Anytime I review a ‘TUF Gaming’ laptop, the expectations are usually all about great performance at a decent price. Asus hasn’t let me down with their TUF Gaming laptops yet, and when I got the new TUF Gaming A15 (₹94,990), I could tell that it wasn’t going to let me down either. Which is great; after all, what else could I want from it. The new TUF Gaming A15 builds upon the success of the TUF Gaming FX505DT that I reviewed last year. And Asus has taken the smart decision to improve upon last year’s laptop, without wasting time on things it got right already. So, to me, that’s what this laptop is. An improvement upon what was a solid laptop last year. And if you’re wondering whether or not you should buy it, here are my thoughts after using this laptop for almost a week now.
Design and Build
Right off the bat, Asus has made improvements on the design front. The lid no longer has the angular lines leading to the center with the Asus logo lighting up in soft yellow, or red (as was the case with the FX505DY). This time, the lid is completely flat with no unnecessary lines or graphics. There’s the TUF Gaming logo at the very center and while large, it’s very subtle and barely visible in most cases. That’s something I appreciate, because it makes this laptop look a lot more stealthy.
The TUF Gaming A15 FA566 comes with a 15 inch Full HD display with a 144Hz refresh rate. That is pretty great, and the high refresh rate sure makes the experience feel a lot better all over the system. Obviously that improvement is much more visible in games where things just look a lot better.
As a general purpose laptop screen also, this one does the job quite well. It gets sufficiently bright for my usage, and the matte finish helps reduce glare a bit. The colours look pretty solid as well, and I really enjoyed watching movies on this (and yes, I binged Lucifer over the weekend on this laptop as well).
When you read specs like Ryzen 7 4800H, 16GB RAM, and GTX 1660Ti, you kind of already know that the performance is going to be pretty great. Fortunately, this laptop doesn’t disappoint in terms of performance either.
I also ran a Geekbench benchmark to see how this Ryzen 7 CPU performs, and well, take a look for yourself. This is a pretty decent score, which is great for the laptop. Especially if you’re also looking at doing CPU intensive tasks other than gaming here.
Keyboard
The keyboard on this laptop is also pretty great. There’s really nothing to complain about. The keys are nicely spaced, there’s ample travel, and the keyboard is pretty responsive. I have been writing this review on the TUF Gaming laptop itself, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. There’s even a Numpad for anyone who needs it, and there are full size arrow keys instead of those compact arrow keys you’ll find in some laptops.
Moving on, the trackpad here is a nice big area where you can use all the gestures Windows affords you. Unlike the FX505DY and DT where the left and right click buttons were integrated with the trackpad, this one has dedicated buttons for those clicks. That means the visible trackpad is all trackpad and not buttons.
I have started to feel as though the TUF Gaming line up is all about what you need and nothing you don’t. That holds true for the selection of ports here as well. There is no overload of ports on this laptop, but there are all the ones that you may need or want.
As far as gaming laptops go, that’s a great port selection to have. You can connect a mouse, headphones, and even an external monitor if you want. You can use wired internet connections for your multiplayer games, and you have Type-C for expandability as well. The lack of Type-C was a complaint I had with the FX505 last year, and I’m glad to see Asus fixed that this time around.
The speakers on the TUF Gaming A15 are great for some things, and not so great for others. Let me get the bad things out first. If you’re thinking of listening to music, you should know these speakers won’t really offer anything in the way of bass. I would recommend getting external speakers or headphones in order to listen to music.
However, for everything else, these speakers are pretty great. They are loud, and in fact louder than they were on the FX505DT. They don’t distort, and they are great for watching movies and TV shows on your laptop. It’s a little surprising because these are bottom mounted side-firing speakers, and I was expecting them to sound rather bad. Still, like I said, I watched quite a lot of movies on this laptop and the built in speakers are great for such tasks.
The TUF Gaming A15 FA566 comes with a 48Wh battery. Same as the FX505DT from last year. However, it does come with more powerful hardware, and somehow still manages a similar battery life. I got around 4 to 5 hours of battery backup from the laptop with usual day to day tasks on around 70% brightness and ‘Better Battery’ mode.
Pros:
Cons:
- Screen wobbles a lot
- Viewing angles aren’t the best
Asus TUF Gaming A15 FA566: Should You Buy?
All things considered, should you buy this laptop? I think so, yes. There are a couple of reasons for my recommendation here. For one, at this price of ₹94,990, there aren’t many laptops that offer a similar mix of specifications. The TUF Gaming FA566 does almost everything really well, and it checks off quite a lot of things you’d want in a gaming laptop. It looks good, it’s built well, it performs great, the keyboard and speakers are decent as well, and it’s just an all around nice package.
