Original subtitles

ASUS’s new TUF F16 has some nice improvements over last year’s F15,

and it’s a pretty good gaming laptop overall, but there’s one stupid thing holding it back.

It’s available in 2 color options, mecha gray that I’ve got here,

or jaeger grey which instead has an engraved lid logo.

The lids are both metal in either case, with a black plastic interior and plastic bottom panel.

Overall build quality feels great, there’s far less keyboard and lid

flex compared to previous TUF laptops I’ve tested.

The front of the lid sticks out, making it very easy to open. The hinges feel smooth and sturdy.

Fingerprints don’t really show up on the lid or interior unless you’ve got greasy fingers.

But if you can’t stay out of the Doritos, don’t worry, it’s easy to clean with a microfiber cloth.

The F16 is a little thicker compared to many other 16 inch gaming laptops that we’ve tested,

but you know what they say, more chonk means more FPS.

It’s still fairly portable, weighing 5lb or 2.3kg,

increasing to 6.6lb or 3kg with the 240 watt charger included.

This puts it on the lighter side when compared to most other 16 inch

gaming laptops that we’ve tested. Many of the lighter laptops are known for being thinner,

but also more expensive. Last year’s 2023 TUF A16 and A15 were basically the same with the

chargers included, and they’re lighter than many competitors like Lenovo’s LOQ.

My configuration has Intel’s Core i7-13650HX processor,

Nvidia’s RTX 4060 graphics, and a 16 inch 165Hz screen.

The 13650HX is a last gen processor released in January 2023. ASUS told me

that they’re only using Intel’s newer 14th gen processors in their higher end gaming laptops,

because they cost more money and don’t actually offer that much of a performance improvement,

so I think they made the right choice by keeping the cheaper TUF series on 13th gen.

The chiclet keyboard has 1 zone of RGB backlighting. All keys and secondary

functions get lit up, but some of them are kind of patchy and not evenly lit. Key brightness

can be adjusted between 3 levels or turned off by holding function and pressing the F2

or F3 keys. You can use the F4 Aura key to cycle between 4 different effects, static,

breathing, strobing or color cycle. We had a problem where RGB lighting randomly stopped

working after a Windows update, the keyboard shortcuts claimed lighting was maxed out,

but it was off. We were only able to fix it by picking an effect in the lighting tab of

the Armory Crate software - the control panel for the laptop. And this issue never happened again.

The keyboard has 1.7mm of key travel. The keys don’t really feel clicky,

but I still enjoyed typing on it.

I’m not personally a fan of the clear WASD keys, but how else would you know it’s a gaming laptop?

The touchpad is big and smooth. It clicks down anywhere and works well.

Most of the ports are found on the left, RIP left handed mouse users. From back to front we’ve got

the power input, gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.1, Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, followed by USB 3.2

Gen 2 Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, and 3.5mm audio combo jack right down the front.

The right just has a second USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port near the middle,

and there’s a Kensington lock at the back. There aren’t any ports on the back.

The Type-C port closest to the front can be used to charge the laptop with up to 100 watts.

Both Type-C ports can be used to connect a monitor, but only the one closest to

the front connects directly to the Nvidia graphics, so perfect for VR.

The Thunderbolt 4 port always connects to the Intel integrated graphics,

whether optimus is on or off.

HDMI always connects to the Nvidia graphics,

and we confirmed it could run our LG B9 TV at 4K 120Hz 12-Bit with G-Sync.

Getting inside requires taking out 12 Phillips head screws of 3 different sizes,

so keep track of them. Opening it up was fairly

easy with pry tools, I’ll leave a link to these ones I use below.

Inside we’ve got the battery down the front,

two memory slots above near the middle, installed SSD in the left M.2 slot,

a spare M.2 slot on the right, and the Wi-Fi 6 card is hiding underneath the SSD.

Wi-Fi speed was about as good as it can be for Wi-Fi 6,

and was similar to many 6E results, only clearly beaten by the newer Wi-Fi 7.

The speeds from the installed 1TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 drive are decent,

but not at the higher end of what’s available like some other laptops,

which may just be a compromise of the cheaper TUF series.

The upgradeability score is about as good as it can be for a 16 inch

gaming laptop. You can swap both SODIMM memory slots, the Wi-Fi card,

and both M.2 storage slots, which can both fit double sided drives no problem.

The speakers are found on the left and right sides towards the front.

They don’t sound very good. They’re tinny with basically no bass, which is sad because ASUS’s

Zephyrus series sounds amazing, but that’s probably part of the reason those cost more.

The latencymon results were better than most other laptops we’ve tested this year.

The F16 is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery.

Panel power saver is enabled by default, which automatically lowers the screen’s refresh rate

to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save power. This is why the screen flashes black,

and it goes back to 165Hz when you plug back in.

You can enable battery care mode through the MyASUS software to limit the maximum

charge level to 80%, which helps improve the longevity of the battery. Or you

could also enable Eco mode through Armory Crate, which disables the Nvidia graphics

and may help improve battery life if you don’t need the power hungry Nvidia GPU.

Battery life was decent for an Intel based laptop, lasting for 6 hours and 42 minutes in

our YouTube video playback test. For significantly better battery life, you’ve really got to go for

Intel’s newer Meteor Lake processors or AMD’s HS series for the best results.

Let’s check out thermals next. The F16 has two fans with 5 copper heatpipes, and thermal paste

is used on both the CPU and GPU. There are holes directly above the air intake fans,

and air gets exhausted out of the left and right sides, as well as from both corners out the back.

ASUS’s Armoury Crate software allows us to change between different performance modes,

which from lowest to highest are silent, performance, turbo and manual. Both turbo

and manual modes apply this overclock to the GPU, but only manual mode lets you customize

it. Manual mode also lets you customize CPU and GPU power limits, temperature limits,

and gives you some control over the fan curves for both fans. Whenever we’ve tested manual mode,

all power and temp sliders were maxed out with fans on 100% speed for best results.

The internal temperatures were fine at idle. The rest of the results are from

combined CPU and GPU stress tests which aim to represent a worst case full load

scenario. Temperatures get higher in the higher performance modes,

as performance increases. Like many other laptops we’ve tested, running with the

lid closed actually lowered temps a little. The cooling pad we test with, linked below,

lowered the CPU by 7 degrees Celsius and GPU by almost 9 degrees, a great result. It can get even

cooler if we instead set the fans to maximum, but as you’ll hear soon that’s way too loud.

The clock speeds don’t change too much between turbo and manual modes. Using the

cooling pad or maxing the fans out was able to boost CPU clock speeds by about 100MHz,

despite no thermal throttling happening, so more air is able to help out a little.

The CPU is power limited to 55 watts with the GPU active at the same time, which isn’t too bad,

it’s definitely more compared to what we see from thinner and more expensive laptops at

least. Nvidia’s control panel says that the 4060 can run up to 130 watts with dynamic

boost, so although it’s not technically a full powered 4060 with a 140 watt limit,

most of them don’t run higher than what we’re seeing here due to Nvidia’s voltage limit anyway.

Turbo and manual modes gave us similar FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at the native screen

resolution. The RTX 4060 gets us around 50 FPS at high settings without upscaling,

as seen in the purple bars, but of course you can take advantage of upscaling features

like DLSS or FSR to further increase performance, as seen in the red bars.

The CPU can use more power in a CPU only workload like Cinebench where the GPU is

idle. Just like the game, there’s not really a practical performance difference between

turbo and manual mode maxed out. Multi core performance was around 21% higher compared

to last year’s TUF A15, which is based on AMD’s Zen 4 architecture from 2023,

or 45% higher than the TUF A16 which is based on Zen 3+ from 2022.

Performance lowers if we unplug the charger and instead run off of battery power, and last

year’s TUF A15 is doing better now. AMD chips are usually more power efficient compared to Intel in

this test, even the A16 that was beaten by a 45% margin with the charger connected is close now.

Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle,

and the F16 was in line with this and barely felt warm. It’s warmer with the stress tests

running. I wouldn’t say it’s hot, but the middle is warmer than I’d like and uncomfortable in the

lowest silent mode. It’s a little warmer in performance mode, though it doesn’t really

feel that different as the hot spots are between the keys. Turbo mode is similar,

maybe a little cooler. The wrist rest and WASD keys are cool though, so not an issue while

gaming. It’s a fair bit cooler with the fans maxed out, but it’s super loud now, let’s have a listen.

The fans were always audible when doing nothing at idle, though they were quiet. Unfortunately

the cooling pad didn’t reduce the fan noise, but as we saw earlier it still lowered temps quite a

bit. Maxing the fans out reduced temps a lot, but it’s way too loud. Don’t forget

that you can customize the fans in manual mode, I’m just showing how loud it can go.

Considering performance in Cinebench and Cyberpunk was basically the same between turbo and manual

modes, there’s no real performance benefit to maxing the fans out unless you really want

lower temps at the expense of a much louder laptop. The cooling pad makes more sense.

Compared to last year’s TUF F15, this year’s TUF F16 gets a taller 16:10 screen,

which just means that there are more pixels vertically.

The F16 has two screen options. There’s the higher resolution 2560 by 1600 panel that mine has,

and a 1920 by 1200 option. According to ASUS, they both have the same color gamut,

but the listings I’ve found in the US note that the 1080p panel is only 250 nits bright.

Color gamut with my panel is fine for gaming,

and based on the spec sheet the 1080p panel should be similar.

But the brightness of my 2560 by 1600 panel is actually good,

not quite 500 nits at full brightness, but not too far away.

This puts it above many other laptops tested. For comparison, the 250 nit 1080p panel would be down

the bottom near MSI’s cheaper GF63. This is the biggest problem I have with this laptop. So yeah,

if the higher quality screen is an option in your region, it’s worth considering.

Backlight bleed was pretty bad in my unit, but this will vary between every laptop.

Screen response time is good with the higher quality panel. For a 165Hz screen we want

transitions to occur within the 6.06ms refresh window, and they’re all quicker than that.

There was a little overshoot and undershoot, meaning ASUS are using an overdrive mode by

default. But unlike their higher end ROG models, there’s no option in software to turn that off.

This is significantly faster compared to the TUF A15’s panel that I tested last year. The

TUF A16 was only a little slower though, and based on the resolution and refresh rate,

it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the same panel the F16 can use.

The total system latency is the amount of time between a mouse click and when a gunshot fire

appears on the screen in Counter-Strike 2. The F16 is the fastest result from

a 4060 laptop so far. It’s quick, and competes with higher specced laptops.

The F16 has a MUX switch. You can access it through Armory Crate, setting ultimate

mode turns optimus off for best performance in games, but that needs a reboot to apply. You

can instead leave it on standard mode, then use advanced optimus through Nvidia’s control panel

to turn optimus on or off without rebooting. G-Sync is only available when optimus is off,

but adaptive sync is available from the integrated graphics when optimus is on.

There’s a 720p camera above the screen, but it does not have IR for Windows Hello face unlock.

Here’s how the camera and microphones look and sound,

and this is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard.

Now let’s find out how well ASUS’s TUF F16 performs in games. We’ve

tested it with these settings for best results.

Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with our own custom test run, and I’ve got the TUF shown by the

red highlight. It’s our best RTX 4060 result at 1080p, both in terms of average FPS and

the dips in performance shown by the higher 1% lows. It’s not quite the best at 1440p,

but the difference between most of the 4060 results are just a few FPS, which is within

the margin of error and not a difference you’d actually notice playing. Anyway, just below 60

FPS is a great result considering we’re not using upscaling features like FSR or DLSS.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark, and the TUF is one of

our higher 4060 results in this game. The two above it are only 4 FPS higher,

which again isn’t really a difference you’d notice when playing, and that applies to most

of the slightly lower results too. The difference between our 4060 results gets even closer together

at the higher 1440p resolution. Spending more for 4070 graphics can give an 18% or higher boost in

this game, but in the wrong laptop it can end up worse than a cheaper 4060 laptop.

Control is a GPU heavy game, and like Cyberpunk, the TUF has the best 1% low result from our 4060

laptops, while average FPS isn’t too different between the best results. Basically this means

that compared to the other 4060s, gameplay on the TUF may be a little smoother and more consistent.

This continues at 1440p where it’s one of the better 4060 results, averaging above 60

FPS and running fine even without upscaling features. The 4070 isn’t too much better,

you’ve really got to spend more for the 4080 if you want a big performance jump.

Here are the 3DMark results. The F16 performs about where expected in content creation,

you can definitely use it for video editing,

just keep in mind what I said about the 1080p screen option not being as bright.

There aren’t a whole lot of things to customize in the BIOS,

which is pretty standard for ASUS. Other brands like Lenovo,

Dell, and especially MSI provide way more customization, but ASUS does at least give

us the option to undervolt in here, at least with the HX processor configuration I’ve got.

Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 24.04 live CD. By default the keyboard, touchpad, speakers,

camera, Wi-Fi and ethernet all worked. Keyboard shortcuts for muting the mic,

changing volume, screen brightness and keyboard brightness work,

but the F4 aura key to change keyboard lighting effect did not.

Pricing and availability will change over time, so check the link below the video for

updates and current sales. And if the F16 does have a good sale, we’ll be sure to add it to

our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that everyday to include all of the latest sales, so

make sure you check it out regularly to save money on your next gaming laptop with that link below.

At the time of recording in August, the configuration we’ve tested here but

with the lower quality 1080p screen goes for $1300 USD at full price, which is kind of expensive.

We’ve just got better RTX 4060 deals on the gaminglaptop.deals website that will

perform similarly in most cases for less money.

Of course to be fair, the F16 isn’t on sale right now,

so hopefully it will be more competitive with some discounts.

Because for $250 less we can get ASUS’s TUF F15 for $1050. Yeah, it doesn’t have the HX processor,

but this one is only missing 4 E cores and it has higher tier RTX 4070 graphics,

which is a better tradeoff for most games.

All things considered, ASUS’s TUF F16 is a decent gaming laptop. Build quality is good,

it’s on the lighter side as far as 16” gaming laptops go,

battery life was surprisingly good compared to other Intel laptops with HX processors,

and FPS in games was good and where expected compared to other 4060 laptops.

My biggest complaint is that 1920 by 1200 screen option. At just 250 nits it’s way

too dim for $1300 USD. Seriously, what the heck are they thinking? That’s like

the same brightness as MSI’s GF63, which regularly goes for about half this price.

And that’s just the main thing holding me back from recommending this laptop.

Of course the 2560 by 1600 screen mine has is way better,

but that doesn’t seem to be an option in all regions and presumably would cost more.

Apart from that, the other main downsides are that the fans can get super loud,

but that’s not actually an issue if you don’t max them out manually. And almost

all the ports are on the left, so RIP if you’re a left handed mouse user. Ideally

I’d want to see this laptop for under $1000 with that 1080p screen. Otherwise

there are just better options on sale on our gaminglaptop.deals website.

And you can find out about better 16 inch gaming laptops in this video next, where I go through the

top 5 best gaming laptops that I’ve tested so far this year, so I’ll see you over in that one next.