ASUS’ latest TUF A14 laptop announced in July, brings the latest AMD Ryzen chips to the TUF gaming laptop series with NVIDIA RTX graphics to make a compact gaming machine on a budget.
With prices starting at $2,499, the TUF A14 has a 14” display and is powered by the recently released AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processors with the AMD XDNA NPU on-board offering up to 50 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). There’s an integrated Radeon 890M on-board though it comes though with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU.
ASUS have sent over a TUF A14 for review. I’ve spent almost 2 weeks using the TUF Gaming A14 laptop and here’s how it went.
The TUF A14 is a compact unit, weighing in at 1.46kg and just 16.9mm thick. The 14” display has a taller 16:10 aspect ratio which defines the overall shape of the laptop. I prefer this form factor for work and web browsing and it displays games nicely, and the compact design means it slips easily into a backpack.
The laptop has a gunmetal grey aluminium sheet on the lid with a simple TUF logo on the left, as well as the bottom panel which has vents cut for air flow. The grey and the simple design looks quite premium, with no real obvious ‘gamer’ aesthetic unless you look closely.
There is a small bump which juts out beyond the hinge with large vents on the rear. The laptop actually draws air through the keyboard and over the main-board before venting it out the rear in a neat piece of engineering.
Opening the laptop you get a look at the 14” OLED panel which fills the top with an 88% screen to body ratio. There’s minimal bezels around the side, and the top bezel includes a 1080P FHD webcam with Windows Hello support – a first for the TUF laptop line, and I am here for it! It’s almost instant login, making it easy to get into your games quickly.
The lower deck is black, in contrast to the grey lid and includes a spacious keyboard and enormous premium glass touchpad – another first for the TUF line, and it feels super nice, and looks great in the same 16:10 aspect ratio as the display.
The TUF A14 keyboard is comfortable to type on thanks to the nicely curved keycaps which have a generous key travel of 1.7mm. There’s a convenient row of hotkeys at the top left for volume control, mic mute and there’s an Armoury Crate quick access button to launch into the system settings quickly – and the new CoPilot button is there on the lower right.
The A14 is the first TUF laptop to use a mini LED based keyboard backlight module. It’s limited to white only though which may be a problem for RGB fans, but it’s nicely bright with several different intensity levels you can cycle through.
ASUS get massive ups for design of their I/O on the TUF A14 including a USB Type-C and Type-A port on either side of the laptop, though only the USB Type-C on the left is USB4 – though they both support DP 1.4. You also get a microSD slot on the right, with a HDMI out and 3.5mm jack on the left.
The TUF Gaming A14 includes a 14” 2.5K resolution IPS non-touch display and includes dual speakers with Dolby Atmos support.
The 14” panel has a matte finish with anti-glare coating which is a big plus for me, cancelling out annoying overhead lights and more. While the lack of touch is a bit of a disappointment, it does mean the display stays clean.
The IPS-level panel in the TUF A14 has great viewing angles and the colours are bright and vivid. The 165hz refresh rate makes for smooth gaming with G-Sync helping to smooth it out even more, matching the fps.
There’s dual speakers in the TUF A14 with Dolby Atmos support for spatial audio. The quality of the audio is quite good with clear speech and good music playback.
Where it doesn’t quite hit it for me is the lack of power, with the audio quite low, even at max volume. You can tune it slightly with the Dolby Access app equaliser, though at the cost of the smooth audio tuning.
The dual array mics offer good noise cancellation, with the AI able to cancel out the background noise from both your stream and somebody else’s.
The TUF A14 includes the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor with AMD XDNA NPU, paired with 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1TB SSD. The RAM is installed in 2x 16GB modules, with no additional memory update supported, while the SSD can be upgraded by removing the back panel.
The graphics include an integrated Radeon 890M, with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU for heavier lifting.
The AMD XDNA NPU is capable of up to 50 TOPS for supporting on-device AI powered by CoPilot and other AI heavy features. The actual CoPilot+ experiences from Microsoft though will be coming soon, with the ASUS website stating ‘Copilot+ PC experiences are coming. Requires free updates available starting late November 2024’ – so we’ll see more on that front soon.
The AMD Radeon 890M is a capable integrated GPU offering great performance for your day-to-day work. The MUX switch and NVidia Advanced Optimus can then automatically switch to the discrete NVIDIA RTX 4060 Laptop GPU when required which saves battery life.
In terms of the discrete GPU, the RTX 4060 is a capable option for gaming, easily pumping out 50-60fps in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Sons of the Forest and Fortnite. The NVIDIA G-Sync support also means you get super smooth playback.
As usual I ran it through 3D Mark and here’s how it went.
ASUS have included Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 to complement the I/O ports on the laptop. The inclusion of USB-C ports either side is a big plus for me, and the Wi-Fi 6E is fast and maintains connection well.
A massive bonus for gamers is you CAN update the Wifi card, with the module installed in an M.2 2230 slot for easy updates.
I love the option to add more storage or update the Wi-Fi, but would love to see an option to throw in 32GB modules in the future.
There’s a 73WHrs, 4-cell Li-ion battery inside the TUF A14, with a 200W charger included in the box.
The charger is a proprietary connector which connects on the left of the laptop – however you can power it with a USB-C charger, though at a slower charging speed, which Windows and Armoury Crate will both complain about.
The laptop can get over 50% charge in just 30 minutes when using the full charger, with a full charge in just over an hour and a half.
In terms of battery life, the TUF Gaming A15 will get you through about an hour of Performance gaming at full frame-rate and screen brightness. Windows starts to alert around at around the 10% mark – at which time you’ll start to see skipped frames and get a feel something isn’t right.
For more ‘standard’ office work you can fare much better – almost to a full day, especially dropping down to the hybrid standard mode in Armoury Crate. The Standard mode relies more on the integrated GPU, and only switches to the discrete GPU for more challenging work and hence saves battery.
The TUF A14 comes with Windows 11 Home on-board, which of course comes with regular updates from Microsoft.
ASUS have pre-loaded a number of applications and utilities on-board including their myASUS and Armoury Crate software, as well as the usual McAfee software (with annoying pop ups), and various utilities including AMD Adrenalin, NVIDIA GeForce Experience, Realtek Audio console and Dolby Access for tuning your hardware.
The Armoury Crate software is the real hero for me, it lets you switch easily between performance modes and back again easily – and with the quick access button above the keyboard it’s super simple to jump in and out. The app lets you control your hardware including keyboard lighting and more, as well as including a handy game launcher.
The on-device AI is there, with the CoPilot key on the keyboard also encouraging you to call on the AI assistant more often. The downside is that the Copilot+ experience is still not launched on the TUF A14, but it will be coming later this year. We’re sure to see more AI related options coming so stay tuned.
The ASUS TUF A14 offers a lot for a fairly good price. The AMD Ryzen AI processor, with XDNA NPU offers a solid platform for AI as it rolls out, while the AMD Radeon integrated GPU works well and is backed up by the very capable RTX 4060 laptop GPU for gaming.
The OLED panel in the TUF A14 is fantastic and bright, with great colour reproduction and the only real let down for me is the audio which lacks punch and volume.
The gaming performance is great, and the option to update the SSD or Wi-Fi yourself down the track is a bonus, though the included options are certainly good for now.
Overall, this is a great way to spend $2,499 on a laptop that won’t look out of place in an office environment – but can still game with you all night when the sun goes down.
You can find the TUF A14 over on the ASUS eShop, or at Australian retailers.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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