A Chromebook with a kickstand. | Image: Asus
Asus has announced the ExpertBook B3 Detachable, a Snapdragon-powered addition to its premium ExpertBook business line that has a detachable keyboard. The device is available now with a starting price of $599.
The ExpertBook marks a number of hilariously specific milestones for Asus, including “the first ExpertBook laptop with a dual-orientation stand,” “the first Windows laptop operating on Arm with a garaged stylus,” “the first Windows laptop operating on ARM with a garaged stylus,” and “Asus’s first ExpertBook laptop powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2.”
Asus is just the latest company to bring a detachable, Surface Pro-like form factor to one of its high-end lines. Dell converted its XPS 13 2-in-1 to a similar folio-style format earlier this year, and significant business-targeted ExpertBook competitors, including Dell’s Latitudes and Lenovo’s ThinkPads, now include detachable Windows PCs as well.
For the laptop sector as a whole, the announcement marks yet another step away from the traditional 2-in-1 form factor and toward the more portable detachable for on-the-go work.
What differentiates the ExpertBook B3 from other detachables in the space is its dual-orientation kickstand. Like the Chromebook CM3 that Asus released last year, the ExpertBook’s kickstand can be folded vertically or horizontally, allowing the tablet to stand in both orientations.
The device is 16:10 and weighs 1.3 pounds, so a tad bit more than the iPad Air. (I’m assuming this is without the keyboard attached — I emailed Asus to confirm this but haven’t heard back yet.) The device has an optional MPP 2.0 garaged stylus and can be configured with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage in addition to the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 Compute processor. It has two webcams, including a five-megapixel user-facing camera and 13-megapixel rear shooter, and has optional support for Asus Private View, which shields the screen from sidelong snoops.