ASUSTUF Gaming A17 (2023) Gaming Laptop, 17.3” FHD 144Hz Display, GeForce RTX 4060, AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, 16GB DDR5, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, Wi-Fi 6, Windows 11, FA707NV-ES74

This laptop is for someone who wants a laptop to take around and do productive work on and also play modern games at high settings. There are others with faster GPUS, but hardly any that can claim 6-9 hours of battery life like this one. There are tons of battery saving features, like a dedicated key to change what power profile to use. The 144hz screen auto sets to 60hz on battery so save battery life. Gaming on a AAA game at high settings, 30 fps, I get around 2-3 hours of battery life. Less demanding games can go more. Other contemporary laptops i've used can really only game for an hour or so while on battery. You can also set the battery life to be capped at 80% or 60% to extend it's usable life. I usually keep it on 80% and still have long battery life. And it comes in at a hell of a competitive price.#CPUThe cpu is a bit lacking when compared to other 6-8+ core laptops, but it's a good tradeoff for the lower TDP (and less power consumption). It is more than capable for most peoples work though. It cannot be undervolted like any new intel chip, which I did not know until researching it.#GPUThe 3050ti has been able to run any game I throw at it on high settings, and older games can be ran easily on my 4k monitor and the native 4k resolution.It can get fairly loud when gaming at high performance for awhile, I game with headphones so I don't notice it when i take them off. But this will be an issue for really any gaming laptop, especially one this thin.#PortsThunderbolt 4 can be connected to external docks and external GPUS. Allows 100w usb c charging so you can run laptop off one cable, but keep in mind this is less than the 180wpower brick, and if you are gaming at high performance, it will slowly drain the battery unless you also have the power cable connected. I also got a 50$ external 20000 mah battery with 65w usb charging which can bring the laptop from 10-80%. Nice!It is annoying how the ports are all at least half way down the machine, as the top half is for the fan outputs.I am able to drive two 4k at 60hz monitors, an external HDD, mouse and keyboard, and charge the device all from a single cable. For those whose primarily use a laptop at a desk setup like me, and occasionally like to take it off to go work on the couch or bed or something, this makes it super easy just having the one cable.#UpgradeabilityThere are 8gbs of ram soldered onto the board, and an additional slot, which I throw a 16gb stick in for 24gb. There is an additional m.2 slot which I put another 512gb ssd in. Speaking of which, the SSD is crazy fast. While looking up benchmarks for other laptops, this one easily beat them all. I don't remember exact numbers but it's there.#Display1080p, 144hz. Good color reproduction, and clear sharp images. Does not look washed out or anything. Not the brightest for working in sunlight though, but it's usable.The screen cannot tilt back 180 degrees, more like 140 ish? I use a laptop stand so I cant have it as vertically tilted as I like, but for 99% of people this is a non issue. The hinges feel solid and don't seem like they will crap out or break off like other.#Keyboard & TrackpadThe backlit keyboard (one color, changeable brightness with keyboard keys or using software, also has different modes like breathing) is solid. Key travel is not shallow and has a good click. I do not notice a difference in quality with my Mx master key keyboard.The trackpad is average. Not glass, but precise and not an annoying texture. Not much to say on it. It gets the job done.#Design and buildIt is marketed as a 'tough' laptop and while it doesn't feel much different from a normal laptop (and isn't metal, it's some sort of hard plastic polymer), I have had 0 damage in the year i've owned it.The Tuf Dash f15 is solid, yet lightweight and not annoying to lug around. It is thin and not too heavy, and has similar dimensions and weight of most high powered ultrabooks. It has an attractive design that reminds me of a razer or macbook, I wish it didn't have the 'TUF' on the lid though it is very subtle coloring thankfully#Bugs Glitches & SoftwareThis is the first laptop i've had where I have not encountered really any bugs or glitches. I have had BSOD but I am almost postive these are from the Dell TB16 thunderbolt dock i'm using. Even these have only happened 2 times in 3 months.The laptop is ran off of Asus Armory Crate service, which has features such as profile switching, game optimziation, system tweaking and more. It can be accessed via a dedicated key. It is not super lightweight of a program, but not overly consuming either. You can close the program in task manager and the laptop will not have any issues, just some features are closed off.

Excellent Value & Performance During DiscountsThis laptop is an incredible deal, especially during discount periods. The price, considering the features it offers, is truly exceptional and stands out in its class. Performance-wise, it handles both day-to-day tasks and more demanding applications smoothly.i bought this laptop with the expectation of using it as a tool in learning 3d animation and gaming it performs very well in gaming and 3d modeling, the screen is just enough to use but can be improved.Overall, if you’re looking for a reliable laptop that packs a lot of power and versatility, and you want to get it at a fantastic price, definitely consider grabbing it at a discount. This laptop delivers excellent value for money and is a top choice in its range.

This laptop was not cutting edge when I purchased it, but it was only a few generations from the ones that were. For the cost savings, I have zero complaints regarding performance. It's a little janky in the way the video cards work (One is onboard and the other is an Nvidia discrete card). The benefit from that config is the ability to use the laptop for non-gaming functions without burning through the battery. In this way the laptop can double as both productivity and entertainment. Current games run at 30-90 FPS depending on the resolution I choose more so than the graphic quality settings. I can run full quality at full HD with great frame rates with DLSS, but if I crank the display to 2K+, I'll dip into the high 30's (Helldivers 2 for this reference). This review will be dated in a year from now, but this is point in time feedback.

So, my previous personal laptop was definitely outdated (circa 2015 Dell) and in need of replacement, even though it's not my primary PC and is more of a backup/something I can take on vacation with me. This time around I wanted something I could game on and/or act as a viable backup should something befall my desktop gaming rig. However, because this wouldn't be a daily driver or anything, I didn't feel the need to go all out, a moderate budget of $1000-$1500 was where I wanted to be. I wanted something with a relatively modern CPU, a decent discrete GPU, upgradable RAM, and upgradable storage. There were a few laptops that were in the running. But in the end the Asus TUF A15 won the day. Mainly on the strength of it checking most of the boxes and being on sale for $1200 USD when I bought it.At $1600+ this laptop isn't a great deal IMHO. It's downsides are hard to overlook at that price point. But at under $1300 things became a bit more palatable.The Good- The Ryzen 9 7940HS is fine laptop CPU. 8 cores/16 threads. It's usually comes in above the i7-13700H and below the i9-13900H in most benchmarks, but offers better battery life and considerably stronger iGPU. The Radeon 780M is powerful enough to run some older or less demanding games at 1080p decently. So you don't always have to use the discrete GPU when gaming. Which is a nice option to have. With that said, it does lose out in pure CPU grunt to the Intel HX's those are basically detuned desktop CPUs. But in terms of performance vs. efficiency , the 7940HS is hard to beat. It's similar in performance to a desktop Ryzen 5 7600X or desktop i5-12400 for context.- The RTX 4070 discrete GPU. This GPU is really more than you need for 1080p gaming, particularly with DLSS and Frame Gen. At 1080p In Cyberpunk with DLSS Quality and Frame Gen, and with Pyscho ray-tracing (but not path tracing) enabled and with most of the other settings at "high" Things are motoring along at 90-110 FPS on average, Same thing with Starfield (no ray tracing in that though). Gaming performance is more that satisfactory at 1080p, If you were running a 1440p display it would still probably be fine. The RTX 4070 mobile is somewhere between an RTX 3060 ti desktop and RTX 4060 desktop GPU in terms of performance, but it does seem to handle ray tracing with more grace and dignity than the Ampere cards and it has frame gen to fall back on as well. The only thing that gives me pause is the meager 8GB frame buffer. 8GB of VRAM is quickly becoming the baseline for newer games. A few years down the road, 8GB of VRAM might not cut anymore.- Upgradability. Laptops aren't known for vast amounts of customization. The Asus TUF A15 is about as good as you can reasonably expect. It has an open M.2 slot for another SSD, it's wifi card is easy to upgrade (more on that in a minute), and it has two slots for RAM, which is becoming rare in an era where soldering down the RAM is common. Access is easy enough, there are about a dozen screws keeping the bottom cover on, one of which is captive and two of which are different lengths, so if you're going to do some upgrades, keep track of which screws go where, if needed Asus has the whitepapers for this laptop on their website and it has breakdown of which screws go where.- Big battery. The battery is a very generous 90Wh. It's about as high a capacity as you can get in a 15.6 inch laptop. The battery life is very good by gaming laptop standards. As long as you're not using the discrete GPU, you can reasonably expect 7 hours on the low side to 9 hours on the high side of typical use. For gaming, as you might expect, battery life drops to around 3 to 4 hours depending on how hard you're pushing the discrete GPU. When running on battery the screen refresh rate drops to 60Hz by default, presumably to help with battery life.- The ports are generous. Being an AMD powered machine, Thunderbolt was going to be off the table. But good news! You get USB 4 on the A15, which can do most of the things that Thunderbolt can do. You get two USB A ports and two USB C ports (at least one of which is the USB 4), You also get an HDMI 2.1 port. It does support G-Sync over HDMI assuming the display you hook it up to is also G-Sync compliant.- Full keyboard. The A15's keyboard has a numberpad, not all laptops do.Now onto, the "meh" features of the TUF A15. These are the aspects of the laptop that aren't really good or terrible, but are areas where things could be better, but they're not that bad.- Build quality is fine for $1200, not really what you'd expect at the $1600+ price point though.- The RGB on the keyboard is a bit much at it's default setting- There's the usual amount of pre-installed shovel-ware. You probably won't have to resort to a clean Windows install, removing the various/dubious pre-installed dreck only took a few minutes, it wasn't bad as far these things go.- The trackpad sometimes acts up randomly where it will assume you're trying to select everything on the desktop as you move the mouse pointer. I updated the software/drivers for it, but it made no difference. What did work was taking a microfiber cloth, *slightly* dampening it then cleaning the trackpad (computer is off when you're doing this), then turn it back on and it works fine again.- The OEM SSD is a 1TB WD SN560 which I don't think was ever sold at retail. It is a Gen 4 NVMe drive, but it's not exactly one of the faster ones. I ran CrystalDisk and got ~5000 MB/s read and ~3300 MB/s write. Good enough, but likely an area where costs were cut. Real world performance is fine, the laptop boot up quite quickly.- You do get two 8GB SODIMMS standard for a total of 16GB of dual channel RAM. Unfortunately it's only DDR5-4800 which actually slower than what the motherboard/CPU can support. While it's nice to have dual channel RAM standard, the slower speed of the OEM RAM is a bit of a let down. This is probably another cost-saving measure.Now we're at the "things that should be better" part, these are omissions or features that should've been better from the start;- The screen. The screen on the TUF A15 is mediocre at best. At a $1200 price point, it's underwhelming, but acceptable. At a $1600+ price point, it's basically an insult. It's a 1080p screen which isn't exactly cutting edge stuff. It's got an entry level IPS panel, and it's not very bright. You're getting 250-300 nits here. It's fine for indoor use with the brightness turned up, outdoors on a sunny day, it's barely useable. Typically , if you're spending over $1500 on a laptop, it's going to have a 500+ nit screen that's much brighter than this. The color reproduction is again, very "mid". Basically, you're getting a display that would be at home on a $500-$800 laptop. At the $1200-ish price point, you can overlook it since you're getting a great CPU and GPU, but at $1600, you can get similar CPU/GPU combos with a much brighter, higher resolution screen. It's a bit of let down. But most reviews of this laptop do mention it.- The stock Wifi card. Again because you're using an AMD CPU/chipset, you're not getting an Intel wireless NIC. The stock MediaTek wifi card was inconsistent (at best) for me. I did some research on the issue and after various updates decided that an upgrade was needed. I ended up buying an Intel AX210 Wifi card and swapped out stock mediatek card. It was an easy job, the wifi antenna leads being a bit fiddly. Now the wifi performance is better and it's not dropping the wifi connection every 10 minutes anymore. I recommend this upgrade for anyone with this laptop.Here I'll list the upgrades I've done to my Asus TUF A15- Changed the wifi card to an Intel AX210- Upgraded the RAM from 2x 8GB DDR5 4800 to 2x 16GB DDR5 5600 (Crucial CT16G56C46S5)- Added a 2TB Crucial T500 in the extra M.2 slot.Overall with the upgrades, other than the lackluster screen there's not that much to complain about. I snagged the A15 for right at $1200 with the upgrades, I ended up under $1500. And to get something with comparable specs (but probably a better screen) I would be up around the $1600-$1800 range. So the value for money if you can pick it up for $1100-$1200 is very good., the specs are good, and at that price point the foibles can be overlooked/accepted. At $1500 and beyond, I don't think the value is there vs. other more premium laptops.