ASUS PRO B9440: Durable Ultra-Thin Business Laptop with 10-Hour Battery for $999
by Anton Shilov on January 10, 2017 11:30 AM EST
ASUS introduced its new ultra-thin business laptop that weds ultra-thin form-factor, long battery life, spill-resistant keyboard, good performance and a moderate price. The ASUS PRO B9440 is powered by Intel’s new Core i5/i7 Kaby Lake-U CPUs, weighs only around one kilogram and can work for 10 hours on one charge.
Since various people have different requirements and workloads, there are many types of business notebooks: from 12” ultra-thin and compact machines to 15” laptops with workstation-like performance and features. The ASUS PRO B9440 is located somewhere between in terms of design and performance: it comes in 13”-class chassis made of magnesium alloy and has so thin display bezels that it actually features a 14” display with FHD resolution and anti-glare coating. To make the PC more comfortable to use, ASUS installed a spill-resistant keyboard with large keycaps, backlighting, and 1.5 mm key travel. Meanwhile, the weight of the PC is around a kilogram (2.31 lbs), but it is MIL-STD 810G-rated for durability so it can survive shocks, vibration, exposure to low/high temperatures and so on.
From hardware standpoint, the ASUS PRO B9440 is a mainstream PC running Intel’s Core i5/i7 Kaby Lake-U processor, equipped with 8 or 16 GB of LPDDR3 memory, up to 512 GB SSD, a 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with BT module, two USB 3.0 Type-C connectors, stereo speakers, a fingerprint reader, and a 48 Wh battery. ASUS customers can order PRO B9440 machines with enabled Intel’s vPro for remote management as well as Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for hardware-based data encryption.
| The ASUS PRO B9440 Laptops Preliminary Specifications | |||
| Mainstream | Premium | ||
| Screen Resolution | 1920×1080 | ||
| CPU | Family | Core i5 | Core i7 |
| Core | Kaby Lake-U | ||
| Options | vPro | ||
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 620 or Iris Plus Graphics 640 | ||
| RAM | 8 GB LPDDR3 onboard | 16 GB LPDDR3 onboard | |
| Storage | Up to 512 GB M.2 SSD (SATA or PCIe) | ||
| Wi-Fi | 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with BT | ||
| USB | 2 × USB 3.0 Type-C (one port supports docking, power delivery) | ||
| Fingerprint Sensor | Yes | ||
| Other I/O | Microphone, Harman Kardon stereo speakers, TRRS audio jack | ||
| Battery | 4-cell 48 Wh Li-polymer | ||
| Thickness | 8.9 - 14.85 mm | ||
| Weight | 1.04 kilograms 2.31 lbs |
||
| Price | Starts at $999 | ||
| ASUS SimPro Dock USB-C Docking Station | |||
| Display Outputs | 2 × DisplayPort 1 × HDMI 1 × D-Sub |
||
| USB | Type-A | 2 × USB 3.0 Type-A | |
| Type-C | 1 × USB 3.0 Type-C | ||
| Card Reader | SD card reader | ||
| Gigabit Ethernet | Yes | ||
To make the PRO B9440 compact, thin and durable, ASUS had to make certain design decisions. First, the company eliminated the webcam, which helped to shrink the display bezel (and will also please corporate IT security personnel). Second, ASUS removed all I/O ports except two USB 3.0 Type-C and a TRRS audio jack from the PC, which helped to shrink the chassis. While an ultra-thin form-factor is generally an advantage, it also means that to connect an external display, mouse and a keyboard, the ASUS PRO B9440 will require the ASUS SimPro Dock USB-C docking station that is sold separately, which effectively makes the system more expensive. Engineers from ASUS are not the only to make the aforementioned design decisions, so it looks like for many laptops docking stations will be required in the future.
ASUS will ship the PRO B9440 notebook in May for the price that starts at $999. The cost of the ASUS SimPro Dock is unknown, yet its MSRP will be an important factor for those who plan to use the ASUS PRO B9440 in office environments.
Ian says: Ultimately it's a clear shot across the bow of Dell's XPS 13, and seeing one at the show I was mightily impressed by form factor and weight. The trackpad had a good feel, and for writing it came across well. Other editors had reservations with the hinge mechanism, as it props up the keyboard and angles any hot air across the screen, but having used the Zenbook Infinity for 3 years, that doesn't bother me personally so much. Personally I guess I would have liked to see 32GB DDR4 and a touch screen model, and a key proponent here will be battery life. My current ZBI barely holds an hour of 'active' use (up to 5 hrs 'airplane word editing' use), and the B9440 looks pretty enticing right now if the battery life can hold up.
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Source: ASUS
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jaydee - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
I was going to post the exact same thing. For the 400 people on my site, this is useless without the ability to connect to a conference room screen or projector. The lack of SmartCard reader will also be a deal-breaker for a lot of businesses. Dell/HP/Lenovo has nothing to worry about.I'm sure it's a fine machine that would be good for a lot of people, but it seems to miss the mark if they're trying to promote it as a Latitude/ProBook/Thinkpad competitor.
Murloc - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
I guess someone will sell that...Danvelopment - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
I associate true business laptops with serviceability and access to the internals as well as docking (preferably port replication).Think Latitude or EliteBook Pro. I don't consider the XPS series business laptops (and don't get me started on the Dell M3800).
Did you happen to see if this was easy to work on? My old company made the decision to buy Vostros years ago (they buy all Latitude now) and it was a serious regret that wasted so much of the Helpdesk time that it actually affected other services.
Danvelopment - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
The Latitude 7000 series are a dreamboat for getting a user running again quickly.Murloc - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
how can it have such a low price?prateekprakash - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link
How do I search laptops which have 99Wh batteries?TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 11, 2017 - link
you know your laptop is too thin when the screen hinge props the whole machine up like that. Just make it .1 inch thicker and put a bigger battery in it FFS.thetuna - Thursday, January 12, 2017 - link
> First, the company eliminated the webcam ... (and will also please corporate IT security personnel)It will also immediately exclude it from the running for many organizations.
fanofanand - Thursday, January 12, 2017 - link
I have grown weary of products being sold at a fictional price when their intended use case requires the purchase of additional peripherals. I think most business users expect to need a dock but at $999 they would also expect it to be included. Nice device, nice specs, others have already pointed out the flaws but this would have been killer had the dock been included at that price. I have a similarly specced work laptop without the military grade toughness but does have the 10+ hours of battery life (I have been experiencing a little over 8 hours not 10 but I'm still pretty satisfied) and it was a little over half this cost. It didn't come with a docking station either but at $600 that's far more forgivable.sharath.naik - Saturday, February 11, 2017 - link
1080p is not useful for any thing other than making things look a bit sharper in 13+ inch screens. It is too wide for any web or document window, at the same time it is too narrow to be able to have 2 windows side by side, which you need if you need to get any usability boost for work. When will manufacturers get the point that the only screen resolution that makes sense in laptops is 1440p, if that is too much then you can as well have 900p and save even more battery.1080p is a useless neither here or there resolution. 4k in a laptop should only be there as an option for those who want it for video/photo editing, as 4k is too power hungry and unusable for productivity. So what is the point of offering 1080p(useless) or 4k(mostly useless, too power hungry) resolutions? it either should be 1440P as standard and provide 4k as an option.