asus tuf a15 unboxing

I will skip on the repetitive comments in different reviews and mention only the things which were not mentioned there or didn't apply to the unit I received.

1. In the user manual it is mentioned to charge the laptop 3 hours before the first use. This is to calibrate the battery and you will get decent battery backup. Gaming laptops have low battery backup because a major chunk of power is consumed by the dedicated GPU. Checked the MyAsus app on the laptop. They suggest using the laptop on direct power as much as possible, and for the maximum lifespan of the battery, they recommend max 60% charge, which the app can manage if you select the option.

2. The display is bright enough, but there is some backlight bleeding, which is okay. You can check how much your unit has if you sit in a pitch dark room and are displaying only black colour on the whole screen, at full brightness. But know that you are not gonna get the best quality panels supporting 144 Hz Adaptive refresh rate at this price. Colour accuracy is only slightly off but looked good enough.

People getting confused with the "IPS level" can set their minds at ease. "IPS" is a trademark of LG Philips which not everyone can use, but this is practically an IPS panel. It has great viewing angles. Keep it side by side to a TN (normal LCD) panel to see the difference. Blacks are way better than the normal LCD.

3. Tried Hitman and PUBG Lite in max settings, and got no lag or ghosting. The air from the vents was hot while playing Hitman, but the laptop didn't feel warm anywhere except near the top intake vents where the VRMs are. Do note that I never turned on the turbo mode, as I don't think it makes sense to use overclocking on a device that is susceptible to heat too much.

Also, nearly every GAMING laptop touches 90°C, even the Intel ones. Nothing to worry, as AMD processors can take 5°C more than Intel processors considering the maximum temperature limit.

Update: Tried Watch Dogs 2 today, in Very High preset (ultra not supported in 4GB graphics). The CPU got to 94°C for a second, in performance mode. Started Turbo mode, which pushes the fans to 5700 rpm, and brought the temperature to 80-82, with occasional spikes to 90°C for 5-6 seconds. Didn't feel the fans were too loud. There were no throttling or frame drops, and the CPU was at 4 GHz and GPU was at 1695MHz throughout.

Felt the air vents during this. There are intake vents even in the keyboard (check Asus launch video in CES). The vent at the back, in the centre, is also an intake vent.

Along with the top intake vent, the keys 6,7, T and Y was also lukewarm to touch.

4. No sticker bombs, no laptop bags included. Sticker bombs are only in Fortress grey model, and Asus is not giving bags with TUF A15 in India by default.

5. The SSD in my unit is a WD SN530 NVME SSD, which is faaaaaast! One thing to note here that your unit may come with an SSD which is similar performing, but from a different manufacturer. This is a standard practice, as some part are supplied by multiple vendors and they are not advertised for the same reason. But they deliver similar performance.

7. While ordering it the serial number is updated in the printable order summary once your order is dispatched. Check the serial number on Asus warranty information portal to verify you are getting the right model. I had ordered this laptop before (17 Sept) and checked the serial number the day they dispatched. It was showing FX505, so I cancelled it the same day, and ordered again. I got the correct model now.

8. Asus has allowed upgrading RAM, SSD, WiFi card and Hard Disk in warranty. Upgrades limited only to these components will not void it.

9. Webcam is not good. Luckily I don't need it as much, and better than not having one at all.

10. Facing a weird drivers issue, my usb 3 enable phone does not get detected on USB 3 ports. A combination of USB 2 & USB 3 device and port is working on all the ports. External hard disk which is USB 3 also works. (Update: Issue gone after system reset)

11. It does have an inbuilt recovery partition. So in case you need to reset, no need to get into the clumsy process of creating a bootable usb and booting from it.