Asus TUF DASH F15 Review – Deceptive Branding

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If I had to describe this laptop in one word, it would be ‘confusing’. Why? Well, it’s running an ‘i7’ CPU that’s just 4 cores and 8 threads, and would have been called an i5 last gen (see i5-10300h), an RTX 3070 that performs admirably despite it’s meagre 80W TDP, and my model is running a 240Hz display that you seemly can’t buy – at least here in the UK. Confused yet? So am I. Lets take a look and see if we can understand who this thing is for. But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 

This is the Asus TUF Dash F15, a moderately budget laptop sporting a headline grabbing spec for it’s relatively low price tag. I mean, to the uninitiated, reading “RTX 3070” and “Intel i7” must mean it’s basically the best right? I guess that’s the point though, isn’t it? Because the reality is far from it. In CPU heavy games, just at 1080p, the F15 struggles to hit just 43 FPS in Cyberpunk, and doesn’t even break 49 FPS in Watchdogs – both of those are with Ray Tracing off by the way. In less CPU bound games, the 3070 can stretch its legs a little, hitting just shy of 100 FPS in COD Modern Warfare, and a hair over 100 FPS in Fortnite, again with RT Off. For context, the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel, a creative/graphics based laptop that happened to have an RTX 2070 Max-Q and a 10875H will run Watchdogs Legion at just 4 FPS slower, despite having a 2070 Max-Q compared to the F15’s 3070. Heck, even in Fortnite it ran at a little over 90FPS, only around 10 FPS slower.

The reason for that is what I can gently phrase as ‘deceptive branding’. I’ve already harped on NVIDIA for their naming scheme for this generation in my desktop vs laptop GPU video you should definitely check out, but the condensed version is the 3070 that’s in this, isn’t even the same core as you get in a desktop 3070 card. The desktop card has 15% more cores, and runs 34% faster clock speeds, meaning on clock speed and cores alone, it’s 54% faster. All while being, visibly, called the same thing. It’s still marketed as an RTX 3070, although you might see ‘laptop’ next to it which while technically better still doesn’t help the uninitiated. 

Anyway, it turns out Intel are doing that too, as this ‘i7’ 11370H is a quad core that at best matches the last gen i5 10400H, although the lower 35W TDP this time may argue otherwise. Last generation, Intel’s lowest end mobile i7 had 6 cores and 12 threads, with the higher end one having 8 cores and 16 threads. This time? 4. But it’s still an ‘i7’, they still get to put a sticker on it to say ‘i7’ and convince people that this 4 core ‘i7’ is just as good as the 6 core 10750h you would have bought last year with the STRIX G15, an RTX 2070 based gaming laptop at the same price point. Using a term like ‘i7’ to convince people who don’t know better to buy a product that is markedly worse than the last version is deceptive at best. Want to see why? Here’s the CPU benchmarks. 

Right, I’m glad I got that out, lets talk about the laptop directly. Despite being a more ‘value’ oriented machine, the build quality is great. There isn’t much flex to it, the hinge feels good, the keyboard – with it’s fancy scissor switches you can see through the translucent WASD keys, along with the lime green backlighting, feel decent for typing and gaming and the trackpad is reasonably sized and does about as good a job as you’d expect from a Windows machine. You’ve got reasonable I/O, including Thunderbolt 3 and USB PD charging, and inside there is even space for a second M.2 SSD if you want to upgrade later. 

You’ll also notice the great cooling solution – plenty of heatsinks, heatpipes and ventilation, the only downside is the CPU, despite only drawing 63W under full load, still hit 94°c and thermal throttled on boost, although the GPU which draw 91W stayed frosty at 75°c. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much shielding from heat transferring to the keyboard plate, as anything past ‘T’ was almost unbearably hot, with the area just above the keyboard hitting over 50°c, enough to burn you if you aren’t careful. 

Then there is the display. On the model I’ve got, it’s a frankly incredible 240Hz, 3ms response time, IPS panel that covers 100% of the sRGB spectrum. I like to commend companies for accurate marketing, which Asus has done here. The sticker says 3ms, and it’s exactly that, black to white just 3ms. As usual the white to black response time is slower at around 10ms, but it displays really minimal ghosting, one or two frames at most, so is genuinely impressive. The problem is, the one you can buy, here in the UK, has a 144Hz panel instead. But that’s not a big deal right, sure it’s a little slower but it’s still a high refresh rate panel, right? A close look at their spec list will reveal that the 144Hz option is listed as a ‘Value IPS-Level’ panel, rather than the standard ‘IPS Level’ for the 240Hz one, and that’s reflected in it’s just 62.5% coverage of the sRGB spectrum listed. That means it’s likely the same panel I tore a new one at MSI in their Bravo 15. That means horribly slow response times, a panel you can’t do any level of colour sensitive work on – you honestly couldn’t trust it for anything colour related – and would give a visibly, significantly worse gaming experience. And yet it’s being sold in the same machine as an amazing 240Hz panel. 

So, to recap, you get what I’d argue is an i3 dressed as an i7, a 3070’s that half as fast as a desktop 3070, and if you don’t buy the fancier 240Hz version a display that’ll be a relatively bad gaming experience, all for more money than last year’s model that might actually be faster in games. You see why I’m upset? This could have been an amazing machine, really. I wanted to love it. But I just can’t. Here’s how you fix this. Bin the 144Hz panel you are using and at least put an equally good 144Hz one in, or only offer it with the 240Hz panel instead. Swap this CPU for a 10750H, it’s going to cost pretty much the same but give more performance in games and enough headroom to let people do things like record or stream gameplay. And turn up the TDP of the 3070 a little. It’s clearly got the thermal headroom, so stick it at 90W instead with boost up to 95W and it would be hands down the best laptop anyone could buy for gaming right now. Easily.