Asus TUF A14 review

I like to like things. This is one of my favorite parts of this job. I like to buy modern gear that isn’t unnecessarily hampered by marketing constraints, isn’t strained by some kind of misplaced egotism, or is not overly designed for pain that causes distraction. Simply good, well-made and productive equipment. It’s a real pleasure.

At this point, my review of the Asus TUF A14 gaming laptop can go either way. I could drop a verse like a gravelly-voiced Tory Clarkson and “…but that’s not what we get here” in Zinger style, or I could create a great summary of all the reasons why I think this is one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops I’ve ever tested.

But you saw the result 👆 there, so you know it’s the latter.

The new TUF A14 follows Asus’ latest line of Zephyrus G series gaming laptops, drawing many design cues from this more affordable range of notebooks. And it really works. Previously, TUF laptops were inexpensive, relatively shoddy and quite ugly boards that nevertheless performed well for the money.

They were effective, inexpensive, but ultimately not particularly desirable. Everything changed thanks to this little beauty. The new look of the TUF A14 is much more minimalist than the other TUF machines I’ve tested, retaining the clean lines of the Zephyrus G14 and Zephyrus G16 laptops that we’ve come to love so much. It’s also impressively slim in its tiny 14-inch chassis.

Proportionally, it’s very well designed, with a narrow bezel around the 1600p display and a keyboard that provides much more space around each key than I would normally expect. I’m writing this review on it at the moment, and while I’m not particularly excited about the key response, it’s still an effective unit and I don’t suffer from any missed keystrokes. It is also single-color, with white being the only key lighting on offer. And honestly, I don’t mind it – otherwise I would just do it in pink.

There is also a Copilot button. You know, for artificial intelligence. For… all… these… things… we… gamers… use… artificial intelligence… for… Yeah, I admit, I don’t know either. Just know that there are some TOPs here, whether you’re running an AMD NPU or an Nvidia GPU directly.

The trackpad is also quite good; a truly tactile glass option that takes up over a third of the space under the keyboard. It’s responsive, slippery, and of course has a greasy fingerprint magnet. This is life. I will also say that the physical response to pressing any corner of the trackpad to enable left-click or right-click functionality is a bit rough. This is the only place where it feels anything other than perfectly machined, as when you take it out of the box it appears to be rubbing against the surrounding frame.

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Overall, however, it seems much more expensive than the $1,500 price tag would suggest. I’d also like to note that while this seems like a lot for an RTX 4060 gaming laptop in late 2024, the 14-inch form factor generally commands a higher price point than its larger compatriots, and the Asus TUF series is also one that’s also prone to healthy discounts. We regularly see TUF laptops on sale at major retailers, so I expect the price of the TUF A14 to drop quite quickly.

Somehow I managed to get this far into this review without even mentioning what powers this device. And this is another place where TUF A14 feels premium. As the “A” designation indicates, this is an AMD-powered Asus machine with the latest AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. This gives you both the excellent Zen 5 processor – with four full Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores – as well as the most powerful iGPU ever you can buy today.

This means you get an impressive amount of raw processing power/productivity in this little laptop, as well as really good 1080p gaming performance thanks to the Radeon 890M graphics card alone. This will provide a nice combination of good frame rates and decent battery life when you’re away from a power outlet.

However, if you’re not, you also have the 100W TGP RTX 4060 at your disposal. This is capable of providing more than what you can get from the iGPU, allowing you to increase the resolution to 1440p or native 1600p resolution, while still ensuring a playable frame rate on the system .

And unlike many gaming laptops I’ve tested, it’s not overly annoyingly noisy when the Nvidia GPU is doing its job. Sure, when you turn on Armory Crate in Turbo settings with Ultimate GPU mode enabled, you’ll hear the fans spinning, but it’s tuned so that it won’t be obtrusive and won’t leak into your consciousness through your gaming headset.

Apart from the two main concerns of PC gamers – GPU and CPU – you get up to 32GB LPDDR5 and up to 2TB SSD in the package. Impressively, you also get a spare M.2 slot where you can install an additional SSD in the future. And this isn’t some damn attempt to reclaim TUF A14 either; Asus makes removing the back and accessing the interior fortunately simple.

Although this only applies to managing the SSD as its RAM is soldered in, it also means you need to be sure that the amount of memory you start with will be enough for your needs for the foreseeable future as this won’t change.

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I also care about the overall port selection. There is a full-width ventilation system on the back of the device that helps keep the device cool while leaving space on both sides for port connections. This means USB Type-C and Type-A ports on both sides, although only a 40Gbps Type-C connection with a PD port on the left is available. There’s also a tiny power socket, HDMI, and 3.5mm audio jacks there, while on the right side there’s also an SD card slot and two 10Gbps USB Type-A and Type-C ports.

For me, there really aren’t many gaming laptops that are this well put together. You feel like they fit your entire life, not just the part of you that loves eliminating bugs in Helldivers 2, communing with Illithids in Baldur’s Gate 3, or managing the whims of fate and young millionaires in Football Manager. And honestly, these days it’s almost exclusively Asus laptops If doing this. The first thing that comes to mind is the Zephyrus G14, but the new TUF A14 can equally play a dual role: a gaming companion and an office/school device.

I still have a soft spot for the HP Transcend 14, but that machine’s Meteor Lake core falls short compared to the powerful Ryzen AI 9 APU, and the build quality isn’t at the same level as the Asus laptop. .

It’s durable, surprisingly thin and light, impressively well-equipped, and as capable as you’d expect from a 14-inch RTX 4060 gaming laptop. It’s the kind of machine I can throw in my bag and know it will adapt to any situation in which it needs to be used. I will use it.

So yes, you can color me impressed with the latest Asus TUF A14, it’s one of my favorite things to like this year.