ASUS F15 Gaming Laptop 2021 (FX516PM-211.TF15) Review

ASUS F15 Gaming Laptop 2021 (FX516PM-211.TF15) Review

Buy it at Amazon: ASUS F15 Gaming Laptop 2021 (FX516PM-211.TF15) [Affiliate Link]

Takeaway: Powerful, fast, lightweight, screen performance just okay but external display/discrete GPU works great.

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You’ll receive the laptop, 200Watt power brick with 6 ft cable, 3 ft power cable, and a quickstart booklet showing how to charge and power it on. The laptop measures 14” wide, 10” long, and ¾” thick, and weighs just under 5 lbs. The exterior of the unit is a lightweight but durable plastic, and there is a cutout at the base of the lid, so you can see the status LEDs when the screen is closed. The shell has a matte-finish and prominent branding on the right-side as well as a small TUF logo printed in the front left corner.

At the left-hand-side you’ll find the barrel-style power port, Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0b port, USB-A 3.2, USB-C Thunderbolt 4 port, and combo mic/headphone port. On the right-hand side are two additional USB-A 3.2 ports, heat exhaust vent, and Kensington lock slot in the back corner. On the bottom are intake vents and rubber feet that raise the laptop off your desk surface to ensure stability and air flow.

The lid front has a recessed notch in the middle that makes it easy to lift and open up the screen. This laptop uses a 1080p IPS-level panel with a 15.6” diagonal, anti-glare matte coating, and 144Hz max refresh rate. As you can see, the bezels are razor thin at the top and sides and there is no integrated webcam at the top.

The tenkeyless keyboard is backlit with highlighted WASD keys and in the lower right is a set of half-size arrow keys. To the keyboards upper left are volume adjustment keys, mic mute, and “Armoury Crate” button for launching ASUS’s mobile gaming hub. The power button is located in the upper right-hand corner, and the status LEDs along the back are for power, charging, and hard disk activity. Below the keyboard is a 4” x 3” mouse trackpad.

When powering on the laptop, you’ll notice the keyboard lights up and glows minty green. The LEDs are not RGB and this is the only color it can display, however, do enable you to see the keys in the dark. It will also turn off automatically after 1 minute of inactivity, but lights up again if you press any key or use the mousepad. You can adjust the brightness to three levels or shut off the backlight using the secondary functions on the F-keys.

This first time you start up the machine, you’ll need to complete Windows setup, which takes about 10 minutes. The integrated speakers located on the underside of the laptop at the front corners are actually decent sounding, though most folks will probably want to use external speakers or headphones for better performance. When connecting to your home network, you’ll find that it supports WiFi 6 for more bandwidth, meaning faster downloads, less buffering, and reduced server lag provided you have a compatible router or network.

Spec-wise this build runs Windows 10-Home on the Intel QuadCore i7-11370H 3.3 GHz processor. The GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX3060 with 6GB GDDR6 RAM. It comes with 16 GB of RAM consisting of one replaceable 8 GB SODIMM RAM stick and an additional 8 GB soldered on the motherboard for a 16 GB of dual-channel RAM. My build has a 512GB m.2 SSD pre-installed and you upgrade or add a second m.2 NVMe SSD inside. For these upgrades, you’ll need to remove the entire bottom panel of the case to access the internal components. You can also upgrade the RAM up to 32GB total max, and I’ll have a link in the info bubble above on how to do that.

If you set the laptop to the ‘Silent’ profile, this will reduce its power consumption and use of the fans making it super quiet. However, switching to Performance or Turbo modes when gaming runs the fans at full speed which you’ll hear are loud enough to drown out the onboard speakers’ output.

Performance-wise, the native display panel can sometimes produce slightly smeary visuals at high-frame rates in fast-paced FPS games like CS:GO and Warframe, due to its sluggish response time by today’s standards, though thankfully there was little tearing and stuttering, thanks to its adaptive sync capabilities. The cinematic experience on the native display is also so-so with muted, under saturated colors as the panel only outputs 62.5% sRGB color space which isn’t the greatest for creative work or content creation where you may need more accurate colors. However, if you plan on hooking up a secondary display via the HDMI port with this laptop, this might not be a big issue.

When using the trackpad, note that the left and right “mouse keys” are embedded in the bottom; while it looks nice as a single smooth surface in can be a little tricky to determine the separation between the keys. You can also execute multi-finger gesture commands on it to perform actions like switching or minimizing windows.

I liked that that the Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port is multi-purpose for connecting peripherals, charging mobile devices, and can even be used for Power Delivery charging of the laptop, and even DisplayPort alt-mode output. When using the combo headphone jack, you can connect a headset with a mic and enable two-way AI noise-cancelation in the Armoury crate app for clear, noise-free chat and in-game audio. Also when typing on the keyboard, the keys are fairly quiet and have good tactile feedback and responsiveness. Outside of gaming, the laptop does a great job with productivity apps and casual use like web browsing. Battery life varies, though if you keep it in “battery saver” or silent mode you can expect between 3-6 hours. In performance mode, you’ll likely get a little under 2 hours of use on a full charge.

Overall, as a gaming oriented laptop, it’s got all the specs and power to run most AAA titles in high or ultra settings and will perform just fine. It’s light enough for travel and daily use, both for work and play, though the lackluster display ends up looking a bit washed out and doesn’t produce the best visuals. However, that can be mitigated by simply docking to an external display where you’ll use it the most. While you don’t get some of the nice-to-have extras likes RGB backlighting or an integrated webcam, you can still upgrade the RAM, storage, and add onto your setup with external peripherals.

Buy it at Amazon: ASUS F15 Gaming Laptop 2021 (FX516PM-211.TF15) [Affiliate Link]