ASUS TUF Gaming A14 Laptop Feature
Gaming is getting crazy expensive these days. While I’m very familiar with shelling out big bucks for amazing gear, this feels different somehow. Maybe once the five biggest companies on Earth stop trying to build the Torment Nexus, prices will chill out. For the moment, it’s not a great time to pick up a new gaming laptop. But! If you’re blessed with an abundance of liquid capital, the Asus TUF Gaming A14 laptop would be an excellent choice. So long as you go for the right model.
I spent a couple of weeks testing the base model. I don’t recommend it. Don’t get me wrong! It’s an amazing machine. It’s got an AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 392 CPU, 32GB LPDDR5X 8533 MHz RAM, and a 1TB M.2 hard drive. The 14″ display outputs 2.5K visuals at 165Hz, and the audio quality is Dolby Atmos Hi-Res level. It’s got four different USB ports (of the C, A, and USB4 varieties), and it only weighs 3.26 lbs. The one downside is the base model only comes with an AMD Radeon 8060S GPU.
I simply do not recommend playing most modern AAA games on the base model of the A14. If you want to mess around with some smaller-scale indie stuff, by all means. Maybe you want to play some older titles? Go right ahead! But my success rate with new games was pretty mixed. Deathloop ran alright on medium settings for a short while. Titanquest 2 defaulted to high settings, but the framerate was oddly low. Somehow, Street Fighter V and Marvel’s Midnight Suns ran more or less problem-free.
It’s not that you can’t play games on this machine. You absolutely can! The trouble is that you’d be spending $2400 CAD on a machine that can’t quite hack it, games-wise. The A14 does a lot, there’s no question. But you’d be making a lot of concessions with a lot of modern games. On the other hand, the $3200 CAD model comes with a GTX 5060. That’s more than enough power to handle basically any game on Earth. Either way, the A14 is an investment.
Price tag aside, this is an exceptional machine. The smaller frame feels properly portable and lightweight. The build quality is obviously rock-solid. The keyboard feels responsive and snappy. The track pad has a host of gestures built in. It’s a great laptop all around, assuming you can afford it.
Therein lies the problem, you know? I loved messing around with the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 laptop for a couple of weeks. It runs quiet, it feels great, and it looks awesome. But the price tag of the base model is downright sobering. It speaks volumes about the difficult place the whole PC gaming industry is in right now. Although the tech is still steadily improving, the hobby is getting extravagant. Until the skyrocketing cost of RAM and GPUs cools off, it might not be the best time to grab a hot new gaming laptop.
***This hardware was provided as a temporary loan from the manufacturer***