Customers highly value the performance and GPU of the TUF Dash 15.6" Gaming Laptop, frequently praising its impressive speed and capabilities. Positive feedback also highlights the battery life, build quality, and portability of this model. While some users noted issues with fan noise, heat, keyboard, and the lack of a webcam, many found the display and price to be significant strengths. The compact size and sleek design were also frequently mentioned as positive aspects.
This summary was generated by AI based on customer reviews.
The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.
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Pros mentioned:
Gpu, Performance
Cons mentioned:
Heat
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Nice Laptop (Caution Heat)
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Very nice laptop for price and comparison. Only regret is that it gets hot fast so I would recommend getting a cooking pad. Do not use this for mining as GPU reaches a threshold that cuts monitor off as PSU cannot handle it. Mines came with the TAB key partially off and it becomes annoying having to press it back in as one of the white connectors under the key is broken OOB. Overall the 3070 coupled with the i7 gen 11 is nice however if you could get an i9 I would recommend. I also purchased a G502 Lightspeed Mouse to compliment it considering you save a lot with a price point of $1500 or less….Highly recommend if you can find an open box one at your local Best Buy for $1199 you won’t beat this performance with any other like this….The main key to this device is scalability in upgrading, performance, and price.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Good performance, good price
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Posted . Owned for 1.5 years when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Very nice performing laptop for the price can run most games at 4k just under 60fps and has easy performance management with ARMOURY Crate app. Modern and slim design makes it nice as a discreet desktop at home combined with a monitor or as a powerhouse on the go that fits in a small laptop backpack. 240 hz on laptop screen is beautiful especially with ray tracing the 1080p max resolution on laptop screen does not matter.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Great gaming/mining laptop!
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Posted . Owned for 3 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Bought as an open box excellent condition, $1300+tax was a steal for this laptop! Laptop appeared as if it was brand new. As someone who travels frequently to visit family/friends having something light and portable that can still play any game at or close to max with good frames is awesome! Paired it with an iets gt300 laptop cooler I have it mining etherium all day when not gaming. 49.7mh/s stable all day never over 58c core temp! If you're like me and want something portable for games that can also mine crypto this is an amazing buy! I wouldn't buy if you're only intention is to mine crypto. Will take about a year or more to roi.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance, Ram
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Love it !
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Posted . Owned for 2 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Works perfectly ! I’m able to run all games at ultra and epic settings no issues . Keep in mind it has 4 cores. Can be upgraded to 40gb of ram. One of the 8 gb can not be removed but the other one can be changed out to 16 or 32gb. Have not upgraded yet but havnt needed to yet . Wouldn’t use this for streaming but it’s the perfect gaming laptop no issues at all. Works best plugged in. Use with a laptop cooling pad.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Gpu, Ram
Cons mentioned:
Speakers, Webcam
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Great Mid-Range Notebook
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Asus makes really great laptops, and they make some pretty awesome gaming laptops as well. But this , right here, is something else. It's a gaming notebook. This thing is super slim. Attractive is an understatement. The form factor is the of their ROG Zephyrus gaming laptops of recent, but it's under an inch thick. And for real, this thing is packing some serious power for its size. The specs read off like a desktop system. With the NVYDIA GeForce RTX 3070 and an 11 Gen INTEL CORE i7. Two very new pieces of CPU & GPU on the market. The 15.6 inch full HD screen is plenty bright and crisp for my liking. And I use headphones, so I hardly even hear the fan when playing the more graphic intense titles. And as that stands, this system can run what you want to run with nary a sweat. You may need to adjust things to get games like Call Of Duty to run smoothly at a decent frame rate. As far as ports, you're getting 3 USB A ports, 1 Full HDMI port, a Thunderbolt port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, port for the standard power supply and even a USB C port, for charging and/or accessories. I personally use mine for my webcam since this unit doesn't come with one on board. I guess that's one of the things they saved on to make it so small and affordable. Some people may tell you that they aren't crazy about the teal as a back-lit keyboard choice(and no other option), but as for me, I happen to think that's one of the things that give that extra flare. Again, for what you'll be paying, you're getting amazing mid to high range unit in the form of a notebook. But you won't be doing much video editing with this one without some additional accessories. No camera, but small bezels. Bottom firing 2.5 watt speakers, but most gamers use headphones. No ten-key, but it's also a gaming rig 1st. No SD or Micro SD card slot, so you'll need to go USB card reader route or flash drive. That's also fine, because you're paying pennies for a monster.16 gigs or RAM( expandable) 1 TB of SSD memory and it's designed to easily upgrade with the ability to remove the bottom panel with only a flathead screwdriver. At under 5lbs, and under an inch thick, this little beast can go wherever the game takes you. I chose the rating, because of the obvious absences, but rest assured, I'm definitely recommending this to everyone that doesn't plan on doing much more than gaming and pretty minimal computing tasks. Basically as long as you're doing any video editing, you'll get hecka' mileage out of this notebook. The Asus Tuf Dash F15 is ready for liftoff baby!
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Gpu, Ram
Cons mentioned:
Fan noise, Heat
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Awesome on the go power and performance.
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
ASUS TUF F15 Review
Initial setup went quick. There's not a much of anything inside the box outside of a few pamphlets and the Charger/Power Cord.
The system boots quite quick due to the NVME Drive which makes everything snappy. I will likely consider installing a secondary drive though.
There were some updates that had to process and some BIOS/Firmware updates for the Notebook itself. Some reviews on this I had noticed that a couple encountered issues where the Notebook was bricked and rendered useless, I did not experience this. I don't know the scenario of the users experience with this problem nor if the unit was connected to external power. Most won't allow a BIOS/Firmware update if it's not plugged in. I didn't test this as I'm adamant of keeping something like this connected to external power for something as critical as a BIOS or even minor/major Windows update.
So far the notebook has been running well. That said, it runs fast, but the fans are noisy. Idling on the desktop you can hear a whine coming from them. When a load is applied via an update or a program installing it get's quite a bit louder. Given I typically use a headset, it's a non-issue for me, but when I don't have my headset on it's very noticable and invasive. It actually hurts my ears a little given the very high frequency of the whine.
One thing I noticed off the bat was the display. It wasn't very responsive and I could tell it wasn't running at the native refresh rate. Checking the display settings reveals from the factory it's defaulted to 60hz. You have to manually change it from the Advanced Display Settings Monitor tab to the 240Hz setting. Once done, you can then change it to 240hz in the Display Settings and then it's a night and day difference.
Performance, to test this I ran a couple game benchmarks.
The first test I ran was Borderlands 3's Benchmark. I tested it at the 1080p on 3 different visual presets. High, Ultra and the Bad@ss preset. Of the Averages, High obviously had the best at 85 FPS. Ultra it 73 FPS and the highest Bad@ss it averaged 58 FPS.
I'll be honest that this was underwhelming. The 3070 in this particular model is definitely a cut down variant compared with the other mobile variant's. I also assumed that the performance in particular would be higher than an older previous generation GPU even though it's a mobile version. To give some perspective, the Desktop I built last year with a Ryzen 3800X, 32GB RAM, EVGA 2080 FTW3 Ultra (not a super or Ti) I tested the game out on it and at 1080p on the same presets I got over 85 FPS on the highest setting and anything below I averaged over 90-110 FPS. I tested at 3440x1440p and I was still able to get over 60 FPS on the highest.
I'm a bit thrown though in regards to temps and noise levels. Unless mine has an issue, Running anything 3D intesive the system's fans ramp up quickly and are quite load, enough to the point where I can hear them through some Closed back headphones. The temps are quite high as well. Using HWMonitor I was seeing CPU temps as high as 87C and 75C on the GPU. From some other reviews I had seen, most were not seeing temps this high. It could be that my unit may have an issue.
The 2nd Game I tested briefly was Cyberpunk 2077. The game defaulted the settings to RTX Ultra with DLSS set to Auto. I will say that the game appeared to run smoother than the 2080 in my PC. This could be due to the better Tensor/RTX cores in the 3070. Temps while testing were a little higher. The peak on the CPU was 90C, though the GPU was 73C. The FPS seemed to hover around 45 on the default settings. I think it possible there may be a Hardware issue with the unit. I've reached out to ASUS to see what advice they can offer.
I also tested out Forza Horizon 4. I did so connected up to my TV in my Living room to play it at 4k as anything short of this you're really robbing yourself of fidelity with this title. 1080p on the laptop display did return an average 94 with Ultra Preset. It had defaulted to Dynamic but I set it over to Ultra with no issue. On the TV at 4k however, I could not get the game to run at anything over 48 FPS. I don't know if this is do to throttling of the CPU and GPU, but even dropping to high, the performance in the graphs was identical. Dynamic High and Ultra also made no difference. The game does appear to run smoothish, I noticed a little hitching here and there.
I also ran some older benchmarks too. Unigene Heaven and Valley. Using the Performance Preset in ASUS Armory Crate my average in Valley at 1080p Extreme Detail and 4x AA was at 122 for an average. Changing the preset to Turbo my average was only 120.6. This is a bit surprising. From what I could see in HWMonitor CPU only topped out at 84C in both runs and the GPU was surprisingly only hitting 69C which is a fair bit lower than in Cyberpunk and Borderlands.
Heaven, the averages were lower but I expect this as it despite Valley being a newer benchmark it was not as intensive. The averages clocked in right around 108 FPS at 67C. Testing using Performance and the average was 96.4. The slower performance in Valley looks like it was due to the CPU getting throttled as its temps hit 91C. Quite a bit higher than in Performance. Tessellation was enabled as well.
Just for a comparison, my Desktop at 1080p with the same settings for Valley scored 155.9 average. Heaven was 135.6. So on average going from these numbers, the TUF is roughly 20% slower than my desktop. Admittedly, this is impressive given the TUF only draws 200W compared to my Desktop drawing roughly 480W.
The last benchmark I ran was Superposition. I tested with both Armory Crate presets.
1080p Extreme score was 5075. Turbo was 5249, so a decent extra boost. My Desktop clocked in at a score of 6683, just over 27% faster.
Bear in mind that simply changing your power plan to best performance will not change the Armory Crates performance. It was sitting at Performance preset even at Best/High Performance in Windows power options. It seems that Performance will lock the GPU to 80W. Changing this to Turbo will allow the CPU to clock higher and will allow the GPU to run at 85W.
Overall it's great laptop but it has some quirks. Again some of these could be due to my unit as others are reporting higher FPS in identical games, nearly 20%, and others were showing temps significantly lower than mine, up to 30C while gaming.
Pro's.
- 1TB NVME and it's fast. Looks to be sourced from Hynix.
- 16GB RAM, plenty of it for multitasking and gaming.
- 11th Gen i7, plenty of oomf for your gaming and productivity.
Both the RAM and the NVME's can be upgraded. There's 2 Gen3 M.2 slots so you can always add another NVME drive.
- Display is colorful and has that crazy 240hz refresh rate which is very welcome for competitive gaming.
- It's got a type C port that's PD rated plus two more USB 3 Type A ports.
Backlit keyboard, and it can get fairly bright.
- It's got a gigabit ethernet port. Something nice to see since so many are shucking these now.
- Weight. For what you're getting in such a small package, I'm genuinely surprised this is only just over 4lbs.
Con's.
- Noise, it gets very loud when under load. Armory reports that it's 40-50db, I don't have a way to test, but I'd reckon it's closer to 55+db.
Heat, again this could be an issue with mine, but it gets well hot enough to cause the CPU and GPU to throttle.
- HDMI port. This is only a 2.0 and it's controlled by the iGPU. So if you were hoping to get more refresh rate you will be disappointed. I was able to get it to output at 1080p120 on to my main ultrawide display but it stretched across the entire monitor so it looked awful, but it did register as 120hz. It would have been a lot better to source the HDMI to the RTX 3070 but I assume this was due to keep power usage in check.
- Battery. Well this will be hit or miss depending on your workload. With the computer running on the Performance preset in Armory I got around 90 minutes run time while gaming. Idle on the desktop was only around 2 hours on the same preset. Setting it to silent, I was seeing around 2.5-3.5 hours with light usage like browsing the internet. I don't really expect much with a Gaming Laptop so this is more or less a like it or love it for most.
- Power adapter location. This boggles my mind why it's in the dead center of the left side. I think it would have been better to place it towards the rear of the right or left side. I just find it gets in the way.
Not really pro's/con's.
- Keyboard and track pad are serviceable. You'll ideally want something external. I'm surprised that there's no RGB on the keyboard, it's merely a light white blue hue. It does as I mentioned above get fairly bright. I also find it odd there's no border lighting around the touchpad. It's generous in size, but it would still be nice.
- Warranty is a standard 1 year which is fine. I put this here cause I'm not certain if this is normal procedure, but when I registered the unit with ASUS it provided me with a 1yr Warranty with ADP. I don't want to give out false hope with your purchase.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Perfect for portable gaming!
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Posted . Owned for 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
High speeds. Beautiful display. Simple to use. It is only really capable of gaming when in turbo mode (meaning the device has to be plugged into the wall for gaming) The display gets a 10 out of 10. The interchangeable sound equalizer that is built into the asus hardware is simple to navigate and a very cool feature. I would recommend this to someone who needs a portable gaming device, it is also a well rounded laptop for every day use.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Battery life, Build quality, Gpu
Cons mentioned:
Fan noise, Heat
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Love it! .... but loud fans
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I’ve been in the market for a new laptop for an easier lug-around (than the 17in HP) with two display ports. It was a battle in deciding what to get, whether I wanted to go for the beefy gaming laptops or stick with a mid-range. The ASUS TUF DASH F15 appeared to be in the mid-range. I figured, why not?
The laptop is built to be sturdier than the average laptops, compact size, and has proved to me to be able to handle graphics in gaming (GTA 5, Fallout 4 (with some overwhelming mods that usually cause intense explosions that inevitably crash most systems :D happy to report it passed this test), Mass Effect Andromeda, Star Wars Squadrons) with accurate colors. The only downside that I’ve found so far is the fans and heat of the hardware.
Fans tend to be loud while running most open world or intense games, so much so that it ends up taking over the sound quality. The hardware does tend to run pretty warm, even with the fans on turbo mode (options in the Armoury Crate). Fortunately, the WASD keys remain cool and most off the warmth stays near the center of the key board where those keys are not usually used except for toggling maps/inventory. The vents are positioned on the sides and rear of the keyboard, but most of the heat comes out the right side where I would keep an external mouse. It’s not a show stopper as I fell that this is a great choice overall.
You’re going to want a headset while running games. Though when the fans are not overtaking the sound, the speakers provide a decent quality of surround sound. The speakers do not provide any bass.
The keyboard is very comfortable and is backlit with three brightness levels. It is only one color and will not work with the AURA Creator effects, but it does have three basic effects for the pulse lighting in the keyboard of Static, Breathing, and Strobing. An added bonus is that the WASD keys (Up, left, down, right) are transparent and light up completely on the keyboard, makes it easier to find this important keys.
Two display ports. Thunderbolt and HDMI port. My careers in finance and hobbies in photo editing have made me accustom to having 2/3 monitors, this feature was a must have for me. As most laptops, this doesn’t include a DVD/CD drive, but that is easily fixed with an external drive if you need one and in this day in age most software/games are digital downloads.
The track-pad is smooth and responsive, though I usually never use a track-pad for anything more than basic browsing.
With basic usage the battery lasted about 6/7 hours in one session with 30% to spare before I plugged it in to try how it gamed.
So far I’m happy with this product.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Warzone 80-100 fps
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Posted . Owned for 1 month when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Really good relation between price and performance. I use it to play warzone. No ultra setting but neither low setttings at 90-100 fps.
If you want a very good experience, update graphics driver by your self, because I bought two machines and while playing, screen begins to switching between the game and whole black screen. After a manual update of all the graphics driver everything works smoothly and how it supposed to be.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Battery life, Performance, Ram
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
Good Mobile Gaming
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The ASUS TUF boasts a fairly simple style, outside of a couple bold accents. However, the internals are well equipped to run the games you through at it.
The packaging design is simple, yet bold TUF logo, included in the packaging you have the TUF laptop itself, the charger and some manuals and pamphlets. The laptop itself carries over the simple design, on the top side you have the TUF logo across the gray lid, which has more of a metallic feel while the rest is a solid black plastic You have no RGB, but the keyboard is backlit with more of a 'G'. This stands out more on the transparent WASD keys.
I have been playing a bunch of State of Decay 2 lately and thanks to the cloud save I was able to pick up where I left off. This laptop was capable of handling the game on the highest settings, the built in display is wonderful, I have exclusively used this display but an external monitor can be used. I was able to jump into Gears 5, Hades and Warzone which they were all able to be pushed to high on the internal display. The WiFi was also good enough to play warzone without having to hardwire the machine. The touchpad works well, however I would recommend an external mouse.
There is a 30 day trial of Office 365 included, as well as MyASUS software which checks for updates (Such as the BIOS which had an update), Optimization settings, solutions, promotions, plus customer service support. This application is your one stop shop to help keep your machine running.
Across the F keys, there is a range of function key shortcuts, above this off to the left hand side there is proprietary keys for Volume Up/Down, Mute/Unmute, finally Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate allows you to monitor your system, change game visuals and Aura effect and sync for compatible devices, plus news and deals. There is also a mobile app which allows your iOS or Android device connect to monitor your system plus a couple of utilities you can adjust.
Overall I am very pleased with the laptop, the internals are great enough to handle the games I'm currently playing without and major drops. Plus you got decent battery life to use the machine on the go thanks to the laptops ability to throttle back to a silent setting while not using any CPU/GPU heavy tasks. The lack of touchscreen doesn't bother me too much for the price, but a webcam would have been a nice inclusion, but is not a deal breaker. The laptop can support 32GB of RAM plus has an extra spot for an additional M.2 PCIE SSD. Anyone looking for a gaming capable laptop I would highly suggest you look into this machine.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
An Average Gaming Laptop for a Premium Price
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Posted . Owned for 1.5 years when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
I had high hopes for this laptop due to the price for what specs it contained. I ended up returning it because it felt cheap and had many issues. My main complaint is the track pad which felt terrible and was hard to use. Also the GPU was way slower than expected and when I compared it to other laptops with the same GPU.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Performance
Cons mentioned:
Heat, Keyboard
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Stealthy Speed contender from Asus
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Asus has recently released their new line of 11th gen Intel laptops paired with RTX3000 series graphics of which this is a fairly decent showing with only a few drawbacks.
To start, the packaging leaves a lot to be desired. Having come from a previous Asus ROG level laptop to this TUF line and seeing the plain brown box it arrived in with TUF printed on top was a bit of a disappointment. The box also barely protects the top of the laptop (there is zero padding between the lid of the box and the lid of the laptop save for a thin sleeve that the laptop is shrouded in), so beware if a company ships it to you without another form of packaging around it.
Upon removal of the laptop from the box I immediately noted that the chassis was identical to my almost 2 year old Asus ROG laptop (appears to use the same cooling as well). In fact I'd almost argue it was a slight step down from the ROG chassis as it only has TUF printed on the metal lid, whereas the ROG laptop had a glowing ROG insignia embedded in the lid. One thing to note about the lid also is that despite the matte finish, it picks up fingerprints very easily. I've only opened it 3 or 4 times as well as moved it around my table only twice and you can easily see in the image where I've touched the lid. This is actually a surprise for me as I traditionally have very dry hands and almost never leave fingerprints on hardware.
When booted up you're greeted first by an interesting teal-colored keyboard backlight. This got my hopes up initially as I thought with such an interesting color, surely the backlight must be RGB so I can change it. Unfortunately I was wrong. As with the previous generation of this chassis design, the backlight is fixed. You can only change whether it is solid, strobing, breathing or off.
The initial setup and configuration of Windows is very straightforward, with only simple additions for Asus terms and warranty and a single spot to fill in your email address to be used in the MyAsus support app. I appreciate this very direct means of setup and lack of overall bloat that Asus has leaned towards in all of their recent laptops. In fact, the only real bloat on the laptop is that it has Helium Backup installed (in addition to the MyAsus update/warranty app, and ArmoryCrate for performance/power management).
The MyAsus app is relatively unobtrusive presenting you with a clean interface for updates and warranty management. There's an interesting thing I found about the warranty. It states that the warranty will be from the date of manufacture of the laptop if a proof of purchase is unavailable. This feels very forward-thinking of Asus as the constant need to find receipts for potential repairs down the road is always a struggle for people (myself included). That said, I've rarely ever needed an Asus product repaired, and this may be a vote of confidence in their own manufacturing, which I would argue is true.
Now for the hardware.
This is one of the first entries into the Intel 11th gen + RTX 3k series of notebooks.
The display is a 240hz 1080p display which according to the Asus website boasts of 100% sRGB color gamut with 75.25% Adobe coverage. This is superb for a laptop display to have all of these features. I can tell you firsthand that it's a beautiful display and a very welcome experience.
As for the hardware, it, of course, has the new Intel i7-11370H processor with on-die Intel Xe graphics which is dynamically switches between for battery life or performance. The Intel chip is still only a 4-core 8-thread options, but it boosts all the way up to 4.8GHz which, I think, is quite insane for a laptop.
The Geforce RTX 3070 included in the machine is definitely of the 'Max-Q' variety. It appears before NVidia gave the manufacturers the option to say whether or not the graphics in their laptops were 'Max-Q' or 'Max-P' options, this specific SKU from Asus was previously reported as 'Max-Q'. This means it has a lower power draw and lower cooling requirement (albeit also lower performance) than the Max-P version. This could be helpful if you're attempting to be somewhat mobile with a laptop of these specs.
The laptop ships with an SK Hynix 1TB nVME PCIE 3.0 SSD which, as tested myself with ATTO Diskbench came in at a respectable 3.3GBps Read/2.8GBps Write. I do have to wonder if the board supports PCIE 4.0 in the nVME slot though as the graphics reports itself as connected at PCIE 4.0. Unfortunately I do not have a drive readily available to swap in to validate this.
The laptop ships with 16GB of RAM installed running at 3200MHz. According to the Asus site 8GB of the RAM is soldered to the board and the board has 1 additional SODIMM slot and supports a total amount of memory of 32GB (although where you're going to find a 24GB SODIMM is beyond me).
To round out the specs, it has a WiFi 6 (AX) capable wireless card which connected without issue to my WiFi 6 access point and posted superb scores through my gigabit fiber internet (808 mbps down/561 mbps up). The laptop also has a thunderbolt 4 port for highspeed external devices, it also supports power delivery (pd) for power hungry devices as well.
The performance is definitely what you'd expect of a laptop of this calibre.
I spun up 3DMark Timespy and after a series of tests came to a result of 7478 3DMarks in Performance mode and 7698 in Turbo mode (as selected from the ArmoryCrate application). Adding a fan cooling pad under the machine did not seem to modify these numbers much at all. When comparing these results with all other i7-11370H/RTX 3070 Notebook mixes on the 3DMark website, it appears they are almost all from Asus and specifically this series of notebooks as almost every single one of them reported the Asus FX516 motherboard as the board inside the machines. The results placed this laptop well above average for the configuration. With the right tools and knowledge, this could likely be tuned a bit better, however I feel it is important to report on the shipped results as not everyone will have the knowledge or desire to do this.
It's fortunate to know that with performance such as this on a screen with this refresh and resolution, you could easily run all current and many upcoming games at maximum settings without any concern at all. In addition, with the HDMI 2.0b capable port, you could choose to drive a 4k monitor from this machine and still run most games at High or Very High settings. I have loaded up Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion and World of Warcraft Shadowlands, and have not experienced any issues at all.
In fact, while running the aforementioned games, I was easily able to experience the delight of the high refresh rate screen and all the beauty it is able to deliver. Really, this screen is an absolute delight and is a solid reason why this laptop should be considered by anyone in the market.
Final Verdict:
Overally this is a worthy entry from Asus. I'm disappointed they did not improve on the chassis, cooling or design from almost 2 years ago despite the significant improvement in CPU and graphics from that generation, however it still delivers on performance when needed and that's really what is important. I've chosen not to reduce my score on it for this, as it gets the job done and many people prefer this 'stealth' appearance.
If you're in the market for a thin gaming laptop with current gen hardware and a beautiful screen, this is a definite contender.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Gpu
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
most powerfull laptop out there at a great price.
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Posted . Owned for 2 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
most powerfull laptop out there at a great price. Is the only way you can enjoy the new RTX 3000 series right now.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Gpu, Ram
Cons mentioned:
Fan noise, Heat
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Sleek and Powerful
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 is another installment to ASUS’s lineup of gaming laptops. The TUF series slots in below ASUS’s ROG lineup, but still aims to provide good value. The TUF Dash F15 is the first out of the gate for 2021 (the A17 and 15 will follow it up), and comes pretty well equipped. Benchmarking this laptop places it squarely among the higher end gaming laptops from 2020. I had a chance the last few days to put some time in and play a few of my favorite games.
Specs
Processor – Intel Core i7 11370H - CPU 4C/8T @ 3.3 GHz with boost to 4.8 GHz
Graphics – NVidia GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU w/ 6GB GDDR6 @ 1500 MHz
Memory – 16GB DDR4 3200 Dual Channel (22-22-22-52)
Storage – 1TB SK Hynix PCIe SSD (M.2 NVME)
Display - 15.6” 1920 x 1080p LED IPS screen @240HZ, 3ms, 100% sRGB
Camera – None
Network Adapter – 802.11AX (WiFi 6) adapter / 1X Gigabit LAN Port / Bluetooth 5.2 Radio
Ports – 1X USB-C (4) / 3X USB 3.2 / 1X HDMI 2.0b / 3.5mm TRRS jacks for headsets
Battery – 76Wh with a claimed 16.6 hour battery life
OS – Windows 10 Home – a few preinstalled ASUS utilities, but no bloatware
The Dash F15 comes with an 11th gen Intel and 3XXX series NVIDIA pairing. The intel processor is a multithreaded quad core with a 3.3GHz base clock with a single core boost up to 4.8GHz. The RTX 3070 laptop GPU is a slightly cut down version of the full desktop GPU (5120 pipelines vs 5888 and a reduced core speed profile). The 3070 supports ray tracing and DLSS for some 4K gaming potential (on an external monitor). The laptop can be connected to 2 external monitors – 1 through the HDMI 2.0b port and the other through the USB-C (4.0)/Thunderbolt port. To use this port you would need a USB-C 4.0 to Display port 1.4a adapter. The highest rates supported by these ports are: 4K @60 for HDMI 2.0b and 8K @ 60.
The F15 comes with 8GB of onboard DDR4 3200 RAM, and another 8GB in the only SODIMM slot, which makes 16GB total. This can be expanded by swapping out the SODIMM for a 16GB stick but you would lose the benefit of dual channel RAM. 16GB is honestly more than enough RAM to play games today. If you are a heavy streamer or content creator then you would likely need more, but for gaming it’s enough. Storage comes in the form of a 1TB PCIe 3.0 M.2 2280 NVME drive from SK Hynix. There’s an additional PCIE 3.0 M.2 slot available if additional storage is needed.
The display is a 15.6” 1920 x 1080p IPS screen. It has a very high refresh rate at 240Hz which allows for extra smooth visuals and can display games at high frame rates. The response time for the display is 3ms which is pretty good for an IPS. A TFT or TN panel would be needed to achieve 1ms or less. The display has a full color gamut of 100% sRGB allowing it to display colors more naturally. There’s no listed response time for GTG. The display does support adaptive sync technology (Freesync, G-Sync). The only issue I noticed with the display was a little edgelight bleed in the lower left corner on a very dark screen. Its just a small glow, so it doesn’t have any impact, and it’s disappears as soon as the screen brightens a bit.
Games and Benchmarking
I ran the F15 through a series of benchmarks to test its various capabilities. I wanted to see how it stack up to my gaming tower, which was a high end build circa 2018. I ran it through 3DMark Time Spy, GeekBench, CrystalDiskMark 6, CPU-Z, and GPU-Z. I have included a screenshot of my raw results table. The results show that this laptop has better performance over last years gaming laptops, and sits just below a mid level gaming PC from last year. It was interesting that my tower still has the edge over the F15 in a few areas even though its 3 years older. The F15 has a little more graphical horsepower than my Vega 64, but my R7 1800X tips the scales in compute. Either way I look at it, I now have a competent gaming platform outside of my desktop setup.
In the last year I have gone in on Xbox Gamepass, which gives me access to a lot of games right out of the gate. My favorite game to play, even on Xbox, is the Halo MCC. Unfortunately MCC doesn’t have a framerate counter, so I don’t know exactly what I was pulling. However, I can say that it had no issue running games on the highest settings. I played the CE remastered campaign with the updated graphics. The 240Hz monitor just made it so very smooth. I’m used to playing this on console on my TV, so this was a big leap. Gameplay was smooth, and I didn’t have any issues with drivers or anything like that. My only issue came with my controller losing connection during a matchmaking game. It had worked fine for a few games, and then decided to go haywire. After the game ended the controller was fine. I don’t know if it was an issue with the game, the controller, or the laptop. I haven’t had it happen again, so I can’t be sure.
For something a little more graphics intensive I ran another favorite – Forza 7. This game has a ton of detail and absolutely needs to display smoothly. The nice things about Forza is it will let you render things higher than your display can output, so this game became a good test. I was able to bump my settings up to ultra at 4K. Tracks in the rain took the hardest hit with the lowest frame dips at 43fps. I regularly saw my fps in the low 50’s at this setting. I dropped the resolution down to 1080p to match the display, and I was surprised at my fps. It was only in the low 60’s at 1080p. What this tells me is the graphics card was chucking out frames faster than the CPU could process. I was bottlenecking the GPU on 4K and the CPU on HD. Either way the details looked excellent, and the gameplay was very smooth.
The one thing I noticed while playing games was how hot the keyboard got. The system has 2 fans on the bottom pulling air in to cool the heat pipes from the GPU and CPU heatsinks. The system dBa also reached around 50db, so the fans are definitely running hard under load. The designers must also be using the laptops body to dissipate some of that heat as well. Either that or the fans just aren’t enough. The top 2 inches of the keyboard surface were incredibly warm. The rest of the keyboard was warm, but not unreasonably. Using an Xbox controller to play made it difficult to notice this warming trend until it was already quite warm.
Design
The design of the F13 is sleek with its dark gray finish and large ‘TUF’ logo silkscreened onto the cover. The main body is just over 0.8” thick (1.125” including the anti-skid rubber feet). To me this is thinner than I expected, which is a blessing for anyone stuffing this into a bag on the go. The laptop clocks in at just under 4.5lbs so its not without some weight.
The F15 uses a narrow bezel around the 15.6” screen which helps keep the dimensions down. This is also a tenkeyless design so there is a decent border surround the keyboard (1.6” from the edge to the keys). The stylized power button has a cool shape and its offset from the main block of keys. Above the keyboard are the media controls and a dedicated button to launch ASUS Armoury Crate system utility. There is also a button to control the dual onboard mics. The F15 does not feature a camera, which is understandable due to the narrow bezel that is in use around the screen. This will be a knock for anyone who might want to use the laptop for any video calls or streaming.
Overall the design is very sleek and unassuming from the outside. It is very polished and doesn’t look over-designed like a lot of high end gaming laptops. I think most people would be surprised at how capable this laptop really is.
Keyboard
ASUS has gone with a chiclet membrane keyboard. The keys are all flat but have an appropriate size and spacing that makes it easy to use. The absence of the number pad is likely what allows this. The keys themselves are all backlit with a mint-green color. This color is locked and can’t be changed – only dimmed. You can apply different lighting profiles – breathing, strobing, and static. plugged into the wall. The WASD keys are transparent so there’s backlight is in full view. The keys themselves have a 1.7mm travel distance, which feels a little better than some other laptops I have used. Typing on it is quiet, and not at all clicky.
Upgradability
The F15 has 2 items in which you can upgrade. The RAM and the NVME. There is an additional slot for a PCIe 3.0 NVME drive that is sitting vacant. Right now I the TB is enough, but after added a couple of games my storage space has severely dwindled. The RAM is a little different story. You can only upgrade 1 RAM stick – the one in the SODIMM slot. The other stick is embedded on the board and can’t be touched. This limits your upgrade path as you will not be able to make identical pairs with the RAM if you decided to upgrade. You would lose the dual channel relationship and potentially higher latency clocks. Therefore storage is easy to upgrade and worth it, but not so much for the RAM
To change out these parts there are 15 screws to remove from the bottom. The bottom right screw is captive, and it serves to pop open the cover after you loosen it. The other 14 screws are straightforward. However, ASUS used 2 different lengths of screws here. I used the upgrade guide on the laptop’s support page to help me identify which screw belongs where. This is my first time seeing a manufacturer use different fasteners like this.
Final Thoughts
Overall the F15 is a great upper-mid range gaming laptop that should remain relatively modern for several years. It has more than enough power to handle the newest games at high settings, and play competitive games like Overwatch CS:GO and other at the high frame rates they require.
I would recommend this to a friend
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Still perfect for my job.
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Posted . Owned for 1.5 years when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Most powerful laptop when I bought it. Still perfect for my job.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Battery life, Build quality
Cons mentioned:
Fan noise
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Amazing machine in compact size!
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Posted .
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Summary:
This laptop is outstanding! All the things that matter to me are present. There are a few shortcuts take but they are easily forgivable. Read below for a detailed review.
Pros:
- Fast!
- Good looking
- Decent speakers
- AMAZING keyboard
- Color accurate screen
- Long battery life
- Upgradable
- Compact
Cons:
- Loud fans
- Plastic trackpad
- Plastic build
- Fingerprint magnet
- No camera or fingerprint reader
- Only 1 USB-C port
Unboxing:
The box does not have much inside. You will find the laptop nicely packed, the power adaptor (200W), power cord and that is pretty much it. There is a lot of wasted space in the packaging, but it does keep the laptop safe if you ship it.
Build quality:
Upon first inspection, I was surprised by how compact it is. It is heftier than an Ultrabook but not too much thicker. The screen has minimal bezels. The screen feels sturdy when bent with minor flex. The “gamer” aesthetic is minimal as well, I would not feel strange using this in a coffee shop to get some work done. The body is mostly plastic build but feels high quality on the top keyboard section. There is minimal flex when pushing on the keyboard hard. The bottom of the laptop is secured with small Philips head screws and does feel very plasticky. The trackpad is plastic but feels nice and is a usable size.
Setup:
Setup is simple with your usual Windows 10 setup process. The only bloatware preinstalled is the MyAsus software to better connect your laptop to your phone, Armoury Crate software for power and lighting settings, and that is pretty much it other than the standard software that comes with windows.
First impressions:
The keyboard looks cool! It is only a single color, something of cyan color. The boot times are extremely quick! Only a few seconds long. I was a bit sad there is no fingerprint sensor, but a simple PIN is not too hard to use to login. The screen is only 1080p, but it is noticeably clear and bright with accurate colors and viewing angles. I tried some music with the 2.5w speakers and was surprised that the bottom-firing speakers put out clean and loud audio. It is lacking in clarity and bass but is not bad at all.
Benchmarks:
I attached a few screenshots of benchmarks but overall, this laptop impresses! The 3070 is an 80w version so it is not going to be top-tier performance, but it is not bad by any measure.
-Playing Borderlands 3, I consistently saw 80-100 FPS in Ultra settings at 1080P.
-The built-in hard drive provides 3468 MB/s read speed and 2906 MB/s write speed in Crystalbenchmark.
-Geekbench 5 was run in the three different power modes: Turbo, Performance, and Silent. I assumed turbo would provide the best performance as it puts all parts into high power and the fan to max. I was surprised to see that performance mode provided the best scores. I am curious if there is some thermal throttling going on. So, for all benchmarks after I kept the laptop in performance mode.
-3D Mark: 7259 in Time spy, 9570 in Fire strike Extreme, 40624 in Wildlife, and 29311 in Night Raid.
-Cinebench: 6425 pts in multi-core, 1486 single-core
Battery:
WOW! For a gaming laptop battery life is phenomenal. Ensure you keep your laptop on auto in “iGPU” mode within the Armoury crate app to get the best battery performance. This will properly utilize the Xe graphics card when on battery. I do not recommend gaming on battery but the Xe is good for simple games if you wish. Depending on what I am doing I could easily get 4-8 hours of battery life on this beast. This is assuming you do not have any apps which require the video card in the background. For example, running the Epic Game store in minimized mode or in your tray will keep the 3070 running and give you 1-2 hours only.
Gaming:
As previously mentioned, it worked like a champ in Borderlands 3 hovering around 80-100 FPS. COD MW with RTX on 1080p would be upwards of 100 FPS and as low as 70 FPS when the action starts. Overwatch provided me with around 160 FPS average. In short, gaming is amazing! The fan gets loud when gaming, so I highly recommend you use a headset and keep a clear area around the sides of the laptop due to heat. The keyboard is a dream for gaming as the WSAD keys are brightly colored and the keys just feel right.
Upgradability:
Opening the device is simple. Take off the screws, one of the corner screws is a captive screw that pops the shell out slightly to assist with the removal of the cover. I recommend you take a plastic tool to pry the rest of the edges which comes off with ease. Photos attached of the interior. There are two NVME hard drive slots PCI Express 3, one is open. The RAM is 16GB with 8GB soldered on and 8GB installed. I wouldn’t recommend upgrading the RAM since it might affect the dual-channel setup, but you can expand if you wish.
Other stuff:
I plan to also use this laptop for photography and typing as the screen is top-notch with color accuracy RGB. Using some P3 color images there is some additional color, but I am not fully sure what percentage of that color gamut it covers. The keyboard is perfect for typing and you should net some high accuracy. Power can be provided by the included 200W power supply or you can use up to a 100W USB-C adaptor if you wish, this might not fully power your laptop in games though. The plastic on the palm rests is a fingerprint/grease magnet so I recommend having a microfiber cloth nearby.
This laptop is outstanding and worth the buy. The only complaints I really have are I wish there were some sort of Windows Hello integration as well as an additional USB-C port. Other than that, this thing is gold!
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Gpu
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Amazing Laptop with Great Power Efficiency
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Posted . Owned for 5 months when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
Amazing laptop with great power efficiency. It has an amazing screen and GPU. The price makes it the cheapest RTX 3070 Laptop and it just is great for gaming. Yes, any laptop can do office work just fine no matter what you pay. But if you want to game, you need a powerful laptop like this.
I would recommend this to a friend
Pros mentioned:
Battery life, Build quality
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Ultra Cool Portable Monster Notebook
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This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
My first impression out of the box is how thin the TUF Dash F15 is. I’m so used to my 2018 HP Omen 15 weight and thickness. I was taken by surprise by how light and thin it was when I took it out of the box.
Summary of the Specs:
11th Gen i7 4 Core 8 Threads CPU.
RTX 3070 GPU w/ 8GB of VRAM running at 80w (up to 85w boost).
1TB SSD in addition to an empty m2 slot for additional storage.
16GB of Dual Channel DDR4 3200mhz RAM. 8GB are soldered.
240hz refresh rate, 3ms response display with 100% sRBG color
Thunderbolt 4
USB Type C charging (requires 100w PD charger)
200w charger up to 50% charged under 30mins
WiFi 6 Support
Design and Build Quality:
For 2021 Asus made some slight design changes to the TUF lineup. Overall size and weight have been reduced resulting in a much cleaner looking laptop with flat sharp edges. The laptop lid is made out of metal but the rest of the build is made of solid plastic. I did not experience any creaks even when carrying it around single handily. It’s a nice-looking laptop without the over-the-top gaming laptop aesthetics that gaming laptops are known for. You can definitely take it with you to work and not have to worry about drawing too much attention.
Performance:
So far I have no complaints. I was a little worry going from a 6 core CPU to a 4 core CPU. But the performance has been awesome so far. As far as gaming goes I would say that games are at least 35-40% better performance in higher quality settings. Having much better performance with a thinner chassis is a win in my book. Some of the games I tested were Fortnite (avg 120fps epic settings, Forza 4 (max settings @1080p 94fps). As for the temps they stay around 80°C only one time I notice it went above 90°C. For the most part, it does run cool compared to my Omen gaming laptop that would constantly stay around 90°C. Even though it runs cooler I highly suggest getting a laptop cooler to help keep it running cooler during your gaming sessions. Not only does it run cooler due to the lower wattage CPU, but you also gain some battery life. With my previous Omen 15 2018, I would average around 5hrs of battery usage. With the TUF Dash F15, I get right around 8-10hrs of battery life on mixed usage like web browsing, YouTube, and streaming Netflix. Keep in mind since Nvidia no longer uses the Max Q to differentiate their GPUs is now about the max wattage. The Asus TUF-F15 RTX 3070 GPU operates at 80watt but can boost up to 85watt. Another laptop with the same GPU but running at a much higher wattage will have better performance compared to this one. The higher the wattage the higher the thermal load is, and in order for the cooling system to be able to keep things from overheating the thickness of the laptop chassis is usually thicker. Overall it depends if you’re looking for a thin laptop that can game the Asus TUF-F15 is a solid choice. But if you’re looking for the best performance I suggest considering a model that can run their GPU at a much higher wattage.
Display:
It’s bright, colorful, and smooth as butter. It’s a joy each time I get to use this display for gaming or consuming video content. With 100% sRGB colors it’s a good display for content creators. Going from my previous 60hz screen to this is a night and day difference. Backlight bleed is minimal is pretty much evenly lit.
Keyboard:
As for the keyboard I have no complaints. It has a good amount of travel depth and feedback. The keys are backlit with a teal-like color. There no other options to change the color but you can change the light animation from static to breathing or strobing. I also like how the WASD keys stand out with the clear see-through keys cover. It’s a good keyboard to type on and game on too if you wanted. As for the touchpad, it has a smooth surface to easily slide your finger on. It’s also a clickable touchpad so no individual left or right buttons. Gestures worked fine like using two fingers to scroll and 3 fingers to go back to the home screen or return back to the previous open app.
Summary:
I think Asus nailed it with how much performance you can get out of this thin chassis. It has a strong battery life that I feel comfortable enough to leave the charger behind. It’s not the top-performing RTX 3070 laptop out there but still provided a good gaming experience. If you’re someone in need of a portable light gaming machine considered the Asus TUF-F15 to fulfill that role.
“Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews.”
I would recommend this to a friend
Cons mentioned:
Heat
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
Extremely Disappointing for the cost
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Posted . Owned for less than 1 week when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
=You really get what you pay for, I mean it’s 2021 and this laptop doesn’t even have a display port. If you have it on “turbo” and play a game that’s not even demanding like Destiny 2 it sounds like you have a mini tornado by you.
=The usb-c/thunderbolt is wired to the integrated graphics which makes this laptop unable to be used with VR which is sad for a “RTX 3070”.
=The backlighting is only one color with 3 modes
=Overall pretty disappointing for the amount of money spent, I will be returning and spending another couple hundred for much much better. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.
No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
Bad Screens, Cold Weather Warning!
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Posted . Owned for 2 weeks when reviewed.
This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.
First one that arrived had terrible light bleed. Compared to the screens you get on other similarly priced laptops, the quality wasn't up to par. Movies and cutscenes were unwatchable. Otherwise I was very happy with the performance. Best Buy sent out the replacement, which arrived with a broken screen. I think it had something to do with the bitterly cold weather that both laptops were shipped in and it's all metal design.
The processor, gpu, and ram expandability are amazing. It's 8+8 soldered and you can put a 32gb chip in the expansion slot to take it to 40gb. The additional hard drive slot will be necessary for gamers once you get going. One TB isn't a lot.
Overall I'm incredibly bummed that I received two duds. I question whether or not they are actual milspec, or if there is another engineering issues going on. This pc has the potential to be an excellent rig and production tool. I'm a student and consolidated my gaming and computing into one, but if I were to made a recommendation I would say try the AMD ROG G15...I ordered one in advance of returning my two Dash T15s...not very TUF in my view, but maybe I'm just unlucky? I think the cold and metal had something to do with the issues.