ASUS is aiming at business travelers, executives, and hybrid workers with the new ExpertBook Ultra B9406, a 14-inch premium laptop that starts at just 0.99kg, or about 2.18 pounds. That puts it in the rare group of full-size business laptops light enough to disappear into a backpack, yet ASUS is pairing that low weight with a 3K OLED touchscreen, Intel Core Ultra X9 Series 3 processors, enterprise security features, and a claimed battery life of up to 26 hours.

Ultra-light laptops are not a new idea, but the category has often demanded compromises. A machine can be remarkably easy to carry, then fall short on ports, battery life, screen quality, keyboard comfort, sustained performance, or durability. ASUS’s pitch with the ExpertBook Ultra is that professionals should not have to accept those tradeoffs simply because they want something that does not turn a work bag into a burden.

The new ExpertBook Ultra is built around a CNC-engineered magnesium-aluminum chassis, a material choice that makes sense for this kind of device. It is lighter than aluminum while still offering structural strength, which is why it has long been used in premium thin-and-light laptops. ASUS also applies its 9H-hardness Nano Ceramic technology, a finish the company says improves durability while maintaining the subdued, business-ready look of the laptop.

The result is a machine designed to look restrained rather than attention-seeking. That may sound like a small detail, but it is part of what separates business laptops from consumer flagships. The ExpertBook Ultra is intended to move between airport lounges, conference rooms, hotel desks, and home offices without looking out of place in any of them.

ASUS has fitted the ExpertBook Ultra with a 14-inch 3K tandem OLED touchscreen, giving it a display specification that is unusually ambitious for a corporate-focused laptop. Tandem OLED technology uses stacked emissive layers to improve brightness and potentially extend panel longevity compared with more conventional OLED designs. ASUS rates the screen for up to 1,400 nits of HDR brightness, which should help with HDR media and improve readability in brighter indoor spaces.

There is also a practical layer of protection over the screen. The laptop uses Corning Gorilla Glass Victus along with Gorilla Matte treatment, which ASUS says improves durability and reduces reflections. Glossy OLED screens can look fantastic in controlled lighting, but glare remains a real nuisance when working near windows or under harsh office lights. A matte treatment could make the display more comfortable for the people this laptop is actually aimed at: those opening documents, joining calls, reviewing presentations, and working from wherever the day happens to take them.

The touchscreen is a welcome inclusion, though not necessarily the headline reason to buy the device. For many business users, it is useful in small moments – scrolling through a report, annotating a slide, navigating an app while standing, or signing a document – rather than as a replacement for the keyboard and trackpad. The larger benefit is that ASUS has not treated “business laptop” as a reason to settle for a basic panel.

Inside, the ExpertBook Ultra can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra X9 Series 3 processor, Intel Arc Pro graphics, and Intel vPro support. ASUS says the machine can sustain up to 50W TDP through its ExpertCool Pro thermal design, a meaningful claim for a device that weighs less than a kilogram.

TDP numbers do not tell the entire performance story, since real-world speed depends on the final processor configuration, cooling behavior, memory, software, and the length of the workload. Still, the idea is clear: ASUS wants the ExpertBook Ultra to handle the work that increasingly lands on business laptops, including large spreadsheets, multitasking across collaboration apps, local AI features, presentations, light creative work, and development tasks, without behaving like an underpowered travel companion.

The Intel vPro branding matters to larger organizations because it is tied to business-oriented management, stability, and security capabilities. For a solo professional, it may be less important than battery life or portability. But for IT departments equipping distributed teams, those features can be a deciding factor, especially when laptops need to be deployed, maintained, and secured at scale.

ASUS is also leaning into the AI PC moment, though with a more practical framing than the usual product-launch buzzwords. Rather than positioning AI as a single chatbot feature, the ExpertBook Ultra is designed to provide the processing headroom for increasingly common on-device experiences: meeting assistance, intelligent organization, background effects, productivity tools, and business applications that make use of neural processing and newer graphics hardware. The real value will depend on the quality of the software, but a lightweight laptop with enough performance to remain useful as those tools develop is a sensible proposition.

Battery life may be the specification that matters most to the ExpertBook Ultra’s intended audience. ASUS claims the 70Wh battery can deliver up to 26 hours of use. That figure should be viewed as a best-case vendor estimate rather than an expectation for every user; screen brightness, OLED content, video calls, processor load, wireless conditions, and the applications running in the background can all change the result substantially.

Even so, putting a 70Wh battery into a laptop that starts below 1kg is notable. If ASUS can deliver strong real-world endurance, the ExpertBook Ultra could reduce the daily anxiety around carrying a charger, reserving an outlet at the airport, or watching battery percentage drain through back-to-back calls.

The security story is equally targeted at enterprise customers. ASUS bundles its ExpertGuardian platform, including post-quantum cryptography capabilities and firmware security designed to comply with NIST SP 800-193. The standard addresses platform firmware resiliency, with the goal of helping systems protect, detect, and recover from firmware-related attacks.

That may sound like background IT language, but firmware protection is increasingly significant. Security features at the operating-system level are useful, yet attackers that reach lower-level firmware can be much harder to detect and remove. For companies managing sensitive employee, financial, health, legal, or customer information, hardware-rooted security is not a checklist item – it is part of the foundation.

ASUS also includes a six-speaker Dolby Atmos audio system, a surprisingly generous setup for such a light laptop. Better speakers will not replace a headset on an important client call, but it can make presentations, media playback, and spontaneous meetings less frustrating when users do not have peripherals close by.

At 0.99kg, the ExpertBook Ultra is not simply a laptop for people who want the lightest possible device. It is aimed at people who carry their work with them every day and do not want that work to become physical baggage.

A difference of a pound can feel trivial on a specification sheet, but it becomes very noticeable after a day of commuting, passing through airports, carrying notebooks and chargers, or moving between meetings. A laptop at this weight is easier to pack in a smaller bag, easier to pull out for short bursts of work, and less likely to be left behind because it feels inconvenient.

The challenge for ASUS will be proving that the ExpertBook Ultra can preserve its quiet, almost effortless portability without sacrificing the qualities business buyers expect: a comfortable keyboard, dependable wireless performance, solid webcam and call quality, strong support, and sustained speed under real workloads. Those are the factors that only long-term use and independent reviews can settle.

ASUS has not yet announced U.S. pricing or release timing for the ExpertBook Ultra B9406. Those details will matter because the laptop will compete with premium business machines from Lenovo, HP, Dell, Microsoft, and Apple, many of which have developed loyal followings through established service programs and enterprise relationships.

But on the information available so far, ASUS is making a compelling first argument. The ExpertBook Ultra B9406 takes the increasingly familiar AI PC formula and applies it to a problem professionals understand immediately: how to get a beautiful screen, a sizable battery, serious security, and capable performance into a laptop that weighs less than a kilogram.