Today I'll be finally looking at this Acer Tuf dash F15 laptop, which is a brand new centralized gaming laptop that focuses mainly on the price.
Now the model that I have right here comes with a lower power RTX 3070 GPU and Intel's latest and greatest Tiger Lake CPU i7-1137H, which has a total of four cores.
Now they are faster cores but it still feels a bit outdated when you compare it to AMD new eight-core options.
Anyway, it also goes with 240 hertz IPS displays 16 gigabytes of RAM and a one terabyte SSD.
So, the basic configuration should cost you around $1100 well the one I have right here should be around $1500 or 1700 Euros, which still makes it one of the cheapest 3070 laptops in this generation.
But is that enough of a reason to go for this laptop?
Design, Materials,Build Quality
Now compared to the last year's model the new Asus TUF Dash F15 Laptop did get a nice visual overall. It is thinner.
It is lighter, it is built better, and it has a nice aluminum top cover which makes it not just more portable but it also looks cleaner and more attractive.
And most importantly, it doesn't have a tramp stamp anymore.
Now I have a gray version here but there will be a white one available as well that I would say also looks very good.
The chassis has a lot of similarities with the Zephyrus G15 from last year with a slightly different top cover.
And since those higher-end Zephyrus laptops had a nice chassis to begin with. I kind of does agree with their choice to just reuse it.
Connections
On the right side of the laptop, there are two five gigabit USB Type-A ports.
There are no connections on the back, and on the left side, there is a power connection, Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, a single five gigabit USB type port, a thunderbolt four-port, and a 3.5-millimeter jack.
Now, this Thunderbolt type C port is very interesting as it does allow you to just use different display options as well as faster external storage, but you can also use it to charge the laptop with any type C charger.
That is not going to be really enough power for gaming, but it means that you can go and do some work, or do your school things with a small compact charger, instead of the standard 200 watts charger.
Build Quality continued,Keyboard, Touchpad
You can open it easily with one hand and the inside also kind of reminds me of the Zephyrus.
It is pretty sturdy, even though it is mostly plastic with very little flex in the chassis.
The keyboard feels as good as their higher-end model so it feels snappy and tactile with a nice amount of travel for a reasonably thin laptop, and it is just, you know, very easy to get used to higher-end models usually have an RGB keyboard while the Asus TUF Dash F15 Laptop only comes with a single color backlight.
As you can see there is no Numpad which is pretty much the norm these days. But unlike the other Asus laptops that have a Numpad feature built into the touchpad.
This one doesn't have that so make sure you don't need a Numpad at all.
As for the touchpad itself. It is the same as usual, it is pretty smooth and it works just fine.
But it's still a touchpad you can use it if you need to, but you know personally warmly recommend to use a mouse. Instead.
(Lack of a) Webcam
This laptop also doesn't have a webcam and no webcam means that you get smaller bezels.
And many people so don't like them for privacy reasons and many would rather use a smartphone as a webcam as it does offer a better image quality.
And while. All those things are valid reasons. The reality is that many people simply need a webcam these days.
And I think that they should have included one in this laptop.
240Hz 1080p IPS Panel Performance
But let's talk about this display here. This version has a 240 hertz, 1080 p IPS panel.
Now, these panels were used on their higher-end gaming laptops from last year which is great news for gamers, because these are very, very nice panels.
They feel nice and fast and lighter games that do run high frame rates, and they look very smooth in triple-A titles thanks to adaptive sync.
They also offer nice colors so it is just a good panel. Overall.
I measured 94% sRGB color gamut which isn't exactly 100% in Seuss's claiming, but it is close enough for actual creative work.
The color accuracy is excellent as well with near-perfect colors out of the box and a similarly good white point.
So the factory calibration here is very good, as well.
Contrast is fine but not exceptional at just over 1000 to the same can be said for the maximum brightness. 350 is enough for indoor use but it is not that great for bright outside areas that do keep in mind that this laptop will be sold with a lot of different panels.
You can also get this laptop with 165 hertz Quad HD screen that they use on the Strix g 15, which is an even nicer and cheaper Asus TUF Dash F15 model.
On the other hand will be sold with 144 hertz or even 60-hertz panel that aren't just slower but also offer a much worse, color performance, and I'm happy that an Asus is not hiding that from their spec sheets so you can actually go there and just make your decision based on your budget, and on your preferences.
Intel Core i7-11370H CPU Performance
But let's talk about the CPU in this laptop.
Now, this Intel Core i7-1137H is a bit of a complicated one. Now usually the age behind the name means it's a high-end high-power processor, but real high-end mobile chips aren't ready just yet.
Intel decided to launch the slightly higher power version of the mobile CPUs we've seen in thin and light laptops, and as a result of all that we get this 35 watts four-core, eight-thread CPU that doesn't sound as exciting as AMD's latest entry chips, but let's start with the good stuff here, single-core performance is good.
It is either slightly ahead or slightly behind the 5900 h x from AMD, depending on what you're looking at.
And it is comfortably ahead of anything from the last few years, multicore performance as expected is nowhere near done your reasons, and given that both are 35-watt chips, AMD just has such a huge advantage here.
That being said this I seven is the fastest four core in my charts, by far, and it even competes with some of the six core laptops from the last two years so even though, AMD will be much, much stronger here.
This processor won't be slow in everyday tasks and it will be completely fine for some photo or light video editing as well, especially if you work in Adobe.
So I would say it's not a terrible CPU, but it's also very important to know its limitations.
RTX 3070 Gaming Performance
But this is a gaming laptop after all. And the most important thing would be the gaming performance right now, things kind of get even more complicated here as you would expect.
Now, in my Strix g15 review and the follow-up post, I kind of talked about how difficult it was for the GPU to just show its real power because of several things going on.
And it was performing, pretty much as the last generation of gaming laptops.
Then this FFT uses a much lower power 80-watt version of the 3070, combined with a weaker processor.
It also uses optimas that cannot be disabled, and it does all that in a thinner chassis so in games.
It is just not managing to pull ahead of the RTx 2070 or the 2080 max-q laptops from previous generations.
So if compared to the 2019 Strix scar, a laptop with a higher power 9th Gen six score i7 and 115-watt RTX 2070, the Asus TUF Dash F15 Laptop is roughly as fast on average.
It's winning some games but losing some others now on their own. These numbers are going to be objectively fine and you can play every game with high settings.
But I don't think most of you will get hyped hearing that in games this laptop is just about the same as a slightly more expensive laptop from two years ago.
Now if compared to the new generation of laptops I tested so far, things get even more underwhelming.
Now it is behind all of them, in most games and even though some of them are a bit more expensive.
It is an average 10% behind the budget MSI df 65 thing that has an RT x 3060.
And if you take the auras 15 p for example with a higher power 3070, you will gain about 33% more FPS on average, and it will only cost you a bit more.
Now since this is a laptop that uses Nvidia Optimus you will be able to gain about 10% more FPS, if you connect it to an external monitor by the USB type C connection on the side. but even Dad, it's not going to be enough to catch up.
Thermal Performance
But when it comes to thermal performance. This laptop does very well in the default performance mode the CPU balances at around 80 degrees Celsius, the GPU hits 78, and the noise levels stay very reasonable at just under 47 decibels in turbo mode the CPU does get pushed a little bit harder but it still stays comfortable at 84 degrees.
The GPU gets pushed a little bit further to and while it gets a little bit louder. The difference is not that big.
Now, this turbo mode will give you a roughly one to 2% performance increase in both games, or a similarly small performance increase in CPU tasks so, in reality, you won't even really notice the difference between these two modes.
Now the silent profile as usual does make a big difference here really dropping the GPU power and clock speeds.
And it even stops to fans but most of the time so you get a super quiet laptop when you're working, for example, I would just say don't expect to play AAA games in silent mode because it will hurt the performance.
Internals,Maintenance,Upgrades
It is very easy to open up this laptop and clean to fans or replace the battery, you can replace the SSD or simply add a second one if you need to.
And if Wi-Fi six ever becomes obsolete at some point, you can even replace that.
Now the only downside here is that half of the memory is soldered onto the motherboard now for a laptop of this form factor that is not too bad.
I would say, especially since most versions will ship with a dual-channel 16 gigabyte 3200 megahertz kit by default. But I still think having an option to replace it is always better.
Now although it is only a 76 watt-hour battery.
Battery Life
The battery life is one of the highlights of this laptop in BC Mark eight, which does use the Nvidia GPU by default, you do run out of battery at a similar pace as last generations.
But while watching Netflix which only needs the internal graphics, you get pretty close to 10 hours putting it almost at the top of the chart.
SSD,Speakers
The one terabyte SSD is completely fine as well and the same can be said for two speakers, I just do wish that they could go a bit louder.
If you're looking for some reliable and fast external storage as these are the way to go.
It doesn't matter if you're just going to use them to copy some files to work from them for example or to keep your games on, they're just such a useful tool to have.
Conclusion
So to recap, I have to say that this is a pretty complicated laptop. On one hand is just nice to use it because it has a nice sturdy chassis, it has great thermals has a nice keyboard and a nice display and a fantastic battery life so in that way.
It does offer a pretty good user experience. But when it comes to performance. It is just so underwhelming in every way.
I mean, you will still be able to play all the games in high settings but it is behind all of the laptops of the current generation have tested so far, and it is just about competing with the previous generation ones.
And even though it has fast cores quad-core CPUs are just outdated so it comes down to two things.
First thing is that you need to decide what you prefer more the frame rates or the overall experience.
Now most affordable laptops lean towards frame ways but the build quality and the panel are usually, poor, well this one focuses a bit more on that overall package.
And the second thing is the price now giving the poor performance issues needs to make sure that this Asus TUF Dash F15 Laptop is aggressively priced.
Because if it's not, I just don't see a reason to go for it, but if they do make it's much cheaper than the alternative is with the AMD CPUs with higher power graphics cards with MSC switches and all those last year's deals, it might be worth taking a look.
Now, I hope you enjoyed this review if you did please subscribe to the bell icon buttons to never miss a publish. See you next time.