The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 comes as a surprise in this year’s roster of AI-driven laptops, and our recent Japan trip proved this all the more. Now, you’re probably thinking, what kind of surprise? Were we swamped with an immeasurable amount of work, akin to being upstream along a raging river without a paddle–and water wings? Or, were we left with the unusual fact that we had much more free time on our hands, given a certain boon of productivity?
If you’re thinking the latter, you’re right on track.
Our full review of this mini monster yielded quite the results, leaving us satisfied and wanting more. Tokyo Game Show gave us that opportunity. So, with the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 in tow, our work was pretty much cut out for us. You’ll have to pardon the lack of photos that were actually in Japan. We did drop by the ASUS ROG booth, though. As expected, it was pretty much a highlight.
During those back and forth trips between Makuhari Messe and stocking up on Famichiki, work had to be done. As with its brethren, Copilot was readily available at the click of a cursor–or its dedicated key. AI is all the rage, so best believe we’d be using it quite a bit when it comes to doing our due diligence; especially when the typical search engine just isn’t enough. Regardless of the query, best believe we’d be getting answers. The AMD XDNA NPU is the new kid on the block, and only the best and brightest when it comes to newfangled technology can unlock its full potential. In our case, we’re just glad it kept the laptop running amidst the several blocks of text we’d be feeding it on the daily.
Now, staring into the screen for a good six hours could be a bit taxing–mostly when gaming isn’t involved. It happens to the best of us. It was less of a chore and more of a pleasant experience thanks to the laptop’s 14-inch 2.5K display. For a smaller device, that 2560 x 1600 resolution works hard to keep your eyes from dying. Swapping between tabs, photo editing apps, and the ever loving Capcut would do a number on your eyesight. That wasn’t thee case here. Aside from a very smooth 165Hz refresh rate, the screen’s anti=glare feature and 100.00% sRGB guaranteed that we got things done, night or day. We take research very seriously here.
While we didn’t necessarily need Swiss knife levels of I/O options, it’s nice to know that you have seven different ports to plug in your doohickeys. Yes, that includes a 3.5mm combo jack and a micoSD card reader. Do you know how many people still use wired headphones? We don’t either. But plugging IEMs into a laptop that has Dolby Atmos support is a heavenly experience.
Funnily enough, gaming had to take a bit of a backseat during our ten-day stay. We’re well aware that this is a gaming laptop, first and foremost. But duty called–and not in a live service FPS way. That doesn’t mean we weren’t able to sneak in some sweet gacha gameplay during downtime. We didn’t have all day to play the newest triple A title, but we had a couple hours to spare per day to play some Wuthering Waves and ZZZ. On max settings, of course.
It’s wonderful to have both an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU crammed into such a small chassis. Having a decent 16GB of LPDDR5X 7500 RAM and a generous 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD right out of the box helped quite a bit as well. Of course, we didn’t maximize our storage, but we did maximize the tabs on our browsers. Nothing caught fire. We chalk it up as a win.
It’s also worth mentioning that it was pretty quiet, too. You’d usually hear the fans pierce through whatever noise the air-conditioner makes, but not this time. Thermals were pretty good, too–both in chilly Tokyo and humid Manila. The Armoury Crate software did most of the heavy lifting here. You could opt to crank up those fans if you wish, but you won’t be needing to. Having a dedicated MUX switch also ensured we could easily switch between Performance Mode–when plugged in, and Eco Mode–every other time we weren’t.
We’ve already gone in depth before, so we’ll talk more about our experience having the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 holstered in our daily loadout. If we recall correctly, out of the ten days we were there, we had it in tow for more than half of that time. You can never really tell when you might want to just whip it out and caress it. That being said, its size made the process much easier to do just that. At 1.99cm and 1.46kg, it’s no featherweight, for sure. But then again, we can’t exactly imagine handling our “desktop replacement” laptops in the same manner. They’re almost twice as heavy and thick. Deciding to grab, pull, and unfold your laptop in the middle of Shibuya crossing would usually be a calculated risk. Not for the A14.
Our only regret was not being able to use (and abuse) it just teensy bit more. We never ran out of battery life, thanks to the 73WHrs the device could pull. An abundance of sockets only made sure we’d be able to use its 200W AC Adapter, too. Having wi-fi all over the place also guaranteed we didn’t need to hotspot for mobile data. The game was rigged in favor of the TUF Gaming 14, but we really can’t complain here. We were having the time of our lives.
We can imagine that running every triple A title in our library for eight hours a day, ten days straight would probably do a number on the system. But that’s neither here nor there. The fact that we essentially had an extra teammate in our lineup helped enhance the overall experience. Other laptops could probably do the same when it comes to portability and productivity. The mission would still be accomplished.
But personally, the experience won’t be as fast, as fun, and as fabulous as with the ASUS TUF Gaming A14. Oats curry, TUF Gaming A14. Oats curry.
For more information on this portable powerhouse, make sure to check out the official website and Facebook page.