ASUS TUF Gaming F16 Laptop Review – Good Performance all rounder

The ASUS TUF lineup has just gotten the refresh once more, and this time we got a sample from ASUS for a round of review on the TUF Gaming F16. To start, the TUF lineups are basically sets of models that is targeted for gamers with some balanced performance, while the positioning is set lower than the ROG series, the TUF series still hold some serious gaming aesthetics, hardware and base design with some compromises made.

Design, Aesthetics, Outlook

The looks and design of the TUF Gaming F16 is taken with it’s clean, classic design, which represent simplicity that does not look overly too plain. From the cover itself you dont see any RGB lighting, just an embossed TUF logo at the back of the display.

Since this is a gaming laptop, over the thermal aspects, the TUF Gaming F16 could have one of the most robust cooling located at the bottom of the case taking in air and blowing it our through the back of the laptop with a pair of 84 blade fans, 4 exhaust vents, a redesigned dust filter and 5 heat pipes effectively channeling all the hot air out.

The keyboard is fairly sizable too, a full size keyboard is in place with numpad and four additional buttons for accessing volume controls, microphone toggle and Armory Crate app. From the experience side, they keyboard typing is silent with key travel distance of 1.7mm. They ASWD key caps are distinctive on it’s own in translucent so that it can shines up more with the single zone RGB lights indicating most used keys, especially for movement on games such as first person shooters. No complains over the touchpad, which is quite big for me, but it does have a satisfying soft taps and clicks with Windows Precision Drivers verified for Windows 11 and features 5 point multi touch for gestures support.

Lets look at the ports available, you get a pair of USB C ports, one which is on Thunderbolt 4, allowing faster speed and expansion of more peripherals and external eGPU, 2 USB A ports, a HDMI Port, LAN port and a microphone/headphone jack. All of these allows for ample connectivity with external accessories and USB based devices.

Lastly, the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 is tested to meet MIL-STD-810H standards for vibration and impact resistance. It is also weighted at 2.27KG, a standard weight for most gaming laptops available on the market today.

Display & Audio

Towards the display, the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 has a 16 inch, 1920 x 1200, 165Hz IPS level panel that carries an sRGB of 100% which sets this laptop selling point not just for gaming, but should you wanted to edit visuals that needed some color accuracy, this laptop can be a good to go choice for that reason as well. The Anti Glare display is also high suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, whether it is dark or bright areas. It does have GSync, and this is to enhance the gaming experience by lowering the latency between inputs and VRR to reduce tearing over fast moving scenes.

Over to the audio, it houses a pair of pretty powerful speakers located at the side bottom of the laptop that has Dolby Audio tuning. Some of the customization options are available via Armory Crate for AI Noise cancellation via AI and Microphone mode for three different modes for audio recording.

Performance & Software

The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 is powered by the 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13650HX, with 16GB of DDR5 running at 4800Mhz, 512GB of fast NVME Gen4 storage and either an NVidia GeForce RTX 4060 or RTX 4050 dedicated mobile GPU. Of course from the hardware perspective you can also upgrade the RAM up to a maximum of 32GB of DDR5 RAM, at the same time, should you wanted to replace and upgrade the storage, it can be done as well. Since it uses a MUX switch, the laptop will dynamically switch to the dedicated GPU when you are gaming or over some graphical intensive task, or back to Intel integrated graphics when doing lighter, normal stuff such as movies, on Microsoft office or just browsing the web, since it does not need that much graphical horsepower. The MUX switch will also prioritize on the internal graphics first when you are using the laptop on battery mode. Speaking about battery life, by average it will last you around 5.5 hours, that is on a normal usage without any gaming included.

Gaming wise (as we are testing the RTX 4060 variant), the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 performs admirably well with titles from Forspoken at high settings can cross over 60FPS with ease, while eSports titles such as Counter Strike 2, DOTA 2 or even any Call Of Duty Series can go over high framerate well without issues, even cranking up the settings a little bit higher will be totally fine.

The included software is pretty standard and most notable from ASUS is Armory Crate and MyASUS. To summarize, Armory Crate is a one stop app for your RGB light modes on your keyboard, special news and promotion from ASUS, Power adjustments, System monitoring, performance settings while MyASUS takes care of Warranty status, battery care modes and system driver update with diagnostics. There is close to no bloatware include and this laptop is pretty much stock Windows 11 with Microsoft Office 365 installed.

Benchmarking

I will just leave the benchmark results here as above so that you can take the results to compare with other competing laptops in the market today.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 is one laptop that justifies performance and pricing quite reasonably with one of the best in balanced processor included, though it is not a Core Ultra, but it’s performance still holds high and with the RTX Graphics and MUX switch included, the laptop stands very well in both gaming and work related task in a single machine that can accomplish what you want to play, and what you want to work on.

The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 is now widely available on sale. Price starts from RM5999 with the GeForce RTX™ 4050 model. For more information, CLICK here to find out.