Gaming laptops are often chunky and heavy, but ASUS’ new TUF Gaming A14 is set to change that perception. This laptop is not only compact and ultralight, but it also packs great performance and even an impressive battery life. It may will be the ultimate laptop for gamers who want ultra-portability.
Powered by AMD’s new Ryzen AI 9 processor and NVIDIA RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 has the power to run any AAA games. The new AMD processor is more energy-efficient and will support future Copilot+ PC experiences.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 is obviously meant for gaming. It’s in its name. But the laptop doesn’t scream gaming. There is a TUF branding marked on the display cover. Maybe some people may know what it is. But I think most won’t recognise this as a gaming laptop, so you might get away carrying this laptop into a board meeting without looking out of place.
The overall design is somewhat plain and understated for a gaming-oriented laptop. It’s all around decked out in matte-black finish. There are no flashy lights or RGB colours, apart from the white backlighting on the keyboard. It feels robust and durable. In fact, the TUF Gaming A14 is tested to MIL-STD-810H standards, and have been exposed to drops, vibration, humidity, and extreme temperature. The laptop doesn’t require tender loving care, but of course, you should take good care of it anyway.
The TUF Gaming A14 is surprisingly compact and portable. The chassis dimensions are 31.1 x 22.7 x 1.69 ~ 1.99 cm (WxDxH), and it weighs 1.46 kg. It’s so light it almost felt like it might not have some gaming innards, such as a dedicated GPU. (It does, of course, have a dedicated GPU.) This laptop will be quite easy to take around to any gaming meetup, or maybe just for anything at all.
The display is a 14-inch, 2.5K (2560 x 1600 resolution) 16:10 aspect ratio IPS panel with 165 Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support. The pixel density of 215.63 pixels per inch ensures images are sharp and clear, and provides an immersive gaming experience.
The matte-finish display might not look best for video streaming, but it resists glare easily, which is probably most important for gamers. ASUS says the display has 100% coverage of sRGB colour gamut.
The webcam sits atop the display. It has a 1080p sensor with IR capabilities to support Windows Hello facial recognition logins.
The display can open up 180° to lay flat, something good to know in case it is important or useful to you.
The keyboard has island-style chiclet keys what are backlit with white mini-LEDs for even light distribution. The keys have a generous 1.7 mm travel. The layout is perfectly standard, something that is important to me. Overall, the typing experience is great. Most people probably don’t have too much expectations of typing experience on a gaming laptop, but if you do need the TUF Gaming A14 for occasional productivity work, this keyboard will not disappoint.
Notice there’s a Copilot+ Key. This is Microsoft’s new dedicated key to launch Copilot+ functions. It’s not really that important, and in the case of the TUF Gaming A14, it isn’t technically a Copilot+ PC just yet. The TUF Gaming A14 does have the NPU specs to meet Copilot+ PC requirements, and ASUS says the Copilot+ PC experience will come later.
The touchpad is reasonably large, and it works as well as you would expect it to. It’s the traditional cantilever clickable touchpad though, in case it matters to you. I usually just tap-click, so while a fixed rigid touchpad with haptic feedback would have been a nice luxury, this one work just fine for me.
The two speakers on the TUF Gaming A14 are downward firing. They have Dolby Atmos to give you a high-fidelity sound stage. Sound quality is just average though. A built-in array microphone supports Microsoft Cortana near field/far field audio pickup.
There’s a decent port selection on the ASUS TUF Gaming A14. On the left side, you’ll find a proprietary power jack, a HDMI 2.1 port, a USB Type-4 port with DisplayPort 2.1 and Power Delivery 3.0, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and a 3.5 mm combo audio jack.
On the right side, you’ll get a mciroSD card reader, a USB 3.2 Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 and G-Sync, and another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port. Take note that the USB Type-C ports on the left and right side have different capabilities.
I would ordinarily gripe about the proprietary power jack, but I’ll cut ASUS some slack here since gaming laptops do need more demanding power input than USB Type-C Power Delivery can handle. A nice touch is that the proprietary rectangular power connector can plug in upside or downside, avoiding the problem of USB Type-A connectors where you almost always get it wrong the first time.
There is no doubt that the TUF Gaming A14 has excellent built-in thermal management features. There are large vents over more than half the bottom of the chassis, with rubber feet to ensure good clearance over any hard surface to faciliate air flow. There are also some vents on the side, and more running along the full back of the chassis.
Internally, there are dual fans each with 89 ultra-thin blades just 0.1 mm thick to enable high airflow and static pressure without the associated bothersome acoustics noise and whine that comes with typical “powerful” fans.
The ASUS TUF Gaming is powered by the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor which has 12 cores, 24 threads, and XDNA 2 NPU with 50 TOPs performance. The dedicated GPU is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with up to 100 W of power. There is 32 GB (2x 16 GB) of LPDDR5X memory.
Geekbench 6 scores as are follows (plugged-in, best performance):
- Single-core: 2835
- Multi-core: 14620
- GPU: 92906 (dedicated) / 42195 (integrated)
PCMark 10 Extended benchmark scores are:
- Overall: 10021
- Essentials: 10125
- Productivity: 11801
- Digital Content Creation: 12449
- Gaming: 18322
Quite impressively, the PCMark 10 scores are even better than the ASUS ROG NUC 970 I reviewed recently.
The 1 TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage is fast. There are actually 2 slots available, with one free, so you can add a second stick later.
The built-in Li-ion battery has 73 Whrs of capacity. With the new energy-efficient AMD Ryzen AI 9 processor, the laptop manages to run for 11 hours 24 mins streaming Full HD YouTube videos before the battery runs out.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 comes with a 200 W power adapter. You’ll also get a TUF backpack in the box.
There is no doubt that the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 will meet the performance requirements to run AAA games. It’s most impressive that it can do so in a compact chassis as light as it is. Then, if you ever want to switch over to productivity work or just stream videos, it can run for almost 11.5 hours without needing to be plugged in.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 as configured in this review (32 GB RAM, 1 TB storage) retails for S2,799.