The ASUS TUF A15 is a gaming laptop that has been put to the test in various benchmarks and tests. Notably, it was behind and worse than some 4060 laptops in terms of performance. However, it's worth noting that this is still one of the best results from any 4070 laptop tested at 1440p, with a gain of less than a 3 FPS best case. This means that users won't notice a significant difference in gameplay.

In other games, such as Control, the TUF A15 also delivers good performance, with the highest result in 1080p at 1440p. However, this time around, the 1% low was the best, indicating varying results by game. The laptop is still one of the best 4070 models tested at 1440p, but this difference could come down to silicon lottery rather than something special that ASUS is doing.

For those interested in 3DMark results, here are the scores:

The TUF wasn’t that great here considering its specs. Maybe due to the one memory stick, as I’ve found this to affect these workloads. It’s often quite close to the smaller Zephyrus G14 with the same CPU but lower tier GPU.

The BIOS looks nice, but there’s almost no customization available. Especially when compared to other brands like MSI or Lenovo. Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 23.10 live CD. By default, the keyboard, touchpad, camera, speakers, ethernet, and Wi-Fi all worked. Keyboard shortcuts for adjusting screen brightness, volume, and keyboard brightness all work too, but the F4 aura key does not work, and the keyboard was stuck on the last effect I set in Windows.

Pricing and availability will change over time, so check the link below the video for updates and current sales. And if the TUF A15 has a good sale, we’ll be sure to add it to our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that every day to include all of the latest sales, so check it out regularly to save money on your next gaming laptop.

At the time of recording, Amazon has the RTX 4050 version with older Zen 3+ CPU for $1050, which is kind of a rip off when we’ve had other 4050 laptops with similar features on the deals site for $300 less. Even the RTX 4060 version with Zen 4 CPU is $50 more at B&H, which is much better competitively. Best Buy used to have the same specs I’ve tested here, but not anymore. Instead, the Intel version with 4070 goes for $1400. Not great, but I think it’s gone on sale for $1000 in the past, which is pretty good.

All things considered, the TUF A15 is a pretty good gaming laptop, which is basically what I said last year. Because for the most part, this is the same as last year’s model. The only major difference is that we’ve got a newer CPU and GPU for more performance. The chassis design is much the same, and battery life is still excellent.

However, there are some issues to note. The screen in this Australian model kind of sucks, so stay away from the 1080p 144Hz option if you’ve got the choice. The 165Hz 1080p or 1440p panels should be much better. Apart from that, there’s not really too much to complain about, except perhaps the price.

ASUS TUF laptops just don’t seem to have as many sales compared to their competitors. I don’t think this is worth it at full price, but with the right sale, the TUF is a solid laptop. Just keep an eye out on the gaminglaptop.deals website for a nice price drop!

If you’re looking for a budget-friendly gaming laptop then check this video next! I’ve gone through what I think are the best budget gaming laptops from each brand and shared the top 3 best options right now – so I’ll see you in that one next.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThe new TUF A15 gaming laptop from ASUS is finally here! SO there’s no time to waste,  let’s get straight into this review!The A15 has a grey metal lid with black plastic interior and bottom panel, just like last year.Overall build quality feels good, there’s a normal amount flex to the keyboard deck  when pushing down way too hard, and the metal lid doesn’t bend much.The front of the lid sticks out,  making it very easy to open, and the hinges feel smooth and sturdy.There are 2 color options this year, the mecha gray that I’ve got here,  and jaeger gray, which has the TUF logo off to the side.There was only a small amount of screen wobble when typing  a strongly worded comment explaining that it’s actually pronounced jaeger, not jaeger.ASUS claims this 2023 model is 4.5% smaller compared to last year’s version,  but the dimensions on both spec sheets are exactly the same.The laptop alone weighs 4.7lb or 2.1kg,  increasing to 6.3lb or almost 2.9kg with the 240 watt charger included.My TUF A15 has AMD’s latest Zen 4 8 core processor with Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics and a 1080p 144Hz  screen, but you can get it with lower GPUs or even a last gen CPU for less money with the link below.The keyboard has one zone of RGB backlighting. All keys and secondary  functions get lit up and there are 3 levels of brightness available with the F2 and F3  shortcut keys. The F4 Aura key can be used to change between 4 built in lighting effects,  and you can also control it through software. But not through the Aura Effects section,  none of these effects do anything, I think the software is confused with a laptop that has a  per-key RGB keyboard. You need to go into device and then lighting to access the available effects.The color cycle mode worked by flashing all keys rainbow,  but the other 3 effects were always red lighting only and we weren’t able to change  it from red. So it’s more like an R keyboard. I tried clicking the button for Aura Creator,  which takes me to a website to install some RGB software, but this didn’t recognize the keyboard.I found the keyboard alright for typing with. It’s got 1.7mm of key  travel but feels more on the mushy than clicky side, but I still liked using it.The WASD keys are clear, and there are extra keys above on the left for volume and mic  control, and a shortcut for the Armory Crate software, which is used to manage the laptop.The touchpad is fairly big, smooth, and clicks down anywhere, I didn’t have any problems with it.Almost all of the ports are on the left, RIP left handers. There’s an excellent  selection of ports, and even a USB 4 Type-C port on the left.The Type-C port closest to the front can be used to charge the laptop with up to 100 watts,  and both Type-C ports have DisplayPort support for connecting a screen.The Type-C port closest to the back always connects to the integrated Radeon graphics,  whether optimus is on or off, while the one closer to the front always  connects directly to the Nvidia discrete graphics.HDMI always connects directly to the Nvidia graphics too,  and we confirmed it could run our LG B9 TV at 4K 120Hz 12-Bit with G-Sync.Getting inside requires removing 12 Phillips head screws of 3 different lengths,  so keep track as you remove them. The front right screw doesn’t come out and instead  lifts the bottom panel to help with opening. It was fairly easy with my usual pry tools,  I’ll leave a link to them below the video.Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two memory slots just above near the middle,  installed M.2 SSD to the left of that with the Wi-Fi 6 card hiding underneath as usual,  and a spare M.2 storage slot on the right.The Wi-Fi speed wasn’t very good compared to most other gaming laptops tested. It’s  slightly behind ASUS’s TUF A16, but a little better compared to last year’s A15.The speeds from the installed 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD were alright, decent on the reads but  not as good for the writes. We can get faster writes from a good Gen 3 SSD.Mine only came with one stick of RAM installed, but with DDR5 this isn’t as  big of a deal compared to DDR4, as it sort of still runs in dual channel this way.The upgradeability score was good as we can change Wi-Fi, both RAM slots,  and both M.2 slots, plus there were no problems fitting a 4TB SSD with chips  on both sides in both slots. I took off half a point from last year’s A15 because I found it  harder to open. The design seems much the same this year, but it was easier for me.The speakers are found towards the front on the left and right sides. I thought they sounded  decent at around 50% volume, but at 70% and above they start sounding tinny which hides the bass.The latencymon results weren’t great, but that’s the case with most laptops this year.The TUF is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery. We can enable battery care  mode through the MyASUS software, which is separate to Armory Crate,  and this limits the charge level to 80% to help improve the battery's lifespan.Panel power saver is enabled by default, which automatically lowers the screen’s refresh rate  to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save power. This is why the screen flashes black,  and it goes back to 144Hz when you plug back in.Battery life was excellent, lasting for more than 8 and a half hours in  the YouTube video playback test. It’s not as good compared to last year’s TUF A15,  or this year’s A16, granted the Radeon GPU didn’t last as long with a game running.The TUF also has this message from our sponsor, Pulseway!Pulseway's patch management allows you to keep your server and desktop operating systems up  to date and safe from security threats. Pulseway can even update a wide range of third party apps!And the new advanced templates let you create  reports to quickly identify any systems with missing updates.To top it all off, you can even schedule an automatic reboot, if needed, to complete the  update process. As someone who had to wake up at 3am to run kernel updates in my past  system administrator life, let me tell you, I'd much rather let Pulseway take care of it!Make your life easier and start your free trial with the link below. And now back to the TUF!Let’s check out thermals next. It’s got two fans with some heatpipes shared between the  CPU and GPU with standard thermal paste on both.There are holes directly above the air intake fans,  and there’s a vent above the keyboard on the right. Air gets exhausted out  of both sides towards the back, and out the back on the left and right sides.ASUS’s Armoury Crate software allows us to change between different performance modes,  which from lowest to highest are silent, performance, turbo and manual. Both turbo  and manual modes apply this overclock to the GPU, but only manual mode lets you customize  it. Manual mode also lets you control CPU and GPU power limits, temperature limits,  and gives you some control over the fan curve for both fans. Whenever we’ve tested manual mode,  all power and temp sliders were maxed out with fans on 100% speed for best results.The internal temps were fine when just sitting there idle, a little warm,  but no problem considering the fans were off. The rest of the results are from combined CPU  and GPU stress tests which aim to represent a worst case full load scenario. Manual mode  with the fans maxed out was a little warmer on the CPU despite faster fans,  but closing the lid and docking the laptop was warmer and thermal throttling started.  The cooling pad I test with, linked below the video, barely made any difference.The thermal throttling with the lid closed was only minor in this workload, as the CPU clock  speed is hardly any different. The cooling pad makes no real difference as thermals weren’t  a limit in manual mode without it. It’s worth noting that the clock speed difference between  turbo and manual mode is basically nothing. This is interesting, because when we look at the power  levels being reached, manual mode was running the CPU close to 53 watts. This means the CPU is using  more power and running 3 degrees warmer to barely provide any benefit in terms of clock speed.This behavior is confirmed in a game test. Turbo and manual modes were reaching the same  frame rate, so there’s not really any point running with louder fans in manual mode and a  higher CPU power limit. It’s just needlessly increasing power usage and temperatures.The CPU can use more power if the GPU is idle, like in Cinebench. Around 80 watts  was possible in manual and turbo modes. Again there’s basically no difference in  terms of performance, but manual mode is louder as we chose to max the fans out.It’s the best result we’ve got from a Ryzen 9 7940HS in multi core so far,  but if we’re being real, the difference compared to the others is within the margin of error range  and likely depends on silicon lottery rather than any differences between the laptops. The  multi core score is 26% higher compared to last year’s A15 while single core score is 17% higher,  and then it’s 43% ahead of the A15 in 2021 in multicore and 26% ahead in single core.CPU Performance lowers if we unplug the charger and instead run purely off of battery power.  It’s now one of the better results out of the same selection of laptops, as laptops with AMD  Ryzen processors tend to do better than Intel in this regard. But that’s not always the case,  as Razer’s Blade 14 with the same CPU is now one of the lowest results. But I mean  it’s outperforming Apple’s M2 Max and Intel’s Core i9-13900H, both of which have more cores.Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle, but the TUF  was a fair bit warmer. It’s warmer with the stress tests running, but only the middle is a little  warm, the rest feels fine. The higher performance mode was fairly similar. It’s only hot at the back  above the keyboard, but you don’t need to touch there. Turbo mode was quite similar too. The  wrist rest feels cool and the WASD keys are only a little warm, it feels fine. Manual mode with the  fans maxed out wasn’t much different to the touch, but it’s worse for your ears, let’s have a listen.The fans were off most of the time at idle, but they turned on briefly from time to time. They  get louder in the higher performance modes, as expected. Turbo is a little louder compared to  most other laptops, while maxing out the fans in manual mode puts the TUF in the top 20% loudest  laptops tested. But as we saw earlier, maxing the fans doesn’t really provide any benefit anyway.Alright we really need to talk about the screen.In the US, it seems like it’s available with either a 1440p 165Hz or 1080p 165Hz screen,  and ASUS are listing a 3ms response time for both.But here in Australia they’re offering it with a lower quality 1080p 144Hz screen,  and note that they don't bother to mention the response time here.So you can probably expect better results in your country if you can  get it with a 165Hz screen compared to what I’m about to show you with this 144Hz panel.The colors are ok for gaming, but content creators would probably want more. The  screen doesn’t get super bright either, but it is at least able to hit the 300  nits I like to see as a minimum when at full brightness. But only just..Backlight bleed wasn’t bad, but this will vary between laptops and panels.The response time kind of sucks. There’s no overdrive mode, so we’re looking at a 18ms  grey-to-grey response time. A 144Hz screen needs 6.94ms for transitions to occur within  the refresh window, and we’re nowhere near that here, so expect some blur in fast paced games.It’s similar to far cheaper gaming laptops. Not the end of the world if  you’re playing single player titles, but not great compared to others if  you’re playing competitive first person shooters. It’s actually gotten worse since  last year’s version. But again, the 165hz option should be much better.The total system latency is the amount of time between a mouse click and when  a gunshot fire appears on the screen in CS:GO. The higher frame rate from the newer GPU puts  it ahead of last year’s A15, despite this year’s having a slower screen.Though as per  the higher standard deviation, results were less consistent on the 2023 model.Despite the screen otherwise being fairly meh, it does at least have G-Sync, but only when Optimus  is off, otherwise freesync is available. It has advanced optimus too, so you can use the Nvidia  control panel to enable or disable optimus without rebooting. You can access the classic MUX switch  option through armory crate by setting ultimate mode, but that requires a reboot to change.There’s a 720p camera above the screen, but it does not have IR for Windows Hello face unlock.Here’s how the camera and microphones look and sound,  and this is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard.Now let’s find out how well TUF A15 performs in games. We’ve tested with these settings  for best results. Apparently we’re in the high frame rate zone, so it better not let us down.Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with our own custom test run, and I’ve got the A15 shown by the  red highlight. At 1080p it’s right in line with most of our other RTX 4070 laptops,  though the 1% low was the worst here, which means more dips in performance. That seems  to change at the higher 1440p resolution. The RTX 4070 isn’t really that much better  compared to the RTX 4060 or 3070 Ti, and it’s only a little behind the best from last gen,  the RTX 3080 Ti. You’ve really got to step up to the 4080 if you want a big FPS boost.Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark. Again at 1080p it’s similar to our  other RTX 4070 results, with differences that are insignificant and within the margin of error  range. Well, except for MSI’s smaller Stealth 14, which was notably behind and worse than some  4060s. It’s the best result from any 4070 laptop tested so far at 1440p, but again we’re talking  about less than a 3 FPS gain best case, which you’re really not going to notice when playing.The TUF has the highest 4070 result in Control at 1080p as well, and unlike Cyberpunk,  this time the 1% low was the best, so it varies by game. It’s still the best 4070 at 1440p too,  again not too much ahead compared to most of the others and this difference could  simply come down to silicon lottery rather than something special that ASUS is doing.Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some content creator tests.The TUF wasn’t that great here considering its specs. Maybe due to the one memory stick,  as I’ve found this to affect these workloads. It’s often quite close  to the smaller Zephyrus G14 with the same CPU but lower tier GPU.The BIOS looks nice, but there’s almost no customization available. Especially  when compared to other brands like MSI or Lenovo.Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 23.10 live CD. By default the keyboard,  touchpad, camera, speakers, ethernet and Wi-Fi all worked. Keyboard shortcuts for  adjusting screen brightness, volume, and keyboard brightness all work too,  but the F4 aura key does not work, the keyboard was stuck on the last effect I set in Windows.Pricing and availability will change over time, so check the link below the video for updates  and current sales. And if the TUF A15 does have a good sale, we’ll be sure to add it to  our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that everyday to include all of the latest sales,  so check it out regularly to save money on your next gaming laptop.At the time of recording, Amazon has the RTX 4050 version with older Zen 3+ CPU for $1050,  which is kind of a rip off when we’ve had other 4050 laptops with similar features  on the deals site for $300 less. Even the RTX 4060 version with Zen 4 CPU is $50 more at B&H,  which is much better competitively. Best Buy used to have the same specs I’ve tested here,  but not anymore. Instead the Intel version with 4070 goes for $1400. Not great,  but I think it’s gone on sale for $1000 in the past which is pretty good.All things considered, the TUF A15 is a pretty good gaming laptop,  which is basically what I said last year.Because for the most part, this is the same as last year’s model. The  only major difference is that we’ve got a newer CPU and GPU for more performance.  The chassis design is much the same, and battery life is still excellent.The screen in this Australian model kind of sucks, so stay away from the 1080p 144Hz  option if you’ve got the choice. The 165Hz 1080p or 1440p panels should be much better.Apart from that there’s not really too much to complain about, except perhaps the price.ASUS TUF laptops just don’t seem to have as many sales compared to their competitors.  I don’t think this is worth it at full price, but with the right sale the TUF  is a solid laptop. Just keep an eye out on the gaminglaptop.deals website for a nice price drop!If you’re looking for a budget friendly gaming laptop then check this video next!  I’ve gone through what I think are the best budget gaming laptops from each brand  and shared the top 3 best options right now - so I’ll see you in that one next.\n"