If military grade durability wasn’t already one of your business’s top priorities for a new fleet of laptops before the coronavirus pandemic, it almost certainly is now. In this new world’s blend of hybrid and remote work arrangements, employee devices need to survive the rigors of everyday travel across a wide range of locations. To keep TCO down and productivity up, your business needs laptops with proven durability — and that’s exactly what you get with ASUS ExpertBooks. Tested and found worthy in a punishing set of military-grade durability tests, these laptops have what it takes to go the distance.
Travel hazards
The world is returning to a post-Covid normal in 2023. A recent Morgan Stanley Research survey predicts that executive business trips will return to pre-pandemic levels this year, and then continue to grow. With business trips come all the challenges of travel. Between packing your bags, checking in, clearing security, and hustling to make any connecting flights, the constant rush can wear you out and punish your gear.
Even if you have an armor-plated carryon and a reinforced shoulder bag, careful travelers can occasionally toss a laptop into the bottom of their bags. If that carryon is checked at the gate, the laptop finds itself beneath pounds of gear, tossed around by luggage handlers, and then stowed in the cargo bay of a 747 aircraft at 36,000 feet. Air temperatures hover at -54 ̊C (-65 ̊F) outside the plane, while inside it’s a frigid 5 ̊C (41 ̊F). If the plane lands in the sunny south, that laptop will endure a sudden temperature shock as the atmosphere warms by 50 ̊F or more.
Everyday threats to business laptops
On the ground, things can get even worse. The gear frequently comes back damaged due to sloppy care or unavoidable accidents. After all, employees working in the field face unpredictable, even chaotic circumstances. Architects and engineers who visit a building site always wear hard hats to protect their brains, but what protects their electronics?
It’s easy to set your laptop on a handy piece of industrial equipment whose motor is running, vibrating the computer’s delicate circuitry. When a sudden breeze swirls up clouds of sand and grit, the circuit board and cooling fans face their worst enemy. And in workplaces where volatile chemicals are stored, the air can be thick with vapors that ignite at the smallest spark. Do you dare boot up your laptop? You do if it underwent an Explosive Atmosphere Test, just one of the new endurance test procedures we at ASUS have adopted for our latest line of laptops in 2023.
If explosions are unlikely where you work, consider that even quiet moments can endanger electronics. During a few hours of work poolside, you might nod off and wake up with sunburn. Imagine what hours of solar radiation can do to a computer. Maybe we are just living in hard times, but it starts to feel like a threat lurks around every corner.
The secret to surviving hard times is to toughen up. Wherever reliability and resilience are a business’s priority, we have your electronics covered against both sudden shocks and long-term wear with the world’s strictest US military-grade durability standards for laptops. The 26 test procedures that we adopted for our consumer line of laptops conform to the latest MIL-STD 810H specifications. For commercial laptops, we went even further with 28 test procedures, more than any other manufacturer.
Military grade durability tests ensure reliable, resilient laptops at all temperatures
For decades, traditional knowledge about computers held that heat is the enemy, degrading performance and destroying delicate circuitry. Yet from the moment of purchase, computers need to survive shipping in extreme temperatures. Also, many end-users regularly rely on laptops to operate in the heat. The bottom line is, you need your equipment to endure whether you’re a researcher in the Amazonian jungle or an executive giving a presentation in Las Vegas.
That’s why at ASUS, we test our 2023 laptops for Storage and Transit in both Basic Hot and Hot Dry conditions for one full week. Switch the notebook on and, thanks to our Operational test, enjoy guaranteed functionality for 72 hours in dry temperatures up to 49 ̊C (120 ̊F), or 43 ̊C (109 ̊F) in 44% humidity. At the other extreme, where mountaineers send emails from a snowy base camp or remote workers shiver through a snowstorm while finishing up their reports, our laptops endure both Operational and Cold Storage/Transit temperatures as low as -46 ̊C (-50 ̊F).
Up high, where the air gets thinner and the cold stings harder, our laptops operate for twelve hours at altitudes of 15,000 feet. However, rapid temperature changes can be just as grueling as temperature extremes. So we test our notebooks with three cycles of temperature shock, taking them through a change of 122 degrees Celsius (or 220 degrees Fahrenheit) in one hour. And poolside workers who nod off with their laptops will be pleased to learn that ASUS notebooks are tested to endure three cycles of direct sunlight for 24 hours.
Never fear a bump, bolt, or drop
Of course, shipping and operational use don’t just expose electronics to hazardous temperatures. There are the jolts of airplane turbulence, or all that bouncing and rumbling over janky streets and potholes. Not to mention the moments of distraction or carelessness when a laptop is pushed off a desk or dropped from overburdened arms, leaving the notebook to slam corner-first onto the floor.
To guard against jolts like these, we test our notebooks for durability against drops, vibrations, sand and dust, and even explosive atmospheres. The results?
Our laptops are designed and tested to remain operational after falling up to four feet onto a wooden surface. They survive vibrations normal to shipping. They even endure two hours of mechanical vibrations. And our notebooks stay operational through Shock Tests for Transportation, Bench handling, and eighteen Functional shocks of 40 g at 11 ms. That’s to a lot of sharp jabs.
Tested to withstand everyday wear and tear
But life’s hazards are not confined to sudden impacts. Regular wear and tear also take their toll as workers unfold the laptop, tap the keyboard, plug and unplug peripherals, navigate the touch panel, and manipulate the touchpad. Endurance testing proves the durability of all these moving parts, as our ASUS labs start to look like a gymnasium for notebooks.
The hinge test opens and closes laptops for 20,000 cycles. The keyboard durability test ensures a lifespan of 10 million keystrokes. The panel pressure test applies 25 kg of force on the lid and bottom without damage, while another test twists the chassis 50,000 times to ensure rigidity against torque. Along either side of the notebook, those peripheral I/O ports withstand 5,000 insertion-and-removal cycles. Up on the screen, the Touch Panel Precision Test ensures response and accuracy for a precise, natural feel, while the Ball Drop Test proves the touchpad’s reliability over time. And remember that Explosive Atmosphere Test? It is a testimony to the care with which our notebooks’ electronics were designed and constructed.
That same care provides our notebooks with protection against electrostatic discharge up to 1.5 times the standard in the European Union. We ran more than ten times the minimum number of tests to meet the regulatory requirements. And since these notebooks meet the EU Electromagnetic compatibility regulations EN55032 and EN55035 and were certified EMI from third-party laboratories, users will enjoy interference-free computing when multiple devices are working simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the WiFi Connection Test guarantees reliable connections of smoothly streaming, high-definition content at greater distances from the WiFi hub than ever before, without interference, for two full years.
An ExpertBook exists for every workplace
During the pandemic, when so many workers stayed home to stay safe, you might have expected their electronics to stay safe too. But one survey found that more than half of remote workers admitted to damaging their company-issued electronics during the pandemic. As workers return to the office and business travel increases beyond pre-pandemic levels, risks to gear will only increase. That is why we created an ExpertBook series for every risk level.
Executives and frequent business travelers should look to the B7/B9 series, whose quality exceeds industry standards. These ultratough laptops might call to mind a medieval knight in a suit of armor, as heavy and bulky as they are powerful and protective. Think again. Just as ye olde armored knight has been replaced by today’s nimble soldier in light, flexible Kevlar, the B7/B9 series is as ultralight as it is tough.
For field workers of every kind, who need high-performance computing on the go, we offer the B5/B6 series. These laptops are tested to the extremes of military grade durability and meet the MIL-STD 810H standards in 26 test procedures.
Workers in manufacturing, education, and the medical fields will appreciate the BR series for its enterprise grade security, which safeguards federally protected information. Meanwhile, these units were built with the environment in mind to minimize harm while maximizing durability and endurance. We know that times are tough, so in 2023 we are taking durability more seriously than ever. That is why we at ASUS are confident you’ll find an ExpertBook that stands up against even the harshest environments within your workspace.