Asus TUF Gaming A15
Asus has updated its long-lasting entry-level TUF gaming rig, but has the novelty of this newish range already worn off, or is it here to stay?
We’ve been fond of Asus’s TUF (‘The Ultimate Force’... oh please, Asus) branded gaming laptops ever since they emerged in 2018 with a reengineered fan design that repelled small particles to prevent dust build up and help prolong the life of the unit. This strive for longevity continues today in the TUF Gaming A15 which sees the return of an upgraded version of this selfcleaning cooling system and novel features like an optional 90Wh battery to keep the device running longer in day-to-day use.
The most striking feature of the A15 is a new chassis design that marries a number of interesting elements into one cohesive design. The top shell can either be a flat silver polished piece of aluminium or an angular brushed metal and carbon-fibre-looking case that takes inspiration from HP’s Omen range. The main thing however, is that both look appropriately sci-fi without being unsuitable to take to the office. Returning again are shock, thermal and humidity resistances and after-market customisations that can help keep your device current for longer. In addition to the upgradable RAM, you also get an additional PCIe and a SATA 3 slot to add more storage.
Since its primary purpose is to be a gaming laptop, it’s got plenty of powerful components and a few neat perks that help it to go fast as well as far. The first is a 15.6-inch FullHD screen that comes at either 60Hz or 144Hz refresh rates and covers either 45% or 72% of the NTSC colour gamut. When you consider that 72% NTSC is equivalent to a standard sRGB monitor, your games will not look very vibrant if you opt for the cheaper display here. This is compounded by a peak brightness of around 280nits, which is a little too dull and won’t make games look great if there’s much sunlight where you’re using it.
The A15 has a choice of three
AMD processor options of a Ryzen 5, 7 or 9 for the CPU. The unit we tested had a Ryzen 7 4800H and 16GB of RAM, but you can expand the latter up to 32GB if needed. Because this is designed to be a value device the choice of GPU includes the Nvidia GTX 1650, 1650Ti and the RTX 2060. We took the most powerful option here for a spin with a 512GB PCIe SSD, a configuration that was available online for $2,099.
The CPU in the A15 we tested did surprisingly well, getting 5,315 in PCMark 10’s Overall benchmark and 12.9fps in HWBOT x265’s 4K media encoding benchmark, which was within a few percent of the ROG Zephyrus G14 running a Ryzen 9 4900HS and other comparable specs. Onboard storage speeds were first gen PCIe SSD level at around 1,750MB/s either way and the graphical performance was where you would expect it to be, netting around 45fps on Ghost Recon: Wildlands, 62 on Total War: Warhammer 2 and 66 on Middle Earth: Shadow of War using Ultra 1080p settings.
The unit we tested used a 45Wh battery and managed three hours and 15 minutes in PCMark 8 Home Battery, so you should be able to get a full working day if you decide to get the model with the 90Wh battery. JOEL BURGESS A good value entry gaming PC that should last you a while but could be a little brighter.