If you summarize reviews by the buyers of ASUS’ new TUF offering, you can say it’s the best bang for the buck. Yes, the recent addition to ASUS TUF gaming laptop is that good. Packed with a combination of powerful components, this TUF laptop offers great performance that gamers will love.
That being said, if you are looking for a gaming laptop below $1500 mark, don’t think much and go ahead with this ASUS TUF model. Your money will be well-spent. If you are interested in why this laptop is a good choice, continue reading.
Buy NowLook and Feel
One thing we love about ASUS laptop launched in recent years is their design. ASUS has done really well in coming up with sleek laptops that are stylish but not too flashy. If you look at ASUS ROG gaming laptop lineup, you know what this means.
The TUF lineup is no different. ASUS TUF F17 TUF706HM-ES76 features sturdy exterior, MIL-STD-810H military standard construction for durability, sleek edges and barely-there bezels. Beside a durable body, its brushed metal finish with contrasting hairline brushstrokes across the chassis give this laptop a bold look. The bottom of the chassis is coated with textured honeycomb grip and strategic cuts are placed to act as cooling vents. A choice of Graphite Black and Eclipse Gray contemplates its style-statement.
For comfortable typing and gaming experience, this ASUS TUF features a desktop-style keyboard. Those WASD accents and uniform RGB back-lighting make this keyboard attractive to look at. ASUS claims the keyboard is durable enough to withstand over 20 million keystrokes for ‘superb long-term reliability and precision.’
At the very first look, this laptop looks impressive and it certainly doesn’t look like those overtly colorful and flashy gaming laptops. It’s 17.3-inch screen makes full-screen gaming a pleasure and multi-tasking easy. At its size, it still does not feel huge. In short, if you like to keep it simple, this ASUS laptop will suite your style.
And of course, the design aspect is not limited to how this laptop looks but also how it uses the design to dissipate heat. There are four heat pipes and three heat sinks to draw the heat away. A self-cleaning cooling design ensures that your cooling system stays debris-free. There are two anti-dust tunnels located at the edges of the fans to catch dust and dirt particles and channel them out of the chassis. This efficient heat redistribution enables faster dissipation and helps minimize thermal throttling.
Tech Specs and Performance
With its look and feel, ASUS TUF F17 TUF706HM-ES76 makes a bold style-statement. But its what’s inside that sets it truly apart from similar offerings.
Powered by an 11th-generation Intel Core i7-11800H 8-core processor with 24M cache and Turbo boost up to 4.6 GHz, there is no scarcity of processing power. Couple with this power-horse processor is 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM that makes multitasking a breeze.
A 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD offers ample super-fast storage for installing games and other programs in addition to store other data. The fast SSD storage makes the booting-up of Windows, starting up of games and other programs, as well as data transfer extremely quick.
Dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB GDDR6 graphics (clocked up to 1630 MHz) makes this TUF a gaming powerhouse at 90W. With Dynamic Boost 2.0, its power can be boosted to 95W. NVIDIA’s 2nd-generation RTX platform called the Ampere architecture, combines traditional CUDA cores for programmable shading with new 2nd-generation RT and 3rd-generation Tensor cores for real-time ray tracing and AI. This combination enables realistic in-game lighting and other effects, and accelerates content creation tasks like video and photo editing. While there are other more powerful (and expensive) graphics options available, at its price, this is a great bargain.
All this muscle power isn’t truly worth until it comes alive on the screen. And a 17.3-inch 144Hz IPS-level Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display does just that. The display synchronizes its refresh rate with the GPU’s frame rate thanks to Adaptive-Sync to educe lag, minimize stuttering and eliminate visual tearing. This results in a smooth and immersive gaming experience you will enjoy.
And as we always say, gaming is not only a visual experience as sound, too, plays an important role. It’s possible you own a gaming headset or have external speakers for that but it’s worth mentioning the sound capability of ASUS TUF F17 TUF706HM-ES76. Loud, powerful and deep audio output is enabled by two speakers with four cutouts. The DTS:X Ultra technology helps deliver clear and precise sound. Two-way noise cancellation (upstream and downstream) helps cut down noise from your output as well as input and because it runs on CPU, the GPU remains free for other gaming tasks.
And not to forget the 90WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion battery which can push up to 11 hours of web browsing and 14.3 hours of video playback according to ASUS. It goes without saying that you won’t get even half of this backup when you are playing games but it’s good to know that when you are not gaming and are going out with the laptop, you won’t need the charger for the day.
With the combination of a powerful processor, huge RAM and SSD storage, big narrow-bezel display and deep audio output, this TUF gaming laptop is able to offer an immersive gaming experience that’s worth every penny. To make this experience better, you can even upgrade its RAM and storage easily on your own – all you need is a screwdriver.
Buy NowPorts and Connectivity
Along with eye-popping performance and upgrade capability, this ASUS TUF gaming laptop carries plenty of ports to let you connect multiple peripherals. It carries 1x Thunderbolt 4 port, 3x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, an HDMI 2.0b port, an RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. A dedicated power port is present and so is a Kensington lock. Go ahead, connect an external GPU, displays, speakers, hard drives and what not – there’s plenty of room for all.
For wireless connectivity, ASUS TUF F17 TUF706HM-ES76 features 802.11AX (2 x 2) WiFi 6 as well as dualband Bluetooth 5.2. If you have a compatible WiFi 6 router, your online gaming experience will be much more pleasant. If not, it’s still compatible with previous standards at lower speeds.
ASUS TUF F17 TUF706HM-ES76: Overall Impressions
With the combination of processor, RAM, graphics, storage, display, connectivity and looks that this ASUS laptop offers, we really don’t think it’s missing something. It all makes more sense at its price which has came down to $1,349.99 thanks to an ongoing $150 discount on Amazon. At the given price and the possibility of upgrading the RAM and storage, this ASUS gaming laptop is a steal.
Priced a bit lower and featuring an AMD processor with similar tech specs ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 is also worth checking out. If you would rather go for a sub-$1000 option, have a look at Lenovo Legion 5 82B1000AUS.
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