2020 Asus Studiobooks were the first laptops on the market to have "Full-Size SD Express 7.0 Slot" with >800 MBps sequential speed. 2022 Asus ZenBook Pro series are also rumored to have same SD Express ports without exception.

If anything, it is HP and Dell (ZBook, EliteBook, Omen, XPS, Latitude, and Precision) who are recycling UHS-1 and 2, when UHS-3 has been available for years, and SD Express should now be the standard on premium laptops.

Also microSD on 12-14" size Ultrabooks are more of a placeholder. It does not have to be the fastest thing out there, just needs to work reliably when you can't find your USB-SD adapter. This is a blessing since so many ultrabooks don't even have one on board.

As usual it is not surprising to see this author conveniently omitting key details like this for his biased article. I am disappointed with the plummeting standards of these "opinion" pieces on NBC that lack any insight and research.

This underwhelming SD reader spec is because SD reader is not a "sexy" part of the laptop. It is just there like the webcam, trackpad, keyboard. You need to delve into product specsheets or reviews to even figure out what you are getting.
But I think that the manufacturer gets the most savings from simplified support. The same controllers are used for many years and models. They don't need to update different drivers. The hardware cost difference might be negligible. And they might be buying old stuff just because of that even if a new controller might be faster and cost the same.
It used to be that Dell would use the same WiFi card for years until the WiFi spec itself changes and this would be visible in the simplified specsheet ("n" vs. "ac"). My old laptop was not supported anymore. But I could find laptops 5 years "younger" that used the same wifi card whose drivers worked for my laptop.

Population of Fükks'given: 0 (zero).

@Ninemonths it does have a touchpad, it's placed to the right of the keyboard. That specific model is more of a tech demo though, so it doesn't really have to make much sense haha.

Oh, yeah.... That's definitely an issue nobody has, or better worded, a first world problem

It's amazing that they make a laptop like the one in the first picture that doesn't have a trackpad on it.

I was told by an ASUS rep that ASUS actually uses a lower tier SD controller and therefore the speed. It was a method to lower cost as most people don't use SD on a daily basis. Recently I visited a friend who owned a repair shop and he was at the time repairing a ASUS laptop and he told me that the SD Controller can be one of the reasons by ASUS laptops fail. They can actually short the motherboard due to a bug with the voltage regulator. Therefore I will high not recommend ASUS laptops

Reminds me of microSD cards being capped to about 30MB/s for both R/W on Sony Xperia phones. I am yet to come across a valid reason for this, other than "dude, you don't need more on a phone".

Also yes, I have tested with my Samsung Evo Select card that's rated for 100MB/s sequential reads, which usually hits ~85MB/s using my laptop's SD slot.