ASUS TUF Gaming F15 (FX506) - Review

 


The ASUS TUF Gaming lineup of laptops have always included good mid-range components for gaming on the go, and this year's model improves on the formula with even more powerful graphics components. The TUF Gaming F15 laptop refresh of 2021 now comes with the latest 11th gen Intel core CPUs, armed with an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 that should be more than enough to power its 1080p screen with a high refresh rate. The new laptop also gets an update to its design and chassis, all of which helps in distinguishing itself from gaming laptops of the past.

ASUS TUF Gaming F15 Specs

The TUF Gaming F15 includes the following components:

  • CPU: Up to Intel 11th Gen Tiger Lake-H45 or i9-11900H/ i7- 11800H/ i5-11400H
  • GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 (8 GB GDDR6)
  • Display: 1080p, Up to 240Hz IPS, 100% sRGB
  • Battery: 90WH
  • RAM: 16GB Up to 3200Mhz DDR4
  • Storage: Up to 2 SSD Slots (1 for expansion only)
  • I/O: 1 x Audio combo jack, 1x HDMI 2.0b, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, 1x Type-C with Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort 1.4a, G-Sync), 1x RJ45 LAN, 1xDC_in jack
  • Expanded I/O: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, 1x Kensington lock

The TUF F15 shakes up its design with a new style that leaves behind the more gamer-centric aesthetics that plagued the entire gaming laptop landscape in the past few years. The laptop is well-balanced, with its keyboard being comfortable to type on. It’s nothing that compares to that in my Macbook Air (early 2020), but I was happy enough to write more than half of this review on it as far as gaming laptops go. The trackpad is also quite serviceable, although the lack of capacitive touch did throw me in for a loop, as it instead uses two physical buttons at the bottom. As such, dragging and dropping items using just the touchpad didn’t work half of the time.

The laptop’s 1080p display is well-suited to the internals powering it, with our panel's 144Hz refresh rate compensating for the lack of colour depth. The display is also a tad bit too “smooth” looking to my eyes, with colours looking flat, especially when watching movies. It also never got bright enough for comfortable use, even with the wall adapter plugged in which does help a little bit.. That’s where the I/O ports can come in handy, with HDMI and even Thunderbolt 4.0 to expand your screen estate.

ASUS' claims of the laptop's audio solution including buzzwords like 'DTS:X Ultra' and 'Advanced Two-Way AI Noise Cancelation' reads well on paper, but their implementation could use some more fine tuning. That's not to say that the laptop speakers aren't good, they're fine, but they didn't sound like royalty to my ears. The cooling system is one that will need weeks of testing to verify its claims, although in my time with the unit I was thoroughly impressed with how quiet the fans were, even when gaming at maximum power. There are distinct performance profiles that can automatically switch based on the power load on the laptop, and testing on the 'Turbo' mode kept fan noise at a minimum to the point where I didn't feel the need to plug in headphones.

Our ASUS TUF F15 came with an 8 core/16 thread Intel Core i9-11900H, 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060, all of which are powerful enough for the 144Hz 1080p display.

For testing performance we chose a variety of game titles such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, Cyberpunk 2077 and Shadow of The Tomb Raider. Here’s how the hardware fared against them at 1080p:

Game FPS

(Benchmark)

Shadow of The Tomb Raider 64

Horizon Zero Dawn 81

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 59

Watch Dogs Legion 67

Cyberpunk 2077 48


Watch Dogs Legion - Ray Tracing (Medium): 39fpsWith most of the title supporting either ray tracing, DLSS or both, our baseline tests were done with both features turned off. Here’s how the games ran with ray tracing and DLSS turned on:

  • Watch Dogs Legion - Ray Tracing (Medium), DLSS On: 52fps
  • Shadow of The Tomb Raider - Ray Tracing (On): 38fps
  • Shadow of The Tomb Raider - Ray Tracing (On), DLSS On: 41fps
  • Cyberpunk 2077 - Ray Tracing (On): 21
  • Cyberpunk 2077 - Ray Tracing (On), DLSS On: 32
  • Cyberpunk 2077 - Ray Tracing (Off), DLSS On: 55

DLSS seems to not be working as well as I expected it to, with the performance uplift being much lesser than it probably should be. In certain cases, DLSS wouldn’t work at all, especially with ray tracing turned off. We reached out to ASUS to confirm our findings, with the company confirming that the issue may lie with developer optimisations.

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