Find a balance Between design and performance in a budget gaming laptop can be difficult, but Asus may have nailed it with its newest TUF Gaming A14. With a slightly less aggressive aesthetic than its predecessors, the TUF Gaming A14 feels more luxurious than its price suggests while offering a laptop that wouldn’t look out of place in the office. Not to mention deliver enough sexual attraction for respectable frame rates in modern games.
However, perhaps the biggest surprise when initially unboxing the TUF Gaming A14 was its weight and size. This 14-inch design is new for the TUF 2024 line and is surprisingly light for a gaming laptop that weighs 3.22 pounds. Its 16:10 screen aspect ratio is a little taller and less wide than a typical 16:9 screen (like a TV), making it feel quite compact.
Photography: Julian Chokkattu
For comparison, the TUF Gaming A14 has very similar dimensions to the decidedly non-gaming laptop, the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1, despite including a GeForce RTX 4060 mobile graphics chip, an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, and all necessary cooling components. to keep temperatures low while you play. Other specs include a 1TB solid-state drive for storage and 16GB of RAM, plus an additional M.2 slot if you want to add more storage later. This is an impressive setup for a laptop that looks and feels quite simple at first glance.
The top and bottom of the chassis are covered in metal in a beautiful dark gray color, which complements the black color scheme found around the screen and on the keyboard deck. This isn’t your typical loud, RBG-infused gaming laptop, which I appreciate as someone who doesn’t necessarily want to stand out like that when I’m out and about. However, the discreet look may not be for everyone, especially if you like a little flash in your tech.
Photography: Julian Chokkattu