Asus TUF Gaming A15 - Review

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The world of gaming laptops has been in a tizzy ever since Asus announced its choice of going with AMD instead of Intel this year. Speculations and rumours were rife on performance versus price and now, finally, we have hard evidence.

This year Asus rolled out two new gaming laptops under their TUF series, both powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 Mobile series processors. The TUF Gaming A15 and the TUF Gaming A17..

We received the TUF Gaming A15 in Bonfire Black for a review, spec’d out with AMD’s Ryzen 7 4800H (2.9Ghz), Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6GB), an expandable 16GB of DDR memory and 500GB PCIE SSD plus 1TB in storage.

Benchmarks

I ran PCMark 10’s suite of tests to validate its battery capabilities when challenged with day-to-day work activities with a side of games.

PC Mark Modern Office Test - 3554. While performing essential tasks such as video conferencing and web browsing the A15 scored a relative high - 6987.
When it came down to productivity, the score was 4711.
But the least scoring segment was digital content creation, that’s image and video editing, which was benched at 3703.

PCMark 10’s Extended test yielded a total score of 3347.
Essentials 6953, Productivity 4773, Digital Content Creation 3764 and Gaming at 2718.

Running the PC Mark 10 Express test yielded a total score of 3397.
Essentials scored 6974, while productivity scored 4523.

Geekbench recorded 1165 on a Single-Core and 7318 on Multi-Core.

With Geekbench Compute the TUF A15 scored 65097 (OpenCL), 69719 (CUDA) and 56040 (Vulkan)

On Cinebench the TUF A15 scored 3976, amongst the top 5 scores in rendering.

To test out the A15’s gaming prowess with 3DMark, Time Spy scored 6015, Fire Strike scored a 13887 while Fire Strike Extreme yielded a score of 6950.

While these aren’t great benchmarks, for a budget gaming laptop, they’re not bad.

A point to note is that the battery was charged to the max and plugged out before running this test. So expect a slightly lower performance when under 50% juice.

With regards to real-time gaming, Crysis 3 on very high ran between 75-82 fps, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on high ran at 105 fps, Apex Legends on ultra at 110 fps, Destiny 2 on ultra at 112 fps, Valorant on ultra at 108 fps.

Design and Build

The TUF Gaming A15 isn’t a slim supermodel at any stretch. Weighing in at 2.3 kgs and wrapped around in expensive looking plastic, the A15 is looks a little chunky. But then of course, this is the result of copper insulation lined around the GPU and CPU.

Sharp lines, honey-comb aesthetic, and a brushed metal finish give the A15 a fast and edgy, modern gaming aesthetic. On its side and back are visible copper vents that propel the warm air out. Another great example of form vs function from the Taiwanese manufacturer.

The A15 feels like a machine that’s built to last. Besides its military spec standard to withstand tough conditions, the edges are diagonally slashed to absorb sideways impact. And yet, the laptop with its 180W charger doesn’t feel like you’re carrying a lot in your backpack.

Display

Our review unit came equipped a 144Hz FHD vIPS display with adaptive sync, a first for its kind. There is also a 60Hz model that’s priced cheaper.

In my opinion, this was perhaps the only feature that didn’t impress. As a game reviewer and content creator, I would have loved a better display; to be specific, a display that reproduces the colours in a spectrum better. I can only venture a guess that the company chose this challenged display tech as an option to lower the overall cost. And to mitigate that challenge, retro-fitted is a DisplayPort 1.4 so you can set the A15 up to a display of your choice. The display lid itself had capable hinges, meaning it can be opened using one-hand.

If you have a spare display lying around, great. If not, then the 15.6-inch, thinly bezelled 144Hz adaptive sync display, is alright, but not great.

Keyboard and IO

Compared to its previous iteration, the full function keyboard makes a comeback with the this year’s TUF A15. Some minor modifications included smaller but evenly spaced out directional arrows and narrow keys on the NumPad compared to the main keys. Functional, ergonomic and practical.

The keys still come with RGB backlight, with single zone illumination and a handful of effects. The feel of using them hasn’t changed much since the 2019 TUF model.

With regards to I/O ports, the TUF A15 comes with a single USB 3.0 on the right, Appreciated as it keeps clear of obstruction while using the mouse. Whereas on the left there’s the power in, ethernet, HDMI, 2x USB 3.0, a Type-C and finally a combined headphone/microphone 3.5mm jack.

Sound

I really appreciate a gaming laptop that offers great sound and tweaks to it. Asus has maintained its tradition of delivering great sound whether its the speakers or your headset.

Two upgraded speakers with four cut-outs pump out sound with deep bass coupled with DTS:X Ultra technology delivering high-fidelity 7.1-channel virtual surround sound. There were clear indications of enhanced spatial awareness. I could track gunfire sound sources while playing Crucible in Destiny 2. And the best part was the 8 preset modes with custom equaliser settings. I may have abused this feature while switching between tv-shows, movies and gaming.

Battery

The Ryzen Mobile 4000 series processors promises up to 2x the power efficiency of the previous generation. With that in mind the A15 comes equipped with a modest 48Whr battery.

The battery lasts for a good 7 and half hours on basic office work, some browsing and light gaming. Which compared to last years TUF, is a huge improvement.

Price

The benchmark test results compounded with its practical use for almost 3 and half weeks, make this year’s TUF Gaming A15 probably the best in affordable gaming you can buy right now.

The model we tested came with a price tag of Rs. 94,990 and that may well wander around the 1 lac+ bracket if equipped with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2060.

But starting at their base variations, the Bonfire Black is an Amazon exclusive priced at Rs. 60,990. The Fortress Grey however, starts higher at 62,990 and is available to purchase across all Asus official retail partners, Reliance Digital stores and Amazon.

The Verdict

The Asus TUF Gaming A15 sits comfortably between a high-end gaming laptop and affordability. You can start gaming at 60Hz at Rs. 60,990, with AMD performance inside and a battery to last you at least 6-7 hours. It looks great, cools great and performs exceptionally well. The question of longevity comes to a rest with the TUF A15's pop-up screw at the base. Swap over your RAM and SSD and you’re set. Carrying it around isn’t cumbersome, nor is prolonged gaming or working. Standing in competition, with regards to performance, specs and price are perhaps the Dell G3 and MSI GL65. At the end, a very welcome change with AMD processors cushioned with competitive pricing. I seriously like how Asus is taking these risks.

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