Asus TUF Gaming F17 laptop reviewed: Tiger Lake and RTX 3060 in new case

We recently finished our review of the new Asus TUF Gaming F17 gaming laptop. The manufacturer combines the Intel Core i9-11900H octa-core processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU, as well as 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD in a 17.3-inch case.

The F17 inherits the latter from its previous year's sister model, the TUF A17 with the Ryzen 7 4800H and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile. In contrast, the current Intel variant is equipped with Thunderbolt 4. The RTX 3060 has been configured with a maximum TGP of 100 watts, but it's only marginally behind the 130-watt RTX 3060 found in the Schenker XMG Core 17 (Early 2021). CPU performance is also good and surprisingly consistent.

The only complaints concern the slow Wi-Fi 5 connection and, unfortunately, the display. The latter isn't a complete disappointment, but it certainly lags behind the rest of the hardware. Although the panel offers 144 Hz and Adaptive Sync support, we're annoyed by its slow response times by gaming standards, the poor brightness distribution, the contrast that's average at best, and the rather weak brightness.

Overall, however, the gaming laptop's positive aspects predominate, and it can score points against the budget competition in particular. Unfortunately, Asus was unable to name a price for the device up until the end, so that we don't currently know in detail whether a purchase is worthwhile or the price range in which we should be making comparisons.