ASUS Sells a 2.18-Pound Panther Lake Laptop for $3,599

ASUS is selling the ExpertBook Ultra in the United States for $3,599, a 14-inch Panther Lake business laptop that starts at 0.99 kg (2.18 pounds).

The US shop has one setup: a Core Ultra X7 358H, 32 GB of memory, a 1 TB drive, Windows 11 Pro, and a 3-year warranty plus a year of accidental damage cover.

The Only US Config Is the Dear One

The American SKU is B9406CAA-XSP76T, also tagged 90NX09J2-M00W40, in Jet Fog. It is the machine CDW still posts at a $3,599 list, and it is the only ExpertBook Ultra the US pages specify with a Core Ultra X7 358H, soldered 32 GB, and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 drive.

Some shops are already off that tag. Micro Center has the same Jet Fog unit at $2,899.99, which is a shelf price, not a new official list. The gap is how channel stock behaves after a launch, not a second MSRP.

THE US SKU

• The board: Intel Core Ultra X7 358H with a 50 TOPS NPU and Intel Arc B390 graphics.
• The memory: 32 GB of LPDDR5X on the board, with a 32 GB ceiling on the US spec sheet.
• The panel: 14.0-inch 2880 x 1800 tandem OLED touch screen, 16:10, 600 nits SDR and 1400 nits HDR peak.
• The cover: Windows 11 Pro, a 3-year international warranty, and 1 year of accidental damage protection.

Morn Grey is listed as a second color. Higher memory, a 2 TB drive, and the Core Ultra X9 388H that ASUS showed in its January 23, 2026 announcement are still missing from the US catalog. CES promised those rungs. US buyers get one loaded lid or they wait.

Intel Pointed at a Two-Sided Motherboard

The lightness is not a trick of a small battery. ASUS put a 70 Wh pack in a chassis that is 10.9 mm at the thin edge and 16.4 mm at the thick edge, 31.09 x 21.28 cm on the desk (12.24 x 8.38 inches). The pack is a 2S2P, 4-cell layout that ASUS says runs at 7.8 volts so the converters waste less heat than a taller 15 V string, and the cells sit side by side so the fans keep a path.

Intel later walked through the other half of that squeeze. In August, Intel Technology posted a teardown clip that calls out a two-sided motherboard in the ExpertBook Ultra, a board that uses both faces so the 14-inch shell can hold Panther Lake, a 70 Wh pack, and six speakers without adding a third pound.

We love finding unique features under the hood of new laptops. This video highlights the two-sided motherboard that maximizes space in the @Asus ExpertBook Ultra, then explores a broader family of Panther Lake systems from gaming laptops to NUCs: https://t.co/6sOTzl8E7T pic.twitter.com/YNBtlznX7K

— Intel Technology (@IntelTech) August 12, 2026

ASUS brands the cooling ExpertCool Pro and rates it for up to 50 W, including with the lid shut. The company says three exhausts raise central air pressure by 12%, a 0.1 mm aluminum module adds 14% of area, balanced mode stays under 28 dB, and whisper mode is 20 dB. That is a lot of plumbing for a lid that ASUS also quotes at 2.4 lb in US shop copy, a figure for this tandem OLED SKU, while the spec sheet’s 0.99 kg (2.18 pounds) remains the starting floor and can change with the build.

What $3,599 Buys Against a 3-Pound XPS

The chip in this lid is not rare. Dell already puts Panther Lake in the XPS 14, a machine that starts at $1,599.99 and weighs 3.0 pounds, and the 3-pound XPS 14 we reviewed landed at $2,900. Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5, 32 GB, and 1 TB is $2,399 and weighs 3.4 pounds. The ASUS ask is the lightest of that group on paper, and it is also the dearest list price in it.

THE 14-INCH PRICE CLUB

A kilo you do not carry is real on a jet bridge. It is a rounding error on a quarterly hardware budget, which is why the louder problem with this launch is not the ceramic lid or the speaker count. Dell already sells the same Core Ultra X7 358H idea in a 14-inch OLED shell for less money, and the pound you save on ASUS does not show up as a line item next to warranty and image.

The XPS also gives you three Thunderbolt 4 ports and keeps HDMI off the chassis. The ExpertBook Ultra keeps two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one on each side, then adds two USB-A 10 Gbps jacks and HDMI 2.1, which is the dock-bag argument ASUS is making to IT, not to people who already live on USB-C.

Nano Ceramic, Six Speakers, and USB-A

ASUS machines the magnesium-aluminum shell on a CNC mill and coats it with Nano Ceramic that it rates at 9H, the hardness pitch behind the old “ceraluminum” line. The finish is the reason the company talks about scratches and stains in a business brief instead of in a hobbyist forum. Red Dot gave the design a 2026 product award, and the US spec sheet adds MIL-STD 810H testing across 24 procedures.

The 14.0-inch tandem OLED is a dual-layer panel ASUS says is three times as bright as a normal OLED and uses 40% less power, with Gorilla Glass Victus over Gorilla Matte that it claims cuts glare by up to 80%. The sheet also lists 100% DCI-P3, Pantone validation, VESA DisplayHDR True Black 1000, a 91% screen-to-body ratio, and a 30-120 Hz variable refresh range. It is a touch panel. The keyboard is a backlit chiclet with 1.5 mm of travel and a UV excimer coating; the pad is haptic glass.

IN THE $3,599 CHASSIS

• The ports: Two Thunderbolt 4 (USB4, display, power), two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, HDMI 2.1, and a 3.5 mm combo jack.
• The radio: Wi-Fi 7 2×2 and Bluetooth 6.0, with a driver note that Bluetooth may sit at 5.4 until a later stack.
• The sound: Six speakers with Dolby Atmos, two dual-magnetic woofers and dedicated tweeters, plus a dual mic array and ASUS noise canceling.
• The face login: 1080p camera with IR for Windows Hello, a privacy shutter, and ASUS’s claim of AI upscaling to 5MP, plus a fingerprint sensor in the power button with FIDO2.

Security is the part of the bill that never makes a spec-comparison tweet. The US sheet lists TPM 2.0, Microsoft Secured-core, Microsoft Pluton, Absolute Persistence 2.0, Intel Boot Guard and BIOS Guard, BIOS self-recovery, and ASUS ExpertGuardian aligned with NIST SP 800-193. The January press addendum puts post-quantum firmware on that stack, naming ML-KEM (FIPS 203) and ML-DSA (FIPS 204). That is procurement language. It is also why a traveler’s 2.18-pound wish list and an IT group’s firmware wish list got stapled to the same SKU.

The Arc B390 Chip Runs in a 50-Watt Envelope

Panther Lake is Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 mobile line. The X7 358H in this laptop has 16 cores and a 25 W base, 16 threads in a 4P + 8E + 4LPE split, 18 MB of cache, a 1.9 GHz base, and a 4.8 GHz turbo. Configurable power runs 15-65 W on the chip sheet, with a peak in the 80 W class. ASUS does not let the ExpertBook Ultra live at that peak; ExpertCool Pro is the 50 W cap.

The reason the X badge matters is the GPU. Non-X Panther Lake chips keep a small Intel Graphics block. The X7 358H and the X9 388H share Arc B390, and Intel’s X-series spec lists 12 Xe-cores in Arc B390 with a 2.5 GHz graphics turbo. ASUS clocks the X7’s memory at 8533 MT/s; the X9 is the SKU Intel rates for LPDDR5X-9600, which is one more reason a missing US X9 is not a paper detail.

The NPU is 50 TOPS, enough to wear the Copilot+ label and to run ASUS MyExpert, the on-device suite for search, meeting notes, translation, and writing help. MyExpert wants 16 GB or more, which this SKU has. Local AI is not why the laptop costs $3,599. The tandem OLED, the ceramic shell, the 3-year cover, and the decision to ship only this rung in the US are.

The Chip Ladder the US Store Skipped

On paper the ExpertBook Ultra is a family. The January brief listed a Core Ultra 5 325, a Core Ultra 7 356H, the X7 358H, and an X9 388H with vPro, Arc Pro graphics, up to 64 GB, and M.2 storage up to 2 TB including PCIe 5.0. There is also a polymer OLED panel in that brief, 450 nits with a 60-144 Hz range, which is the likely path to the 0.99 kg floor. The US tandem OLED X7 is the heavy, bright member of that set.

WHAT WE KNOW

• US hardware: One X7 358H SKU with 32 GB, 1 TB, tandem OLED, Windows 11 Pro, Jet Fog or Morn Grey.
• US service: 3-year international warranty and 1 year of accidental damage protection on the ASUS shop listing.
• US power: 70 Wh pack, 90 W USB-C brick (20 V, 4.5 A), and a 50% in 30 minutes charge claim from ASUS.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• X9 in America: No Core Ultra X9 388H, 64 GB, or 2 TB listing on the US spec sheet.
• The 26-hour figure: ASUS quotes up to 26 hours on an X7 tandem OLED unit with 32 GB and a 2 TB drive, which is not the 1 TB SKU in the US cart.
• Every unit’s scale weight: The 0.99 kg line is a starting figure and, ASUS notes, can vary by configuration.

Other markets already treat that ladder as real. Review units in Japan have carried 64 GB in the same thin shell, and India was shown three chip prices when the line launched there. The American store still sells one cart button. If you want the GPU, you pay the Ultra tax. If you want 64 GB, you are not shopping the US page.

The Purchase Order Is the Real Filter

Available in Jet Fog and Morn Grey finishes, ExpertBook Ultra starts at just 0.99kg and measures only 10.9mm thin, offering effortless portability for professionals constantly on the move.

ASUS, January 23, 2026 press release

That sentence is the product. The $3,599 tag is the filter. A 70 Wh pack that ASUS says fills to 50% in 30 minutes, EPEAT Gold with Climate+, Energy Star 9.0, TCO Certified Generation 10, and 90% PIR recycled aluminum on the A, C, and D parts are the rest of the brief an IT buyer files next to the weight.

Street tags under $3,000 already exist, which will matter to a small firm that can wait on a shop SKU. They will not matter to a traveler who needed the 2.18-pound lid in January and is still staring at a single US configuration in September. The people who will actually carry this laptop through a security line are not, as a rule, the people who can sign for $3,599 without a cost center. The chassis is for them. The invoice is for someone else.