ASUS TUF Gaming A14 review: portable, powerful and efficient

After dominating the compact gaming laptop category with the ROG Zephyrus G14, ASUS has a new 14-inch option. The TUF Gaming A14 is the latest addition to the company’s budget-centric series. Although, the pricing isn’t what one would consider affordable.

Featuring a slim design profile, the TUF Gaming A14 is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. The chip promises excellent performance, improved AI capabilities and most importantly, power efficiency. Powering the graphics is Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 and there’s a quad-HD 165Hz display for a smooth and responsive visual experience.

Here’s an in-depth look at the newest compact powerhouse on the market.

Design and build

I was pretty impressed with how portable and lightweight it felt when I first had a glimpse of the laptop back at Computex. Weighing just 1.46kgs, it is slightly lighter than the 2024 ROG Zephyrus G14. In fact, it is at par with most thin and light laptops on the market, making it easy to carry around. It also comes with a sturdy build quality as it adheres to the MIL-STD 810H standards of durability, so it can take minor knocks and drops.

The laptop has a minimalistic vibe, which I personally prefer. There’s not a lot of branding, apart from the TUF logo on the lid, and there’s no flashy RGB lighting. It doesn’t match the levels of the Zephyrus, but it is big step up from what we have seen from the TUF lineup in the past.

The lid and bottom cover are made out of CNC-machined metal with a dark gunmetal grey finish while the interior features a matte-black plastic finish. The keyboard deck tends to pick up smudges and finger oils. I had a hard time removing them, especially when taking pictures, although they are only noticeable in certain lighting conditions. The hinge of the display is sturdy and goes all the way back to 180-degrees, with only minor wobble and flex.

For I/O you get a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (support for DisplayPort), and a microSD card slot on the right side. On the left edge, there’s another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, a USB 4.0 Type-C (support for DisplayPort and power delivery), HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm audio jack, and a reversible rectangular charging jack. For wireless connectivity, there’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Additionally there’s a stereo speaker system and a 1080p webcam that offers support for Windows Hello face recognition. 

The bottom cover can be removed by undoing 11 Philips-head screws. Notably the bottom corner screws are smaller than the rest, so make sure you don’t mix them up. Once you open the cover, you get access to the 73 Whr battery, as well as the dual M.2 storage slots, one of which is accommodated by the primary 2TB drive. One can also swap out the Wi-Fi card, though the memory comes soldered to the mainboard.

Display

The 14-inch display features a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution with a 165Hz refresh rate and 16:10 aspect ratio. It’s not as punchy in terms of contrast compared to OLED, but it gets bright enough with fairly accurate colour reproduction as it supports 100 percent of the sRGB colour gamut. There’s no mention of the DCI-P3 colour space, but expect it to be around 80-85 percent coverage. As with most ASUS laptops, there are various colour profile presets to choose from via the Armory Crate software. 

For gamers, the display supports Nvidia G-Sync and there’s a built-in MUX switch with Nvidia Advanced Optimus. There’s also the option of automatically reducing the refresh rate down to 60Hz when you unplug the charger to save on battery. I noticed minor stuttering when using the display at 60Hz, so it is best to keep it at the highest for the best experience. Response time is rated at 3ms and I was quite satisfied with how snappy it felt during gaming as well as regular day-to-day operations.

Overall, the display on the TUF Gaming A14 is suitable for everyday computing and gaming. It isn’t the worst for content creation, but if that’s a priority, I would suggest going for a laptop that offers better colour reproduction.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard is nice and comfortable to use with a 1.7mm key travel that definitely makes an impact in terms of feedback. There is no RGB lighting here but ASUS is using white mini-LEDs for the backlighting, which is said to offer a more uniform coverage. While the light does shine through the key legends properly, there is some light bleed from underneath the keycaps when you look at them from certain angles.

Apart from the hexagonal power button (reminiscent of the older ROG Zephyrus laptops) there are four additional hotkeys above the keyboard to control volume, mic, and fire up the Armory Crate software.

The glass trackpad is quite responsive and all gestures work really well. It is also large enough especially for a laptop of this size and form factor.

Performance

The TUF Gaming A14 is available with two CPU and GPU combinations. The more base model comes with the older AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor which can boost up to 5.1GHz, has 8 cores, 16 threads and a dedicated NPU that is capable of 16 TOPS (Tera Operations per Second) of performance. This one is available at a lower price and is paired with an Nvidia RTX 4050, 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and 1TB of storage.

The one I am reviewing here is the higher tier model that features the latest AMD Ryzen AI 300, specifically the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. It features a similar boost clock speed as the 8845HS, but comes with 12 cores, 24 threads, more cache and a faster NPU capable of 50 TOPS. It is built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture that uses TSMC’s N4P (4nm) node. Although the chip has a variable TDP of between 15W and 54W, ASUS has configured it for the TUF Gaming A14 to go as much as 70W. 

In terms of memory and storage you 32GB of LPDDR5X clocked at 7500MHz, which is blazing fast and a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Best of all, there is a secondary M.2 SSD storage slot so you can add more storage for your gaming libraries. Speaking of which, the included 2TB drive offers read and write speeds of 5,200MBps and 4,800MBps respectively.

For graphics, there is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 mobile which can draw up to 100W and deliver excellent gaming experience at 1440p and 1080p resolutions. You can take advantage of DLSS and frame generation, high-quality ray tracing, and overall better support for games.

	1600p	1200p
GTA V	134.24 FPS	142.46 FPS
Forza Horizon 5	76 FPS	98 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077	61.66 FPS	81.92 FPS
Valorant	232 FPS	290 FPS
Alan Wake 2	31 FPS	42 FPS

 

Additionally, the onboard Radeon 890M graphics chip is pretty impressive and comes with worthy improvements over the 780M from the previous generation. Gaming at 1200p, especially esports titles like Apex Legends at low settings ran over 100FPS and more demanding games drop to about 50-60FPS, which is great for an integrated graphics solution.

As for the RTX 4060, it delivers respectable performance despite being packed in a thin and light chassis. In GTA V, I was getting an average of 135FPS with very high settings at 1600p and close to 144Hz at 1200p. Forza Horizon 5 runs close to 80FPS at 1600p, and 100FPS average at 1200p with the Extreme preset, along with DLSS disabled and ray tracing on high. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most demanding games today and I was getting acceptably smooth 62FPS at 1600p and 82FPS at 1200p. This was testing at the Ray Tracing Ultra preset with ray reconstruction and DLSS frame generation enabled.

Even in synthetic benchmarks, the GPU fared well and above laptops in the same category, particularly the HP Omen Transcend 14. 

 

As for raw compute performance, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 holds up well. This new AMD chip is faster than Apple’s M3 Silicon and Intel’s Core Ultra 9 185H. It can also handle AI-related tasks with its improved XDNA 2 NPU which now offers 50 TOPS of performance compared to 16 TOPS from the Ryzen 8000 series. It also supports Windows Copilot features, including a dedicated key to bring up the AI assistant, while Copilot+ support is expected to begin from November. 

Thermals are well under control and ASUS has done some solid groundwork here. During my testing, the CPU peaked at 90 degrees while the GPU was around the mid-70 degrees while playing Valorant for 30 minutes straight. Fan noise is considerably low when running the laptop in silent mode, but the fans tend to ramp up if you are running on any other power profile. I found it best to keep the profile to Silent while running day-to-day productivity tasks and moving to Turbo while gaming.

The 1080p webcam is above average for video calls and supports Windows background filters. While the face recognition for logging into Windows worked well, there were instances where it just wouldn’t scan my face properly prompting me to enter my PIN. The speakers are not the loudest but should be good enough for a big room. In terms of software, Windows comes with a bunch of pre-installed bloatware which mostly includes ASUS services and the annoying resource-hogging McAfee Antivirus.

Battery life

AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300 series mobile CPUs not only bring better performance, but they are also quite power efficient. The 73 Whr battery on this laptop managed to deliver close to 8 hours of battery life and you could push that even further by reducing the brightness, resolution and refresh rate. In PCMark 10’s video battery life benchmark, the laptop scored 7 hours and 8 minutes, which seems a bit less than what I was expecting. But I assume this will get better with future firmware updates since the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 is still new to the market. 

As for the charger, you get a 200W brick which can fully charge the laptop to 100 percent in about an hour. The laptop also supports up to 100W charging via the USB Type-C port essentially allowing you to carry a more portable charging solution when you are travelling.

Verdict

The TUF Gaming A14 is a solid alternative to the higher-end ROG Zephyrus G14, offering many of the same features at a lower price point. Although it lacks some premium elements like a metal keyboard deck, RGB lighting, and OLED display options, it compensates with a variety of ports, a comfortable keyboard, and a lightweight build. This makes it ideal for users looking for a subcompact gaming laptop that can also function well for productivity tasks, such as classroom or office work.

Having said that, compact gaming laptops continue to be fairly expensive, especially in India. The base model of the TUF Gaming A14 is priced at Rs 1,29,990 (with the older Ryzen 8000 series CPU) while the one I reviewed goes for Rs 1,69,990. Considering it is TUF branded laptop, the price seems on the higher side.

Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10

Pros:

• Thin and lightweight design
• Solid CPU performance
• Good battery life
• Dual M.2 SSD slots

Cons:

• No RGB
• Loud fan noise in Turbo mode
• Plastic interior prone to smudges