Asus and Acer love to duke it out each year over thin and light laptops, and this year is no different. Asus has just beaten Acer to the “world’s lightest 14-inch” laptop contest. Acer unveiled its Swift 5 earlier today, which weighs just 2.1 pounds and proudly maintains “the world’s lightest 14-inch notebook.” Just hours later, Asus revealed its AsusPro B9, which weighs in at just 1.9 pounds. You might imagine that this laptop isn’t full of powerful hardware, but Asus has managed to pack in a 10th Gen Intel Core processor (the company hasn’t revealed the exact model yet), up to two 1TB PCIe SSDs, Wi-Fi 6 support, and even an IR camera for Windows Hello.
Like many Asus laptops, it’s a 14-inch display inside the body of a typical 13-inch laptop. That means thin display bezels and a 94 percent screen-to-body ratio. I got the chance to get an early look at the AsusPro B9 today, and, as you’d expect from the “world’s lightest 14-inch laptop,” it’s incredibly light. It’s designed to be a business laptop, but it feels light enough that you could easily carry it with one hand while you’re carrying a coffee in the other and using your nose to tap out furious emails to your boss as you go from meeting room to meeting room. I didn’t actually test it with my nose, but you get the point: it’s lightweight.
It’s also pretty thin. At 14.99mm, it’ll easily slip into a bag. I didn’t get to test the trackpad too extensively, but it felt responsive in the short time I was using it. We’ll have to test it further to say either way, but this looks like an impressive little 14-inch laptop, even if it’s targeted toward business customers primarily.
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