Intel's Panther Lake processors are starting to show up in shipping hardware, and Asus is among the first out the gate with the ExpertBook Ultra (B9406CAA), a 14-inch business ultraportable now available in the US at $3,600 (€3,300). The machine weighs just 990 g (2.2 lbs) and tapers from 16.4 mm (0.65 in) down to 10.9 mm (0.43 in), making it one of the thinnest laptops to carry a high-performance integrated GPU.
That GPU is Intel's Arc B390 with 12 Xe2 cores, paired with the Core Ultra X7 358H, a 16-core chip from the Panther Lake family. The rest of the spec sheet matches the premium positioning: 32 GB of LPDDR5x-8533 memory soldered on board, a single M.2 2280 slot holding a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, and a 2880 x 1800 tandem OLED panel rated at 600 nits. Connectivity covers dual Thunderbolt 4, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1, WiFi 7, and Bluetooth 6.0, all fed by a 70 Wh battery. Six speakers and a 1080p webcam with a physical privacy shutter round out the package.
Asus builds the chassis from a magnesium-aluminum alloy finished with a ceramic-like coating the company calls "ceraluminum," designed to resist scratches without adding weight. The laptop ships with Windows 11 Pro and a three-year warranty. Higher-end configurations with the Core Ultra X9 388H, 64 GB of RAM, and 2 TB of storage were previewed at CES in January 2026 but have not yet appeared for sale in the US.
