The Asus TUF Dash 15 is one of our favorite budget gaming laptops of 2021, with an irresistible combination of good looks, good performance, and a low price.
The only hiccup is trying to find the best combination of monitor and GPU, something Asus’ habit of limiting certain combinations to certain markets doesn’t make it any easier. Now, the successor has arrived – the Asus TUF F15 – with a facelift and the latest 12th generation Intel processors inside. ASUS TUF Gaming F15 (2022) review: What you need to know
At just under £1,500, the 2022 Asus TUF F15 sits somewhere between true budget gaming laptops like the Lenovo Legion 5 AMD Advantage Edition and full-on gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Scar Strix 15 . This means you can get closer to Premier. League performance and build quality just above championship price. The F15 is a very attractive laptop with the latest 12th generation Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU (wick up). It also comes with a decent display with a refresh rate of 165Hz, DCI-P3 color reproduction, up to 1TB of storage, and a pretty fancy keyboard with a numeric keypad. The design is an evolution rather than a revolution compared to last year’s model, but that’s not a problem because the 2021 TUF 15 is stunning.
ASUS TUF Gaming F15 review: Price and competitionLike the 2021 (FX506) model, the 2022 (FX507) TUF F15 is available in several different models. You get an Intel Core i7-12500H or Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, 3050 Ti, 3060 or 3070 GPU, and one of three different screen types, all 15.6 inches diagonally: 144Hz Full HD unit, 300Hz Full HD panel or 165Hz QHD screen.
The version tested in this review features an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 6GB of video RAM, and a 165Hz QHD (2,560 x 1,440) display. It also comes with 16GB of quad-channel system RAM and a 1TB SSD; John Lewis sells the system for £1,400.
Competition is fierce in the mid-priced gaming laptop space, so it’s not hard to find strong rivals, and when it comes to maximum value for money, the Acer Nitro 5 is hard to beat. It’s made of plastic rather than anything on the metal end of the periodic table, and the display is a bit dull, but its AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU make it a solid performer. The price of less than £900 is very tempting.
Lenovo’s Legion 5 AMD Advantage Edition uses an AMD rather than an Nvidia GPU and, notably, comes with 8GB of VRAM. Powered by a Ryzen 7 CPU and priced at under £1,000, the Legion 5 is the most balanced budget gaming laptop on the market today.
Another all-AMD kit is HP’s Omen 16, which uses the same Ryzen 7 chip and RX 6600M GPU as the Lenovo Legion 5 but has a larger 16.1-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 display. AMD GPUs aren’t quite up to the task of gaming at native display resolutions, but the extra screen real estate pays dividends when working rather than gaming.
If money is no object, the TUF F15’s hardcore cousin, the ASUS ROG Scar Strix 15, is worth a look. Yes, it’s £1,000 more expensive and the sides of the keyboard deck can get warm, but it’s an absolute powerhouse thanks to the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti GPU, which means it’s able to make the most of its 1440p display. ASUS TUF Gaming F15 review: Design and build quality
Featuring MIL-STD-810H resistance to shock, vibration, and other extreme environmental conditions, the TUF F15 is one of the best-built gaming laptops on the market. Like the 2021 model, it’s made from a combination of aluminum and plastic and feels very solid. Asus claims the new model is 4.5% smaller than the 2021 model, and my measurements more or less confirm that. Measuring 354 x 251 x 25mm,
the 2022 model is certainly narrower and shorter, although it’s slightly thicker at 2.2kg and 200g heavier. It still comes in Moonlight White, but our review unit was the cooler beige model. It’s certainly a smart-looking thing, and the trim on this Gaming F15 model is more discreet than the TUF Dash I reviewed last year. Also different are the four status lights above the keyboard, which are visible when the lid is closed thanks to cutouts on the bottom of the lid. I found these quite distracting when using the F15 in the dark.
Asus has improved the port assortment, so you now have one less USB-A port and one more USB-C. This means you’ll find a Thunderbolt 4 port on the left side, a USB-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port that also supports DisplayPort 1.4, a Gigabit Ethernet connector, HDMI 2.0b, 3.5mm audio jack, and a USB -A 3.2 Gen 1 socket (plus DC power input). Another USB-A port sits on the right edge, along with a Kensington lock slot in a rather uneven layout.
Remove the bottom panel iIt’s a simple process, and once you’re in, you can add a second 2280 M.2 SSD, replace the existing SSD, and upgrade both 8GB SODIMM RAM cards. On the SSD side, the PCI-E 4 Samsung 1TB card in my sample recorded decent sequential read and write times (2,685MB/sec and 1,996MB/sec respectively), but the 4K speed was just 23.9MB/sec and 42.7MB/sec.
Megabytes/second. There are no such issues with the Intel AX201 Wi-Fi card, which supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 and works flawlessly. ASUS TUF Gaming F15 review: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam
The new TUF F15 features a full-width membrane keyboard with numeric keypad. It’s paired with TUF’s signature translucent WASD keys. The keys themselves have 1.7mm of travel and a smooth action with a bit of bounce on the bottom, making them great for typing and gaming. Four convenient hotkeys at the top let you adjust the volume, mute the microphone, and launch the Asus Armory Crate control panel. There’s no per-key lighting, which isn’t surprising at this price. Even more annoying is the backlight’s inability to evenly illuminate key graphics. For example, on the function keys, the upstroke of the small F is fully lit, but the rest of the letter and the number to the right are only partially lit. Combined with the stylized graphics, it makes everything in a dark environment look a little chaotic.
While the TUF 15 has shrunk, the trackpad has grown by 27%, so it now measures 130 x 77mm. It’s still all plastic, but feels comfortable and has a positive clicky action. The TUF logo is printed in the upper right corner and has a simple design.
The webcam doesn’t support Windows Hello – in fact, there’s no biometric security whatsoever – but it produces sharper and more colorful images than the 720p specs suggest.
ASUS TUF Gaming F15 review: Display and audioThe display produces a maximum brightness of 337cd/m², while the contrast ratio is unobtrusive but solid at 1,033:1. It’s colorful and capable of reproducing 130.7% of the sRGB color gamut (96.5% of DCI-P3), which is also pretty accurate for a gaming laptop, with an average Delta E of 2.07 compared to sRGB.
20The combination of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels and a 15.6-inch panel results in a crisp pixel density of 188dpi, making the F15 a very satisfying laptop for watching movies. Tests of cheaper 144Hz displays on other sites have shown it to be a dim, drab , and rather frustrating affair. If you can, go for this QHD model.
By 2022, all TUF machines will come with MUX switches, allowing you to connect the GPU directly to the display without the need for an integrated graphics processor, making it a trio. This improves frame rate, but affects
Asus laptop battery life. In addition to the MUX switch, you also get Nvidia’s G-Sync VRR display synchronization technology.