Asus TUF Dash F15
The RTX 3070 Mobile will bring big benefits, but the MSI Pulse is our pick of this month’s gaming laptops
PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT) from box.co.uk
If the MSI Pulse wins for value – and it most definitely does between the two gaming laptops on test – then the Asus TUF Dash F15 wins for fit and finish. By comparison it screams luxury, whether that’s through a delightful soft-touch keyboard (complete with highlighted WASD keys) or the top-quality trackpad with its super-smooth finish. We suspect you’ll enjoy using the TUF Dash if you buy it.
While the screen didn’t excel in our technical tests, there’s much to like from a gamer’s point of view: support for adaptive sync and a 144Hz refresh rate make it a fine choice for the powerful gaming components inside. Chief among these is Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile chip, which includes 8GB of memory, and that more or less guarantees playable frame rates at the screen’s native 1080p in even the most demanding games. That isn’t true for the GTX 3050 Ti in MSI’s cheaper system.
As we noted in the review of the MSI Pulse, however, that laptop’s superior processor helped push up frame rates in CPU-limited games such as Metro: Last Light. The TUF Dash F15 must also make do with a mere four cores, which is what held it back – comparatively – in mediafocused benchmarks such as PC Pro’s and the PCMark 10 Digital Creation test ( see the graphs on p92). Still, the TUF UF Dash is a powerful system by almost lmost any metric.
We also appreciate the fact that Asus supplies a self-repair manual for the he TUF Dash F15. Admittedly, it’s overkill verkill to have 16 crosshead screws securing ecuring the base, and once you battle attle past them you’ll discover that 8GB GB of RAM is embedded on the motherboard; not ideal if something goes oes wrong with it. You can at least replace eplace the supplied 8GB SODIMM. There’s here’s no second M.2 slot, either: you must again replace the supplied 512GB SSD if you need more capacity. Fortunately, the single USB-C port supports Thunderbolt 4 for speedy external storage.
This port can also be used to charge the TUF Dash, which destroyed the MSI in both our non-gaming battery tests: expect around nine hours to the three hours of its rival. It’s level pegging when it comes to gaming, though, with life expectancy dropping to a paltry hour. Neither machine is ideal for a travelling life, but the F15 is notably less chunky than the MSI Pulse and benefits from a 2kg weight compared to the 2.1kg of its rival.
It misses out on an award, but we like the Asus TUF Dash F15: it’s a high-quality laptop that can handle AAA games, which is quite something for the price.