The ASUS TUF F15 is tough, as its name suggests. The unit's Off Black variant, which is contrasted with other gaudy-looking gaming laptops, gives the laptop a minimal look. It also features white WASD keys and an aluminum lid that glows in the light. The Dash F15 is a durable machine that has very little flex and MIL-STD military certified for durability. It also features a strong hinge design. The Dash F15 weighs in at just two KG, making it one of the lighter gaming laptops available.
Port selection is simple. The device places most of its options to the left, with only one USB 3.2 Gen A port to the right. Other options include a USB 3.2Gen A port, one USB C slots with DisplayPort and Power Delivery, a USB C Thunderbolt 4 Slot, an RJ45 Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.0b connector, and a 3.5mm headset jack. The laptop supports Bluetooth 5.2 and WiFi 6. The laptop does not include biometric authentication, much to my dismay. The laptop has a decent webcam.
My review unit of TUF Dash F15 has a 15.6 inch FHD panel, which can refresh at 144Hz. Gamers who prefer high-refresh rates can also spec the unit with a panel with 300Hz. The viewing experience is good for the price, but it is far from the most accurate laptop screen. The display has a peak brightness just 250nits and covers 62.5 percent of sRGB. The screen of the laptop is adequate for gaming, although it's not ideal for photo/video work.
The device has a standard six-row keyboard, but the additional Numpad makes the keys feel cramped. It can take some time to adjust to the keyboard layout, especially if you're used to a more spread-out keyboard deck. However, once I was comfortable with the layout, I found that I enjoyed typing and gaming on my TUF Dash F15 keyboard. The laptop also has four hotkeys at the top that allow quick access to the volume, microphone and Armoury Crate apps. It also has a fairly large trackpad that felt responsive and had minimal latency.
ASUS has provided the TUF Dash F15 a 12th-gen Intel Core i5-12450H processor. The motherboard comes with 16GB DDR5 4,800MHz RAM. However, you can extend this memory up to 32GB. The base model has a 512GB SSD NVME PCIe SSD. The Alder Lake lineup by the American silicon giant has been very effective in bridging the AMD Ryzen 5000 series. The laptop also produced respectable results using a variety of benchmarking apps.
The device scored a multicore result in CineBench R23 of 9,271 and Geekbench 5 of 7,327 respectively. The laptop scored 6,292 points in PCMark 10's daily workload test. This is quite remarkable for a machine under Rs 1 lakh. CrystalDiskMark's speed test was also run to determine the SSD's read- and write speeds. The SSD's sequential read and write speeds were 3,039MB/s, and 1,631MB/s, respectively.
The laptop's RTX3050 GPU is a great choice for a high-quality gaming experience. Popular titles such as CS GO or Valorant run at 140-160fps on High settings. Frame tear can be reduced for most of the games by using adaptive synchronization. TUF Dash F15 gets the MUX switch, which was not available on high-end ROG laptops prior to this year. The MUX Switch is a unit that relays information directly to the display. This increases efficiency and reduces the amount of CPU-integrated graphics. I've already explained the MUX switch in detail when reviewing the Strix Scar 15.
The Armoury Crate app can be used to enable this feature. According to my testing, it did improve in-game FPS. The laptop's gaming performance is still impressive. Titanfall II on High settings averaged between 120-145FPS. It could run CyberPunk2077 at medium graphics, wherein it produced 60-70FPS. The Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark achieved a score of 5,222. 3DMark's Time Spy scored a respectable 5,222. It is clear that the TUFF15 budget gaming machine is capable, as I can attest.
Thermals are managed effectively while running graphically-intrinsic titles with GPU temperatures not rising beyond 85 degrees. ASUS' Arc Flow Fans, which are claimed to provide 13 percent more airflow, can also be blamed. The laptop also features two downward-firing speakers that unfortunately don't get loud enough. The laptop boasts Hi-res certification, which means that it can produce a great audio output through a pair wired headphones.
The laptop comes with a 76Whr lithium-ion battery. This is a poor backup and pales in comparison to TUF series AMD versions. The battery lasted for about four hours with normal use, and then it dropped to 90 minutes for gaming. The adapter is 180W and can charge the laptop in less than two hours.
TUF Dash F15 continues the legacy of providing a high-quality gaming experience at a reasonable price. The laptop's minimalistic and lightweight design blends well into an office environment. The TUF Dash F15 is a great gaming laptop that can easily meet your gaming needs, provided you keep your expectations in check. The device's only issues are the lack of biometric authentication, a poor battery life, and average speakers. The TUF Dash F15 ticks all the boxes and deserves another look.
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