ASUS TUF F16 (2025) - A Great Mid-Range Gaming Laptop 👌

ASUS’s TUF F16 is a great mid range 

gaming laptop worth considering. But as usual, nothing in life is perfect, and there are some problems with this laptop 

that you need to be aware of before buying. The TUF comes with a dark 

grey finish on the aluminum lid while the interior is all black plastic. Overall build quality feels great 

for a mid-range gaming laptop, with only a minor flex when 

going out of my way to push it. The front of the lid doesn’t 

stick out anymore like last gen, and instead has an indent towards the left 

where the touchpad is to get your finger into. It’s still easy to open, and the 

screen goes the full 180 degrees back. The hinges only flex a little when 

pushing the screen back too far into my desk, so I guess don’t do that, but 

otherwise they feel smooth and sturdy. It does a good job of hiding fingerprints, and 

they’re easy to clean with a microfiber cloth. The TUF is still fairly portable 

for a 16 inch gaming laptop, despite it being on the 

thicker side towards the back. You know it’s a chunky boy when it's sitting in between more powerful gaming laptops 

with RTX 5080 laptop GPUs inside. The laptop by itself weighs in at 5lb or 2.3kg, increasing to 6.9lb or 3.1kg with 

the 280 watt charger included. This year’s F16 basically weighs the same as last 

year’s model, though there are a number of small design differences between them. It’s a fairly 

typical weight for a 15 to 16 inch gaming laptop. It’s a little heavier than last gen with the 

chargers included due to the bigger 280 watt charger. 280 watts is the highest we’ve 

seen paired with RTX 5060 graphics so far, so we’ll see if this bigger charger results 

in more power and better performance. The configuration I bought has 

Nvidia’s RTX 5060 laptop GPU, Intel’s Core i7-14650HX processor, 16 

gigs of RAM and a 16” 165Hz screen. But the TUF is available with lower or higher 

tier CPUs and GPUs with the link below, and if it has a good sale we’ll list it on our 

gaminglaptop.deals website so you can save money. The chiclet keyboard has 1 

zone of RGB backlighting, and all keys and secondary functions get lit up. Key brightness can be adjusted between 3 levels 

or turned off with the F2 and F3 shortcuts, while the F4 aura key can be used to 

change between the limited number of effects. But that only starts working once 

you turn off dynamic lighting in Windows. You can customize the 3 basic effects 

in the lighting tab of ASUS’s included Armoury Crate software, which is 

the control panel for the laptop. The keyboard has 1.7mm of key travel. 

The keys don’t really feel clicky, but not mushy either and I 

still liked typing on it. I’m not personally a fan of the clear WASD keys, 

but how else would you know it’s a gaming laptop? I like that we’ve got bigger arrow keys 

compared to last gen, but some of you might not like the sacrifice of the smaller 

right shift key or non-standard numpad layout. The touchpad is big and smooth. It 

clicks down anywhere and works well. Port selection is good, and the layout 

is great unless you’re a left handed mouse user. I would have liked to 

see a Type-C port on either side, but given only one of the ports offers Type-C 

charge I suppose that’s less important. The display outputs offer a good 

mix for connecting to discrete or integrated graphics. Connecting to the dGPU 

provides VR support and better FPS in games, but connecting to the iGPU for 

lighter tasks means quieter fans. Getting inside requires removing 11 

Phillips head screws of 3 different lengths, so keep track of them. The one down the 

front right corner doesn’t come out of the panel and helps lift it up for opening, 

but I still needed pry tools to get inside. It was easy to open with the ones I 

use, I’ll leave a link to them below. Once inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two memory slots just above in the middle, 

two PCIe Gen 4 M.2 storage slots with the installed SSD on the right, and the Wi-Fi 6E 

card sits below the spare M.2 storage slot. Wi-Fi performance is fine at above gigabit 

speeds, but it’s on the lower side relative to all other laptops tested, including 

the last gen TUF which had superior Intel Wi-Fi. I see realtek options as a cheaper 

alternative, but at least you can upgrade it. Speeds from the installed 

512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD were fine, and I confirmed that 2280 drives with chips 

on both sides can fit into either slot. The RAM sticks are covered by 

this heat protective sticker, but it’s really difficult to get it off 

and actually upgrade the RAM. I found the best way to do it was to remove the sticks 

from the socket then fold the covers back. The upgrade score is about as good as 

we can expect from a 16 inch mid-range gaming laptop. We can swap both RAM 

slots, two M.2 storage slots and Wi-Fi. There are speakers underneath towards 

the front on the left and right sides. They sound alright, remaining 

clear enough at higher volume with a little bass and only minor wrist 

rest vibration when maxed out, not bad. The latencymon results were 

terrible in our 5 minute idle test. It’s impossible to say if 

this may improve after ASUS recently started addressing issues related to 

this going back years in their laptops. The F16 is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery. Panel power saver is enabled by default, which 

automatically lowers the screen’s refresh rate to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save 

power. This is why the screen flashes black, and it goes back to 165Hz when you plug back in. You can enable battery care mode 

through the MyASUS software to limit the maximum charge level to 80%, which 

helps improve the longevity of the battery. Or you could also enable Eco mode through 

Armory Crate, which disables the Nvidia graphics and may help improve battery life if 

you don’t need the power hungry Nvidia GPU. Battery life was ok, lasting for just over 

6 hours in our YouTube video playback test, though last year’s model lasted a little longer. 

The newer 2025 version lasted longer with a game running, which makes sense as Nvidia’s RTX 

50 series has power efficiency improvements. It only lost 9% of its battery charge while 

asleep for 24 hours, but this isn’t a fair comparison with the other laptops as it 

depends on the size of the laptop’s battery. Here’s how much battery power was lost on 

average per hour, which is a fair comparison, and it’s still a great result relative 

to all other laptops tested so far. Let’s check out thermals next. The CPU and 

GPU are covered by a standard cooler with a few heatpipes shared between both. ASUS loves 

to mention when they’re using liquid metal, but they don’t say anything for the TUF, so 

it’s safe to assume standard paste is used. Air comes into the fans through the keyboard 

and these holes on the bottom panel and only gets exhausted out of the back. The whole rear 

section is a full-width heatsink and exhaust, and this design means not hot 

air blowing on your mouse hand. ASUS’s Armoury Crate software allows us to change 

between different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are silent, performance, turbo 

and manual. Both turbo and manual modes apply this overclock to the GPU, but only manual 

mode lets you customize it. Manual mode also lets you customize CPU and GPU power limits, 

temperature limits, and gives you some control over the fan curves. Any time we’ve tested manual 

everything except overclocks has been maxed out. You can also use the F5 shortcut to swap 

between the four different performance modes. The internal temperatures are fine at idle. The 

rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests, which aim to represent a worst 

case full load scenario, but the temps don’t get too hot in most cases. The CPU was thermal 

throttling in manual mode with all the power sliders maxed out, but that’s it. Running with 

the lid closed was slightly cooler than lid open, so no problems if you want to dock the laptop, 

though the software does note that air comes in through the keyboard and that running 

with the lid closed may not be optimal. More on that shortly. Using a basic stand 

was able to lower temps by a few degrees, while the cooling pad I test with, linked 

below, helped further. At least with the fans running at 800 RPM, CPU temps actually 

get higher with the pad’s fans running faster. That’s because like plenty of other laptops, once 

more airflow is available for whatever reason GPU power gets sacrificed for the CPU. Anyway with 

the lid closed we can see that GPU power was a few watts lower, though the CPU was using a little 

more power. Combined, this is slightly less total power with the lid closed, which I think explains 

why the temperatures were just slightly cooler with the lid closed. Manual mode was thermal 

throttling on the CPU, because like the cooling pad, the increased fan speed seems to prioritize 

CPU power over GPU. The Nvidia control panel says the 5060 graphics can run up to 115 watts 

with dynamic boost, and we’re seeing around 105 watts best case with the CPU loaded up at the same 

time, so I’d classify this as a full powered 5060. And just for completeness, here are the 

clock speeds reached during these same tests. Here’s how an actual game performs with the 

different performance modes in use. I’ve got the native results in purple, and DLSS upscaling 

on quality in red to boost performance. Manual and turbo modes were basically the same, perhaps 

a slight edge for manual mode. Gaming on Type-C is quite usable in the highest manual mode, but 

we lost about 1% charge every couple of minutes, so this eats into the battery and you’d 

probably want to use a lower performing mode. The CPU can use more power in a CPU only 

workload like Cinebench where the GPU is idle. This time the performance with the smaller 

Type-C charger was matching silent mode with the bigger 280 watt charger, while again, manual 

and turbo modes performed much the same. This is the first time we’ve had a 

laptop with Intel’s 14650HX processor, and it’s got a couple of extra P cores compared 

to the 13650HX in last years TUF F16, which gives this year’s model a 12% higher multicore score, 

though single core score was only 5% higher. Performance doesn’t lower too much when we 

unplug the charger and run on battery power. It’s now 41% ahead of last year’s TUF, so more performance is possible from 

the newer model when running unplugged. As for keyboard temps, most laptops I test are in 

the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle. The TUF was in-line with this and felt 

cool, even in the middle where it appears warmest. It gets warmer with the stress tests running, but 

it’s still relatively cool in the lowest silent mode, the back hot spot barely even feels warm. 

Things get a little warmer in the next performance mode, but the wrist rest and WASD area still feel 

cold. The middle of the keyboard is only a little warm and not a problem. Turbo mode wasn’t much 

different, as the fans run faster and louder to compensate for the higher power limits and 

better performance. Manual mode maxed out was a little warmer, particularly in terms of the hot 

spot up the back, but it’s still not bad at all. The hottest point of the keyboard was cool 

when compared to most other laptops tested, and that’s especially the case when 

compared against last year’s TUF F16, which was significantly warmer in the same 

turbo mode. Basically this year’s TUF runs cool, but that matters less if it needs to 

blast the fans, let’s have a listen. The fans were only just audible when idling 

in silent mode. The fans get louder in the higher modes, as expected, but there’s quite a 

big jump between performance and turbo modes. We’re talking about a 36% higher perceived 

fan noise compared to last year’s version. It only looks like a 4 decibel difference, 

but decibels work on a logarithmic scale, which is why I’ve got sones listed for 

better comparing perceived loudness fairly. I found it strange just how big the 

noise difference was between performance and turbo modes. Turbo mode has a perceived 

loudness 126% higher than performance mode. Turbo mode was only slightly quieter compared to 

using manual mode to set the fans to full speed. Usually turbo mode is better positioned between 

performance and manual modes on ASUS laptops, but that’s not the case with this year’s 

F16, though it’s worth noting ASUS could change this at any time with a 

software update if they wanted. Remember performance in a game is basically 

the same in manual and turbo modes, but so is the fan noise. Given FPS in games was only about 

13% better in turbo mode compared to performance, I think performance mode is the best 

sweet spot in terms of getting decent performance without having to deal 

with louder fans. You’ll want to consider noise cancelling headphones 

to get the best FPS in turbo mode. ASUS’s TUF F16 is available with 

two different screen options. There’s the 1920 by 1200 

165Hz panel that I’ve got, and a higher resolution 2560 by 1600 option 

too, which ASUS say has the same color gamut. Colors are fine for a mid-range 

gaming laptop. Not bad for gaming, but creators might want to 

look for something better. Screen brightness barely gets 

to 300 nits on the 1080p panel, though ASUS specify the higher tier 1440p one goes 

to 400 nits if you’re after something brighter. It’s not a great result compared to other 

laptops, 300 nits is what I consider to be a bare minimum from the cheapest budget 

gaming laptops. It’s within the margin of error range compared to older 

TUF laptops like the A15 and A16, though last year’s F16 was significantly brighter, 

but that one had a higher resolution screen. Backlight bleed wasn’t great either, and 

could be noticeable when viewing dark content, but this will vary between 

panels. Yours could be fine. Panel overdrive is enabled by default 

in Armoury Crate. This gives us an average screen response time of just 

under 4ms, which is a great result, and below the 6.06ms needed for transitions 

to occur within the 165Hz refresh window. It’s a little faster compared to the higher 

resolution panel in last year’s TUF, and otherwise only really beaten by laptops with faster 240Hz 

or OLED panels, but a fair bit better compared to previous TUF laptops with 1080p screens that 

we’ve tested. So good for competitive gamers. Total system latency was decent too. 

This is the amount of time between a mouse click and when a gun shot fire 

appears on screen in Counter-Strike 2. Interestingly last year’s TUF was slightly 

faster here, but the difference is small, and this year’s TUF is still decent and a 

fair bit faster compared to older models. The TUF has advanced optimus, allowing 

you to automatically get better FPS in games without a reboot. It’s also got the 

classic MUX switch, but that needs a reboot, and considering it doesn’t change which GPU the 

ports connect to, there’s no real point using it. G-Sync is available with optimus off, and 

Adaptive Sync is available from the integrated graphics when optimus is on, so no screen 

tearing as long as your frame rate is above 48. There’s a 1080p camera above the screen in the 

middle, it has IR for Windows Hello face unlock, and this is how it sounds 

while typing on the keyboard. But how well does ASUS’s F16 perform in games? 

We’ve tested it with these settings to find out. Cyberpunk 2077 was running great at 1080p ultra 

settings. It’s the best result from an RTX 5060 laptop so far, though to be fair most of the ones 

we’ve had so far run at lower power levels. It’s still the best 5060 at 1440p, and it’s even ahead 

of some of the lower powered 5070 options, so it just goes to show that power limit matters when it 

comes to performance. It’s reaching a 28% higher frame rate compared to the last gen TUF with 4060, 

which is a reasonable gen-on-gen improvement. The TUF is still the best 5060 in Alan Wake 

2 at high settings, though Alienware’s more expensive Aurora 16X is basically the same. The 

lower powered 5070s are at least in front now, even if it’s only a slight difference, 

and that’s the case at 1440p too. The best performing 5070 laptop was almost 21% faster 

though, again because performance depends on how much power the GPU is allowed to use. 

But it’s only 10% ahead of the last gen TUF. The TUF’s 5060 was slightly ahead of those lower 

powered 5070 laptops in Black Myth Wukong at 1080p, and it’s close to the last gen 4070 in 

Lenovo’s more expensive Legion 7i. It’s only around 11% faster than the F16 from last gen with 

4060 graphics, which is like 4 FPS in this case, so not too much performance difference in 

practice compared to what we saw in Cyberpunk. Results weren’t too different with ray tracing 

and upscaling enabled. RT is more intensive, but combining DLSS can result in higher 

FPS compared to not using RT or DLSS, and of course you could skip tracing those 

rays if you just want more FPS with DLSS. The GPUs 8 gigs of VRAM isn’t as much of a 

concern here with that 1920 by 1200 screen, though it can still be a limit in some 

games even at 1080p depending on the settings used. And it would be more 

of a problem if you got the TUF with that higher resolution 2560 by 1600 screen 

for all the reasons covered in this video. Here are the 3DMark results. Content creator results were similar to 

what we saw in the games, with the TUF’s 5060 generally ahead of the lower powered 

5070s, and one of the better 5060 results. The BIOS looks fancy, but just like 

other ASUS gaming laptops there’s not too much you can customize 

through here, though there is at least some CPU undervolting 

which is more than some others. Linux support was good overall, the main things 

were the shortcuts for changing keyboard lighting effect and performance modes don’t work, 

as they need Windows and ASUS’s software. Pricing and availability always change over 

time, so check the links below the video for updates and to see if the TUF has a good sale. 

If the F16 does have a good sale we’ll list it on our gaminglaptop.deals website, we update 

that every day to include the best sales, so make sure you check it out regularly to save money 

on your next gaming laptop with that link below. At the time of recording in mid October, 

the TUF with RTX 5050 graphics starts from $1200 USD, while the configuration 

I’ve tested but with double the RAM and double the SSD space goes for $1540 - 

at least at the moment without any sales, because we have seen it drop down to $1150 for 

the 5060 model, which is way more reasonable. So you can save at least $400 on 

this laptop with the right sale, which is why our deals site 

is really worth checking out. But is the F16 even worth buying if the price is right? Let’s summarize the 

good and the bad to find out. Starting with the good, the TUF has a sturdy 

build, good upgrade options, good port options, good Linux support, the speakers are decent, 

it’s got reasonable though not super impressive battery life, and it didn’t lose much power 

while asleep. The screen is decent in terms of color gamut and response time, the laptop 

doesn’t feel hot even when under heavy load, and it provides great FPS in games for the specs. As for the bad, fan noise can get loud in 

turbo mode, though the lower performance mode still offers decent performance while running 

significantly quieter. The laptop is a bit thicker than others, and the bigger 280 watt charger makes 

it a little less portable, though that’s at least partially responsible for the better performance 

in games. Though I still think a 240 watt would have been plenty. The 1080p screen is on the 

dimmer side, but if you consider the brighter 1440p panel then the 8 gigs of VRAM will be 

the next concern. DPC latency is bad as per latencymon, though ASUS is addressing this on some 

models, but not sure if that applies to the TUF. Bottom line, get this laptop when on sale if 

you want a sturdy machine with good gaming performance and a decent screen for indoor use. 

But if you want a better screen, quieter fans, more CPU performance, a little more 

battery life and more portability, then consider Lenovo’s Legion 5 instead. So far on sale we’ve seen that 

drop to $1200 with the RTX 5060, so just $50 more than the TUF’s best 

sale so far, and I definitely think the Legion is worth the extra. You can 

find out all the details over here next.