Asus TUF Gaming A16 (2025) evaluation

The entry degree is a humorous place to be. Whereas laptops with RTX 5080 and 5090 GPUs are pored over, in search of each little fluctuation in body price to find the totally different results varied CPUs and cooling options have on the rendering potential of Nvidia’s most interesting silicon, the low finish tends to get lumped into an amorphous mass.

In actual fact, PC Gamer hasn’t reviewed many laptops with an RTX 5050 GPU. Creeping by means of the dusty stacks, marvelling on the symmetrical ebook stacking (identical to the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947) and attempting to not appeal to the eye of the librarian, I may discover just one different level of reference: the Medion Erazer Scout 15 E1.

It didn’t do significantly properly when put by means of the testing regime, which could have one thing to do with the Core i5 13420H and low, low worth, however should you’re in search of PC gaming on a funds, it’s price a glance.

The Asus TUF Gaming A16 takes the identical GPU and mixes it with a way more attention-grabbing CPU. The AMD Ryzen 7 260 (from the Hawk Level era) makes use of eight Zen 4 cores and may enhance as much as 5.1 GHz. It’s able to Hyperthreading, or no matter AMD calls it, and every of these cores is a high-performance core, as AMD doesn’t use the P and E distinction. This implies you get numerous processing functionality, and certainly it places in a efficiency that’s up there with a number of Core i7 and Extremely 7 chips, in addition to Ryzen AI 7s.

In Baldur’s Gate 3 it performs in addition to the brand new Framework 16, which has a better spec on paper.

At first, the GPU seems prefer it’s going to be the millstone across the A16’s neck, dragging it all the way down to mediocre benchmark scores and making the graphs on this web page look very unhappy certainly. In follow, nobody’s arguing that it’s pretty much as good as a 5070, however it may give a 5060 a run for its cash.

The 55W RTX 5050 right here can use as a lot as 115 W of energy, which places it forward of 5060s and even 5070s. A 115 W 5060, resembling that within the Erazer Deputy 15 P1, beats the A16 within the Time Spy Excessive benchmark, however the 85 W mannequin within the Gigabyte Gaming A16 produces a barely decrease rating than the TUF’s (however an identical body charges in Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Fantasy: Wukong). It simply goes to point out that core rely isn’t the whole lot in selecting a GPU. This can be a sizzling little chip.

Oh sure certainly. You need to count on a modicum of fan noise out of your gaming laptop computer, particularly one with a CPU that tops out at 100 °C, however whack this into Turbo mode utilizing Asus’ ridiculously named Armoury Crate software program (and put your individual flavour of RGB flashing into the keyboard whilst you’re at it) and also you not solely get improved efficiency, however a degree of noise to make you attain on your headset.

Fortunately, the TUF A16 is properly provided with ports. Alongside the three.5 mm audio jack and Bluetooth 5.3, you’ll discover a single USB4 (mercifully labelled as such on the highest of the casing, one thing extra producers ought to do because the Kind-C USB 3.2 port subsequent to it’s similar) and three USB-A ports too. There’s an HDMI and an Ethernet and a charging port. You’ll at all times have the ability to discover a place to stay a cable, and all this, together with the rubber ft beneath that carry it as much as enhance airflow, and the sheer weight of the steel and plastic constriction, result in a machine that gives the look it’s extra suited to make use of on a desk than resting on the highest of your legs.

The rear corners have been minimize throughout in a pleasant little design contact, however you’ll need to be careful for the entrance, the place they could be a bit sharp. In any other case, it’s a regular black rectangle, devoid of lighting besides within the keyboard and a scattering of standing LEDs on the bit that protrudes again previous the display screen, the place you’ll by no means see them if the display screen is raised.

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The IPS panel can go fairly shiny, at 385 nits, and its decision doesn’t over-stretch the GPU, bringing its 165 Hz refresh price into sight should you allow multi-frame era in appropriate video games (or simply run older ones that devour much less sources). The one disadvantage is should you’re utilizing the A16 for something that requires correct color replica, as whereas it’s able to displaying 100% of the sRGB gamut, it solely manages 80% or so of wider areas resembling Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 – you’ll want an exterior monitor for that type of factor.

Asus has seen match to stuff a 90 Wh battery within the A16, which ends up in a type of attention-grabbing dichotomy. Depart it looping a video, which leads it to change off the Nvidia chip and depend on the CPU’s Radeon 780M built-in cores, and you will get virtually eight hours of life out of it. Hearth up a gaming benchmark that prompts the 5050, nevertheless, and this drops just like the aforementioned millstone to simply an hour and 1 / 4. You’ll be wanting to hold the charger with you, although it is going to additionally high up over USB-C should you can feed it sufficient watts.

The TUF Gaming A16 for 2025 is large and heavy and makes loads of noise. It additionally manages to maintain tempo with laptops that ought to, in concept, beat it, which is the setup for a heartwarming story of a plucky underdog gaming laptop computer that turns into the folks’s good-value champion. The factor is, it’s just a bit too costly for this to be true. When Gigabyte’s A16 and the Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 (each 5060-equipped) are cheaper, and that Erazer Deputy is way much less cash, the perfect factor to do with the TUF A16 is await some form of low cost.

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