’t much bass, so the audio can sound a little hollow, but there is plenty of volume and clarity. Dialogue comes through clearly, and the overall sound is pleasant enough for YouTube videos, movies, or even music. I quite like them, and for a laptop this thin, I don’t think there’s much to complain about.

Being a business-focused laptop, the ExpertBook A7 also comes with a few security and productivity features, including Windows Hello facial recognition and a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button. There’s also the ASUS MyExpert suite, which brings together several AI-assisted productivity tools for meetings, file searches and other everyday tasks.

How Are the ExpertBook A7’s Keyboard, Trackpad and Webcam?

I have mixed feelings about the keyboard on the ExpertBook A7. On one hand, it’s quite comfortable to type on, with a nice, muted poppy sound that I find rather pleasing. But on the other hand, the shallow 1.1mm key travel does take some getting used to, and I am still not entirely convinced by it.

The problem with the shallow travel is that there isn’t enough tactile feedback to give you the confidence that you have actually pressed a key. It feels a little too light under the fingers, especially if you are used to keyboards with deeper key travel. But strangely enough, that also works in its favour. Because the keys require so little movement, you can fly over words and type remarkably fast without feeling bogged down. I also didn’t experience any finger fatigue, even after extended typing sessions, which is certainly a plus.

However, the keyboard throws another curveball with its spacing. The gaps between the keys are just a little too wide for my muscle memory, and I often found myself reaching for certain keys or making typos because my fingers weren’t landing where I expected. It also made me less confident about what I had typed without looking down at the keyboard to make sure. Of course, you will eventually get used to it, but it does make the initial typing experience a little frustrating. Otherwise, the layout is fine, and the white backlighting is evenly distributed with no visibility issues to complain about.

The trackpad is another area where I have slightly mixed feelings. ASUS has equipped the ExpertBook A7 with a massive glass haptic trackpad that feels smooth and pleasant under the fingers. I am a big advocate of haptic trackpads, and frankly, I think all laptops should have them by now. Being able to click anywhere on the surface without having to rely on a mechanical diving-board mechanism is simply a much better way of interacting with a laptop.

But as much as I like the implementation, the tracking accuracy isn’t quite where I would like it to be. There is a slight looseness to the cursor movement that prevents it from feeling completely 1:1 with your fingers, something MacBooks excel at. It’s hard to explain until you have used both, but on a MacBook, the cursor feels almost directly attached to your fingertip, responding precisely to even the smallest movements. The ExpertBook A7 doesn’t quite achieve that same level of accuracy.

That’s not to say the trackpad is bad. Far from it. For general browsing, navigating Windows, and performing gestures, it works perfectly fine, and I didn’t experience any accidental taps or issues with its large surface area. The haptic clicks also feel nice and natural. But when you need more precise movements, it feels like the cursor isn’t always following your finger as accurately as it should. At times, I wanted to connect a mouse to get things done a little faster.

As for the webcam, the ExpertBook A7 comes equipped with a 2MP Full HD camera with IR support for Windows Hello facial recognition. Unfortunately, the image quality is average at best. While the picture is reasonably clear, it has considerable haziness, compression, and graininess, even in a well-lit room. Fine details are noticeably smudged, and the overall image lacks the crispness you would expect from a premium business laptop.

Will it do for a video call? Of course. It’s perfectly serviceable for everyday meetings and conferences, but don’t expect anything particularly impressive. It also lacks a physical privacy shutter, which I would have liked on a business-focused laptop, especially at this price.

How Does the Core 7 350 Perform in the ExpertBook A7?

The ASUS ExpertBook A7 is powered by Intel’s Core 7 350 processor, based on the company’s Wildcat Lake architecture. It’s a six-core, six-thread processor with two Performance cores and four Low Power Efficiency cores, designed primarily for thin and lightweight laptops where power efficiency takes precedence over raw performance. Our review unit also comes equipped with 16GB LPDDR5X memory, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and integrated Intel Graphics with two Xe3 cores.

In practice, this is a relatively modest processor, especially compared to Intel’s more powerful Panther Lake chips. But for the sort of work the ExpertBook A7 is designed for, it has enough horsepower to get things done without much fuss.

In my regular use, the laptop felt smooth and responsive throughout. Applications loaded as quickly as I expected, browsing with numerous tabs open was perfectly fine, and even image editing didn’t cause noticeable slowdowns. I didn’t encounter any stuttering or hesitation when switching between applications, and performance remained consistent whether the laptop was plugged in or running on battery.

The benchmark results give us a better idea of where the Core 7 350 stands. In Geekbench 7, the ExpertBook A7 scored 2,231 points in Single Core and 7,489 points in Multi-Core, while the integrated Intel Graphics managed 12,415 points in the GPU test. Geekbench AI returned a score of 4,676 using the ONNX CPU backend.

Compared to the cheaper Core 5 320 in the Acer Swift Air 14, the ExpertBook A7 delivers about 26% higher multi-core performance, although GPU performance is nearly identical, with only a 5% difference. The Snapdragon X in the Zenbook 14, meanwhile, comfortably outperforms the ExpertBook A7 in multi-core processing, scoring 11,304 points compared to 7,489, despite the Zenbook being a considerably cheaper laptop.

And then there’s the Apple M5. In our MacBook Air M5 review, the processor managed 4,155 points in Single-Core and 16,928 points in Multi-Core, substantially higher scores than what we see here. However, those results were recorded using Geekbench 6 rather than Geekbench 7, so the scores aren’t directly comparable. Nevertheless, the M5 is in an altogether different performance class, which makes the ExpertBook A7’s AED 7,599 asking price even harder to justify.

Moving over to PCMark 10, the ExpertBook A7 scored 6,480 overall, with 8,354 in Essentials, 12,861 in Productivity, and 6,876 in Digital Content Creation. These are respectable numbers for a laptop designed around office and everyday productivity workloads. The strong Productivity result, in particular, suggests the processor has enough performance for document editing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and general multitasking, which also matches my experience with the laptop.

Storage performance is good, too. CrystalDiskMark returned sequential read speeds of 6,657MB/s and write speeds of 4,640MB/s, which are excellent results for a PCIe 4.0 SSD. Random 4K performance was also respectable, so you shouldn’t see storage-related bottlenecks during normal use.

How Long Does the ExpertBook A7’s Battery Last, and How Loud Are the Fans?

Battery life is one area where I expected the ExpertBook A7 to do better. The laptop packs a 65Wh battery, and with Intel’s low-power Wildcat Lake processor under the hood, you would expect some pretty good endurance. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been my experience.

During regular productivity use, which mostly involved browsing, writing, watching videos and switching between applications, I managed around 5-6 hours at best. This was with the OLED display running at 120Hz throughout, and brightness adjusted to lighting conditions.

Now, five to six hours isn’t terrible, but it’s not particularly impressive either. The Acer Swift Air 14, with its Core 5 320 processor, managed around 8-10 hours in my testing, though it uses a lower-resolution IPS display and a larger 70Wh battery. The Snapdragon-powered Zenbook 14 managed around 6-7 hours, while the MacBook Air M5 delivered roughly 11-12 hours of mixed use. You can likely squeeze out a couple more hours on the ExpertBook by switching to 60Hz and keeping brightness in check.

The fan behaviour is a bit more puzzling. During benchmarks, the ExpertBook A7 remained reasonably quiet, with the cooling system barely making itself known. The laptop also manages heat quite well, with only some warmth around the chassis while the keyboard deck remains comfortable to use.

However, I noticed the fans spinning up at the most random times, even when the laptop wasn’t doing anything demanding. On one occasion, I was simply browsing the web when the fans suddenly kicked in and continued running for no apparent reason. Another time, I had just started the laptop, and the fans were already whirring.

It’s a strange behaviour because the fans aren’t particularly loud or unpleasant. They produce a noticeable hum, but nothing that would be considered intrusive under normal circumstances. The annoyance comes from hearing them when you are doing absolutely nothing that should warrant active cooling. For a laptop designed around a low-power processor, I would have expected it to remain silent during lighter workloads, as several other similarly sized laptops I have used manage to do.

Perhaps a background Windows process or ASUS fan management is responsible, but whatever the reason, the seemingly random fan activity takes away a little from an otherwise quiet, cool-running laptop. ASUS can likely fix this with a software update, but we’re reviewing this laptop as it behaves today.

Should You Buy the ASUS ExpertBook A7?

I quite like the ASUS ExpertBook A7. It’s a well-rounded laptop that gets a lot right, especially in design and build quality. The aluminium chassis feels good, the lightweight construction makes it easy to carry around, and the OLED display is gorgeous. The Intel Core 7 350 might not be the most powerful processor around, but it has enough grunt to handle everyday productivity without breaking a sweat.

But I find it difficult to recommend the ExpertBook A7 at AED 7,599. For a business laptop that focuses on portability, the 5-6 hours of battery life is disappointing, especially considering the low-power processor inside. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it if the price was a little lower, but as it stands, the ExpertBook A7 asks for a little too much money for what it ultimately offers.

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