Moving on to ray tracing benchmarks, the performance ballpark of the TUF Gaming F16 is on par with the other RTX 4050-powered laptop, the Lenovo LOQ 15 . With Performance and Turbo mode having virtually no difference, you’re better off sticking to Performance mode – as we’ll see below.
In practice, you’re not going to gain a whole lot of performance by jumping from Silent all the way to Turbo – given that the GPU pretty much couldn’t stretch its legs, all that fan noise you get in Turbo mode is simply not worth it (and it’s very loud). However, do keep in mind that the TUF Gaming F16 we have here uses a single stick of DDR5, which will be slightly slower than two DDR5 modules installed. (The difference isn’t as significant as DDR4 due to the way DDR5’s memory channels work, however.)
Next up is productivity tests, and here we have Novabench. The theme is similar – Performance and Turbo are virtually equal, so you’re fine sticking with Performance mode. Otherwise, Silent mode is fine too, as you don’t lose much performance either.
Intriguingly, the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark isn’t kind to our TUF Gaming F16. Productivity scores are significantly lower than competition, which brought the overall score down to the bottom of this list. But there’s more bad news…
The biggest pain point of the TUF Gaming F16 is the battery life – we know gaming laptops have come a long way and even the heaviest laptops can get pretty decent battery life with how efficient modern chips are, but a sub-2 hour runtime in Performance mode is rather disappointing. The laptop under Silent mode only managed to survive right past the fourth hour, which is comfortably surpassed by the Lenovo LOQ 15 despite running on the more power-hungry Balanced mode.
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The Good
One of the standout features of the TUF Gaming F16 is the chip that sits within – particularly, the Intel Core i7-13650HX. Sure, it’s “technically” a previous-gen product, but you don’t lose any performance from the 14th Gen since both chips are pretty much identical, with some minor software-level differences. With 6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, and 55W PBP (and 100W+ MTP) to work with, it delivers solid CPU performance as far as budget-centric gaming laptops go.
From the thermal management perspective, it’s pretty solid as well. We didn’t see thermal throttling whatsoever – in the worst-case scenario on Turbo mode with the CPU pushing upwards of 100W MTP, the maximum temperature reached 97°C on the CPU. That isn’t to say it’s perfect, however: we do see the GPU ended up getting too close for comfort when we attempted a Furmark run. To be fair, that only happens when the GPU is pushing over 90W – which we’ve established is pretty much unachievable in realistic workloads for voltage reasons.
Also, one small quirk we noticed on the cooling system is that the fans pick up speed slower than we’d expected. Switching between performance modes can take up to 30 seconds for the fans to properly pick up the speed, and between these periods you may see temperatures spike briefly before the fans catch up. In terms of acoustics, Silent mode is perfectly silent, Performance mode is reasonably quiet – just don’t touch Turbo mode unless you absolutely need to. It’s very, very loud.
Moving on, let’s briefly touch on keyboards. I’d describe this as ‘soft’ – I daily drive the ROG Strix G17 which has relatively stiff keys that I personally prefer, so using the keyboard of the TUF Gaming F16 did take me some time to get used to. If you’re the kind of typist who prefers less actuation force, this should provide a good typing experience for you. The same goes for the touchpad, its actuation force is low, but the diving board design meant the top half is a lot harder to press than other laptops out there (that still use the diving board design).
As with gaming laptops, the I/O of the TUF Gaming F16 is decent. You get an Ethernet jack, HDMI, plus Thunderbolt 4 if you need even more connectivity options. The same quirk that featured on previous Intel-based TUF laptops is still here – you have a sticker that points to the Thunderbolt 4 port instead of the regular USB-C port that sits right next to it. Note that the USB-C port also supports Power Delivery, which you’ll definitely need if you’re carrying this laptop outside.
The Bad
When it comes to the downsides of this TUF Gaming F16, there are a few we’d point out. For one, despite the GPU being advertised with 105+25W TGP, in practice we never see the GPU get fully utilized. You’re also not getting much by cranking up the power limits in Performance or Turbo mode for the same reasons.
The other downsides can be pretty much categorized as the common weaknesses that most budget gaming laptops have. While the display is decent for what it’s worth, the same cannot be said for the speakers and the webcam. Like the ones you find in cheaper laptops, the webcam arguably could do with the 1080p upgrade, at least; meanwhile, speakers lack bass – and tuning it using the built-in Dolby Access app isn’t effective either, due to hardware limitations.
We think the biggest flaw of the TUF Gaming F16 lies in the battery. We know even the most gaming-focused laptops can get decent battery life these days – the days of gaming laptops having just enough runtime for you to move to another wall outlet should be behind us at this point, but it looks like this laptop is, unfortunately, one of those gaming laptops that you’ll need carry the charger any time you’re taking it outside. At least the USB-C PD support meant you could bring a small charger along.
Verdict
ASUS is selling the TUF Gaming F16 (FX607J) with RTX 4050 for the price of RM5,999
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[button type=”link” size=”btn-sm” target=”blank” variation=”btn-success” block=”btn-block” link=”https://shope.ee/7AGTCf63r1″]Click here to purchase the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 (FX607J) via Shopee[/button]
Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing TUF Gaming F16 (FX607J) for this review.
