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00:00Okay, this is actually really interesting. I've been testing this. It's the new ASUS TUF Dash F15 for a couple of weeks now
00:06You may have seen my video from a few days ago where I basically
00:09Explained this little sticker down here because this is one of the first gaming laptops to come with Intel's new H35 processors
00:17It's basically the same chip that you get in an ultrabook like the Dell XPS 13
00:21But souped up to draw 35 watts of power which they've put in this thin and light gaming laptop paired with an RTX 3070
00:28But what's really interesting is that I've actually also been testing this guy
00:33It's the TUF Gaming A15. A is for AMD, F is for Intel
00:40Obviously also the Dash models
00:42So we've got the Dash F15 here is that slightly thinner and lighter a little bit sleeker versions of the gaming
00:48Variants which are well a bit more traditional gaming laptops thicker bulkier chunkier bezels, but actually more powerful
00:55So while you could argue that this is a whole new kind of thin and light format of gaming laptops for me
01:00It feels more like a stopgap until we get Intel's proper H45 series in the next month or so
01:07To be quite honest, I've already summed up why I probably wouldn't buy this. I would wait for H45 or
01:14Realistically just go for a gaming laptop with a Ryzen 5000 series, but that's not to say there's anything wrong with this at all
01:21It's still a fantastic gaming laptop and considering the TUF Dash 15 starts at just a thousand pounds
01:27Although that gets you the RTX 3060 in a 144 Hertz screen. This guy is about
01:321500 which comes with a 240 Hertz screen
01:35RTX 3070 it's the 85 watt TDP variant. Well, it's actually 80 watts, but we're getting a plus 5 watts ROG boost
01:43So this is actually one of the lowest powered
01:473070s you'll get in a laptop, but it's because they've squeezed it into this chassis, which is just
01:5219.9 millimeters thick it weighs 2 kilograms. So the same as my Dell XPS 15 the performance we're getting from
01:58This is still quite impressive
02:00Given just how thin and light it is
02:05And one of the comments that came up a lot in my H35 explaining video I do read all your comments
02:11Was why go for this when you could go for maybe a Comet Lake laptop
02:16That's 10th gen Intel not the new 11th gen H45
02:20But why would you go down to a 4 core 8 thread chip in here when there are last year's 8 core 16 thread versions?
02:27Well, you're basically getting some new next-gen features
02:30We've got PCIe 4 support also 4 lane PCIe 4 so you can plug in an eGPU with less bandwidth issues
02:37We're also getting a Thunderbolt 4 support with a type C and also it supports Nvidia's resizable bar
02:43Which is always a pain to explain but it's basically better memory management between the CPU and the GPU
02:48So we're getting some nice 11th gen Intel features in this which you don't get in the Comet Lake H series laptops
02:55Intel do boldly state that this should give you the fastest single threaded performance on any
03:01gaming laptop right now
03:03But how does this 35 watt quad-core processor and the 85 watt 3070 stack up when it comes to actually playing games?
03:11Well in three of the six games I tested we are hitting triple digits
03:14In fact, really it's just cyberpunk holding it back with a 42 FPS average
03:19But that is with ray tracing ultra settings and actually if you turn off RT that jumps up to 55
03:24And I ran all those tests with this set to turbo mode
03:27Which I can't currently do because it's not plugged in but in the armory create you can go between
03:32Windows silent performance and turbo
03:34But generally I keep it on turbo just to get the best performance and actually you never got particularly loud or even that hot
03:39And actually that's one of the biggest issues I had with the tough lineup last year
03:43But the good news is Asus have listened and across the tough range while in their entire 2021 gaming laptop range
03:49cooling thermals are much better than before and that is in part due to the better airflow, but also the more
03:55Sensible choice of components because what we're seeing this year is Asus have made this their dash thin and light laptop
04:02With a lower power 35 watt CPU and also they've gone for one of the lower TGP
04:083070s so they've been able to really smartly pick the components for this kind of chassis
04:13To give them the performance and the battery life and the thermal
04:17Performance that you'd want and so for this thin and light gaming form factor
04:21It is making a difference and paired with the better design. This is a much better all-around gaming laptop
04:27We're also getting a 240 Hertz refresh rate screen
04:31It's got a 3 millisecond response time and it also supports adaptive sync
04:34My biggest issue with it is it just doesn't get that bright
04:37I measured a peak of about 280 nits
04:40Which I would say is below average and also you're not gonna get any kind of HDR out of this at all
04:45So it's not the end of the world
04:46Particularly if you're gaming in a well reasonably low lit environment
04:51But I would like to see a brighter screen also as you can see we do have these very nice and thin
04:56Bezels around the screen, but as you can see, there is also now no room for a webcam
05:02Which well, I mean gaming laptop webcams have always been pretty terrible, but it's better than nothing
05:07I suppose but it is something it lacks compared to the regular a
05:1215 here or the f15 which does have a webcam albeit with chunkier bezels
05:17The keyboard and trackpad are also lovely to use it is backlit, but it's not RGB
05:22You just get the one color option here, which is a bit of a shame
05:24But you've got these fancy transparent w ASD keys
05:27Which is quite a cool touch and also this much bigger precision touchpad is smooth and just lovely to use
05:32I mentioned the Thunderbolt 4 port earlier, but we actually have a really good range of IO with this
05:38We've got a full-size HDMI 2.0 B. We've got three USB 3.2 Gen 1's a
05:44RJ-45
05:46headphone and mic combi port as well as a USB 4 Thunderbolt 4 port
05:50Which just makes a bit more future-proof really and also if you do decide to plug in an eGPU with this
05:55Which I'm not sure how many people would do that
05:57I mean the 3070 is pretty good already, but I would worry you'd be bottlenecked a little bit by that 35 watt quad-core processor
06:05I say 35 watt but I have actually measured this go as high as 60 watt will be only briefly
06:11So that does kind of show that the big selling point of 11th gen Intel processors is just how scalable they are
06:17as I say
06:17they're using the same chip in ultra books like the XPS 13 and
06:21Also in gaming laptops like this and eventually with their h45 coming soon
06:26They are incredibly scalable and while it does say 35 watts on the Tim
06:30It really can vary quite significantly based on what you're doing
06:33And as I say, I've seen up to 60 watts being drawn in terms of battery life
06:37We're actually getting a 76 watt-hour cell in here
06:40Which isn't the biggest a lot of laptops now have 90 or even 99 watt-hour batteries
06:44But paired with the slightly lower power specs in the rest of the laptop
06:48Battery life is pretty decent after an hour of YouTube the f15 still had 86% of his battery left and you can expect around
06:567 hours of light non gaming use from this. I'm also getting asus's new smaller
07:02200 watt power adapter really is pretty small and actually this supports fast charging so you can get about 50% of your battery in
07:09Just half an hour of charging
07:11But it does also support power delivery through the type-c port if you prefer and if you don't want to carry this with you
07:17Although it's pretty small anyway, so it's not really a big deal
07:20Now if we open this up in terms of upgrade ability
07:23We're actually getting two PCIe 3 SSD slots
07:27One is already filled without of the 512 gig or one terabyte stick depending on which spec you went for
07:32but you do have this second m2 slot available if you want to upgrade it and also as you can see we've got
07:37upgradable RAM up to a max of 32 gigabytes
07:40How tough is this laptop because well, it's in the name even though they're spelling it different to TUF
07:46But I can tell you from accidentally dropping it in my video last week onto my hardwood floor from desk height
07:53No damage, no scuffs at all. It's actually pretty durable
07:57But the problem is and this is the last time I'm gonna reach over and bring this in
08:00I promise but I think I would just rather buy this. This is the TUF gaming a15 versus the dash f15
08:08And while it does weigh 300 grams more than this. It's also about four millimeters thicker
08:13It does feel a little bit cheaper and less premium than this
08:17Overall considering it's the same price when it comes to gaming laptops the priority for me
08:22And I'm pretty sure you guys as well
08:24It's performance and with this we're getting a 95 watt TGP
08:283070 so an extra 10 watts of power over what we're getting in the dash and also more importantly
08:33I think we're getting the Ryzen 7 5800H
08:36Which is an 8 core 16 thread chip and in some games like hitman
08:40I measured this giving us an extra 26% performance in Rainbow Six seed
08:46It was 18% faster
08:47The only game where the Intel came out on top was in Wolfenstein where it was 3% faster
08:53But wait before you grab your pitchforks and head to the comments saying that that's not a fair test
08:58Well, you're absolutely right as I say higher TGP bigger chassis
09:02So better airflow and also the higher power 45 watt CPU versus 35 watt
09:07These are not quite like for like laptops, but I do just want to bring you back to some synthetic benchmarks
09:12I ran between the two just testing the processor while in both cases
09:16The Intel did win in single-core the Ryzen thrashed it in multi-core with an average of a 60% boost over the Intel
09:24So take those with a little pinch of salt because it's not like the like but it is
09:28Indicative of the extra performance that you're gonna get with a higher power 45 watt chip
09:33And it just strikes me that if you're gonna buy a gaming laptop right now while you may want a slightly sleeker
09:40Smaller sort of ultra portable gaming laptop. I reckon for most of us performance is the most important
09:45So while this may carve out a small new category of ultra portable gaming laptops
09:51I'm just not convinced that paying a grand or you know
09:55One and a half thousand for something like this with a four core processor
09:58Which is probably gonna be usurped by the h45 series in the next couple of months. Anyway, isn't the best idea?
10:04I would suggest sticking with a Ryzen 5000 series
10:07I think you're just getting more for your money and in games that are optimized for more cores
10:11we're getting up to sort of 20 25 percent better performance and of course it's also going to come in handy if you're streaming or
10:17Multitasking or using this as a bit of a workstation for video editing or rendering in conclusion for my review of the tough
10:24Dash f15. I would actually just go and buy the gaming a15 instead if that helps
10:32But I will leave links to both of these guys in the description below if you want to check them out
10:36And also let me know what you make of these in the description below. Do you agree with me?
10:40Do you think I couldn't be more wrong either way? Let me know what you think in the comments
10:44Thank you so much for watching guys
10:45If you do want to see more from me
10:46Then don't forget to hit a little subscribe button below and ding that Bell and give me a thumbs up and all that stuff
10:52And I'll catch you next time right here on the tech chat