ASUS has a long history of producing gaming laptops. Their ROG series of laptops are among the best in the industry’s high-end segment, with premium prices to match. ASUS introduced the TUF line of laptops for budget-conscious gamers, offering reasonably well-built laptops with specs that matched the price. However, thanks in large part to Intel’s new 11th-generation Tiger Lake-H35 processors, the Asus TUF Dash F15 brings a luxurious gaming experience to a starting price of $1,099. The ASUS TUF lineup has remained a very reasonable and, at times, an optimal choice for gamers who do not require powerful internals to run their favourite games.
Asus TUF Dash F15 review: Design
When we first opened the Asus TUF Dash F15, we had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t a ROG Zephyrus. For context, Asus’ TUF line of gaming laptops and accessories is aimed at a budget-conscious audience looking for the most bang for their buck. The design of these products is typically utilitarian, but the Asus TUF Dash F15 is anything but. This gaming laptop is only 0.8 inches (20.3mm) thick and weighs 4.5lb (2kg), making it extremely thin and light for a gaming laptop. The laptop’s keyboard deck and lid are both made of aluminium in a gorgeous grey colorway, so it doesn’t sacrifice rigidity for portability. However, the bottom of the laptop is still plastic, so don’t expect a unibody design or anything – that’s still reserved for much more expensive devices, unfortunately.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The majority of the keys on the F15’s keyboard are concave. A few keys are flat. They all have a medium stroke length and a distinct pressure point. The key layout, on the other hand, cannot be described as optimal: It’s worth mentioning the small arrow keys and the single-line “Enter” key. During typing, the keyboard wobbles slightly. This, however, did not prove to be vexing. Two function keys control the three-stage backlight. Overall, Asus provides a keyboard that is suitable for everyday use. A multitouch-capable ClickPad replaces the mouse. Its smooth surface allows fingers to easily glide across it. It also reacts to input from the corners.
Asus TUF Dash F15 review: Display
For the Dash F15, Asus chose a 15.6-inch IPS panel and even included Nvidia G-Sync, a high 240 Hz refresh rate, and a 3ms response time. A fast screen like that has obvious gaming benefits, especially if you’re playing an eSports title where your graphics card can easily reach 240 frames per second. Keep in mind that higher-graphics-intensive games will be more difficult to achieve high frame rates in. IPS is known for good colour reproduction, and the shades came through, including hints of brown cabinets in the deepest shadows and pale robin’s egg blue cabinets. Smoky effects with rainbow prisms appeared smooth and realistic, with hints of purple, blue, and red visible. However, the area it was playing in was quite dark, and in my bright room, we found myself wishing I could turn up the brightness a notch.
Audio
The TUF Dash F15 has dual firing speakers that support Dolby Atmos. The addition of Dolby Atmos may have contributed to the improved audio quality on the TUF Dash F15 2022 over its predecessor. It may also be better than most on the market in terms of volume while maintaining clarity. The mids and highs are crystal clear, and there is some base present but not as strong. That is still preferable to having no base at all. In any case, we still recommend that you use your favourite gear when playing audio-reliant games with great soundtracks, such as FPS and RPGs. You can still get away and enjoy yourself by playing some games on your laptop’s speakers. As an added bonus, you get the well-regarded ASUS two-way AI noise cancellation feature.
Asus TUF Dash F15 review: Graphic and Gaming
The first two benchmarks in this section assess a PC’s gaming performance potential. We run the Sky Diver and Fire Strike tests in UL’s 3DMark, both of which are DirectX 11-based. Another gaming simulation, Unigine Corp.’s Superposition, creates a complex 3D scene using a different rendering engine. In comparison to the Acer and its older GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q, the TUF Dash F15 was unremarkable. The Superposition results show that its GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU outperforms Razer’s GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, despite the fact that last generation’s flagship GPU would not have been found in a laptop at the TUF Dash F15’s price point.
Performance
The ASUS TUF Dash 15 will do well. The only disadvantage is that memory is limited to 8GB from the start, when doubling that to 16GB would vastly improve the situation. After that, let’s look at some of the benchmarking results from our various tests. The 3DMark Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme results are the first to show off just how powerful this thing is graphically. The Cinebench and PCMark scores, on the other hand, are excellent examples of what the machine can do with CPU-intensive programmes and multitasking. You’ll want to tweak and finetune the settings in the various game benchmarks we ran rather than running with the default presets, simply because, despite having a 3070, it’s not getting close to utilising that 240Hz display – only the most powerful portables or even the best gaming PCs really push a display that hard. Metro Exodus struggled with RTX enabled, but turn it off and you’ll get a fairly consistent 70+ frames-per-second, while Shadow of that up to near 80. The Division 2 disappointed a little on ultra, barely breaking 50 fps, but impressed a lot on high, averaging close to 90 fps.
Asus TUF Dash F15 review: Battery Life
Under the hood of the TUF F15 Gaming laptop is a 90Whr battery. With Chrome, MS Word, YouTube Videos, and WhatsApp web open, the battery lasted about 6 hours. To watch videos, the brightness was kept below 50% and headphones were connected. However, if you intend to play for an extended period of time, plug in the charger; otherwise, the battery will only provide about 1-1.5 hours of runtime. There is a 240W power adapter included that charges the device quickly. The battery life isn’t great, but it gets the job done. The Asus TUF Dash F15 is even better, with nearly 10 hours of battery life, a more powerful GPU, and a faster 240Hz display. Even in the 10 battery tests, which simulate a variety of different computing workloads, the laptop lasts around 9 hours, indicating that this gaming laptop should easily get you through a full work day.
Asus TUF Dash F15 review: Heat
The increase in CPU/GPU power from the 2021 model does result in slightly higher internal temperatures, but I haven’t noticed any throttling or overheating issues. Asus used its ROG Intelligent Cooling hardware-software solution to keep a 0.78-inch machine cool. The Dash F15 employs five copper heat pipes (covering the CPU, GPU, VRAM, and VRM) and two 83-blade liquid crystal polymer fans to draw heat away from the CPU, GPU, VRAM, and VRM and distribute it through the machine’s four heatsinks and fan outlets. The WASD keys are used to vent, allowing the fan beneath to generate airflow. Furthermore, Asus improved the self-cleaning capabilities over last year’s TUF lineup by adding 5% more airflow space.
Configuration Options
A GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card, 16 GB of DDR5 RAM, 512 GB of SSD storage, and a 15.6″ Full HD 144 Hz display. This model is available for $1,499 from Best Buy’s online store. Best Buy had it for $1,299 ($200 off deal) at the time we published our review.
Final Words
ASUS has struck an intriguing balance between performance, portability, and, most importantly, price with the TUF Dash F15. The laptop may not provide the best performance due to its 4-core CPU and underpowered NVIDIA 30-series GPU, but a laptop like this at this price is hard to come by. There may be less expensive laptops with better price-performance ratios, but it is unusual to see a design as thin and light as the TUF Dash F15. If you’re looking for a laptop with an RTX 3070 laptop GPU, the ASUS TUF Dash F15 is a great option. It truly is the best Asus TUF Dash F15 review which product available right now.
