Review Summary
Expert Rating
The ASUS TUF A16 Advantage Edition is a powerhouse of a gaming laptop designed for those who demand top-tier performance without compromising durability. Part of ASUS’ renowned TUF (The Ultimate Force) series, the advantage edition means it carries both the CPU and GPU from Team Red, i.e., AMD. And because of this, you get many smart technologies configured exclusively to this system such as Smart Shift Max and Smart Access Memory. So, how do the Advantage edition laptops fare when compared to the competition? Find out in today’s review!
This device was originally reviewed by Florence George, and this article is based on his evaluation.
Here is a video review of the ASUS TUF Gaming A16 Advantage edition:
Table of Contents
Design and build quality
When it comes to design and build quality, there are no compromises whatsoever. The top lid is metallic, and the body of the laptop is made out of polycarbonate. There is no flex on the lid as well as the keyboard deck. The hinge is very sturdy, and you can open and close it with one finger. The display doesn’t wobble when you type on the keyboard, indicating that it is well-balanced. There is surely a bit of flex on the display when you try to twist it, but it is fine. The laptop weighs around 2.2kg, but when you include the charger, it weighs around 3kg, so do keep that in mind.
Display
The ASUS TUF A16 features a 16-inch display with 16:10 aspect ratio, offering a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 and a refresh rate of 165Hz. With excellent viewing angles and a peak brightness of around 250 nits, this display is well-suited for gaming and content consumption. However, it’s less ideal for content creation. While it covers 100 percent of the sRGB colour gamut, it only reaches about 75 percent of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.
The ASUS TUF A16 is equipped with two bottom-firing speakers that support Dolby Atmos. When configured to “Dynamic” in the Dolby application, these speakers deliver impressive sound quality, making them great for quick music sessions.
Keyboard, trackpad and I/O
The keyboard is really good as expected from ASUS, you get 1.7mm of key travel and it feels nice to type on too. The trackpad is a simple plastic one, and it gets the job done as it’s supposed to. In terms of I/O, the ASUS TUF A16 provides a wide array of ports, including an RJ45 Ethernet port, an HDMI 2.1b port, an audio combo jack, two USB-A ports with USB 3.2 Gen 1 support, a DC input, and two USB-C ports—one supporting USB 4.0 with DisplayPort 1.4 and a transfer speed of 40 Gbps, and the other supporting USB 3.2 Gen 2 with Power Delivery up to 100 watts.
ASUS Armoury Crate software
Before we delve into performance, we need to talk about the Armoury Crate software that is provided by the brand. This is a one-stop shop where you can change a variety of performance settings for the laptop, and can be accessed by a simple shortcut key. On opening the software, you get different performance modes such as Silent, Performance and Turbo modes, which cap the CPU and GPU watts to different levels. The GPU also has different modes, and there is a dedicated MUX switch, so when you click on Ultimate mode on the GPU section, the laptop restarts and runs on dGPU mode for extreme gaming performance.
There is also a resource monitor built-in, for monitoring CPU and GPU temperatures. All the testing was done on Turbo mode with GPU on ultimate mode.
Performance
Now let’s shift gears to performance. The ASUS TUF A16 Advantage edition is powered by a Ryzen 9 7940HS processor with 8 cores and 16 threads coupled with 16GB of DDR5 RAM (2 x 8GB) at 4,800MHz, and 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 SSD. In terms of GPU, you get a Radeon 780M integrated GPU and a Radeon RX 7600S discrete GPU with 8GB of DDR6 memory. This machine can do almost anything such as 3D modelling, After Effects, video editing in 4K, basically anything that demands horsepower. Here are the benchmarks of the same:
Of course, since this is a gaming laptop, we did quite a bit of gaming too. We did a mix and match of games with FSR and Ray Tracing and here are the results:
Game | FSR settings | Ray Tracing | Average FPS | 1 percent lows |
GTA 5 (Full HD resolution, Maxed out graphics except MSAA) | Not applied | Not applied | 105 | 80 |
Resident Evil 4 remake (prioritized graphics) | Quality | Not applied | 93 | 69 |
Red Dead Redemption 2 (High Settings) | Quality | Not applied | 116 | 92 |
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra preset) | Quality | Off | 78 | 60 |
Forza Horizon 5 (ultra preset) | Quality | High | 90 | 72 |
Valorant (high preset) | Not applied | Not applied | 309 | 162 |
From the results, it is evident that you can play any modern AAA title at high and Ultra preset and it will work easily with consistent framerates and no frame drops whatsoever. In terms of upgradability, you can upgrade the RAM up to 32GB and you also get an additional slot for storage, making it future-proof.
Thermals
When you have a laptop that is this powerful, then it should be important that it should be cooled properly as well. Unfortunately, it does seem ASUS did miss their mark with this one. When we did the performance test under maximum load at an ambient temperature of 27 degrees, the CPU temperatures did creep up to 90 degrees, and the GPU temperatures touched around 80 degrees. This puts the laptop in the hot territory. To be fair, we did test the laptop in Turbo mode, and this may require a cooling pad when you plan to game in non-AC rooms, as the laptop may struggle to cool with its built-in cooling system.
ASUS recommends running the laptop in Performance mode, and during our testing, we observed that when the laptop was switched to Turbo mode, the total system power draw reached 120 watts. However, when we shifted back to Performance mode, the power draw dropped to 105 watts. This resulted in a temperature decrease of around 5-6 degrees, making the laptop noticeably cooler. Did this affect performance? Yes, but the impact was minimal—frame drops during gaming sessions were only around 2-3 fps compared to Turbo mode, which we believe is a fair trade-off for the cooler temperatures.|
Battery
Verdict
The ASUS TUF Gaming A16 is a solid performer, powered by the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and Radeon RX 7600S. It handles a wide range of tasks with ease, from video editing to playing AAA titles. Its 16-inch IPS display is vibrant and supports a 165Hz refresh rate, making it well-suited for gaming, though it’s not the best choice for colour-accurate photo editing. Thermals can get quite warm, so we recommend running it in Performance mode rather than Turbo mode for better temperature management.
Editors Rating: 7.5 / 10
Pros
- Robust semi-metal build
- Good performance
- 165Hz High refresh display
- Good upgradability options
Cons
- Not the most colour-accurate display
- Sub-par webcam without privacy shutter
- Poor thermal performance
- No Windows Hello