Asus TUF Gaming A16 (2025) review

The entry level is a funny place to be. While laptops with RTX 5080 and 5090 GPUs are pored over, looking for every little fluctuation in frame rate to discover the different effects various CPUs and cooling solutions have on the rendering ability of Nvidia’s finest silicon, the low end tends to get lumped into an amorphous mass.

In fact, PC Gamer hasn’t reviewed many laptops with an RTX 5050 GPU. Creeping through the dusty stacks, marvelling at the symmetrical book stacking (just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947) and trying not to attract the attention of the librarian, I could find only one other point of reference: the Medion Erazer Scout 15 E1.

It didn’t do particularly well when put through the testing regime, which might have something to do with the Core i5 13420H and low, low price, but if you’re looking for PC gaming on a budget, it’s worth a look.

The Asus TUF Gaming A16 takes the same GPU and mixes it with a much more interesting CPU. The AMD Ryzen 7 260 (from the Hawk Point generation) uses eight Zen 4 cores and can boost up to 5.1 GHz. It’s capable of Hyperthreading, or whatever AMD calls it, and each of those cores is a high-performance core, as AMD doesn’t use the P and E distinction. This means you get quite a lot of processing capability, and indeed it puts in a performance that’s up there with multiple Core i7 and Ultra 7 chips, as well as Ryzen AI 7s.

In Baldur’s Gate 3 it performs as well as the new Framework 16, which has a higher spec on paper.

At first, the GPU looks like it’s going to be the millstone around the A16’s neck, dragging it down to mediocre benchmark scores and making the graphs on this page look very sad indeed. In practice, no one’s arguing that it’s as good as a 5070, but it can give a 5060 a run for its money.

The 55W RTX 5050 here can use as much as 115 W of power, which puts it ahead of 5060s and even 5070s. A 115 W 5060, such as that in the Erazer Deputy 15 P1, beats the A16 in the Time Spy Extreme benchmark, but the 85 W model in the Gigabyte Gaming A16 produces a slightly lower score than the TUF’s (but a similar frame rates in Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong). It just goes to show that core count isn’t everything in choosing a GPU. This is a hot little chip.

Oh yes indeed. You should expect a modicum of fan noise from your gaming laptop, especially one with a CPU that tops out at 100 °C, but whack this into Turbo mode using Asus’ ridiculously named Armoury Crate software (and put your own flavour of RGB flashing into the keyboard while you’re at it) and you not only get improved performance, but a level of noise to make you reach for your headset.

Luckily, the TUF A16 is well supplied with ports. Alongside the 3.5 mm audio jack and Bluetooth 5.3, you’ll find a single USB4 (mercifully labelled as such on the top of the casing, something more manufacturers should do as the Type-C USB 3.2 port next to it is identical) and three USB-A ports too. There's an HDMI and an Ethernet and a charging port. You’ll always be able to find a place to stick a cable, and all this, along with the rubber feet underneath that lift it up to improve airflow, and the sheer weight of the metal and plastic constriction, lead to a machine that gives the impression it’s more suited to use on a desk than resting on the top of your legs.

The rear corners have been cut across in a nice little design touch, but you’ll want to watch out for the front, where they can be a bit sharp. Otherwise, it’s a standard black rectangle, devoid of lighting except in the keyboard and a scattering of status LEDs on the bit that protrudes back past the screen, where you’ll never see them if the screen is raised.

The IPS panel can go pretty bright, at 385 nits, and its resolution doesn’t over-stretch the GPU, bringing its 165 Hz refresh rate into sight if you enable multi-frame generation in compatible games (or just run older ones that consume less resources). The only drawback is if you’re using the A16 for anything that requires accurate colour reproduction, as while it’s capable of displaying 100% of the sRGB gamut, it only manages 80% or so of wider spaces such as Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 - you’ll need an external monitor for that kind of thing.

Asus has seen fit to stuff a 90 Wh battery in the A16, which leads to a kind of interesting dichotomy. Leave it looping a video, which leads it to switch off the Nvidia chip and rely on the CPU’s Radeon 780M integrated cores, and you can get almost eight hours of life out of it. Fire up a gaming benchmark that activates the 5050, however, and this drops like the aforementioned millstone to just an hour and a quarter. You’ll be wanting to carry the charger with you, though it will also top up over USB-C if you can feed it enough watts.

The TUF Gaming A16 for 2025 is big and heavy and makes a lot of noise. It also manages to keep pace with laptops that should, in theory, beat it, which is the setup for a heartwarming story of a plucky underdog gaming laptop that becomes the people’s good-value champion. The thing is, it’s just a little too expensive for this to be true. When Gigabyte’s A16 and the Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen10 (both 5060-equipped) are cheaper, and that Erazer Deputy is much less money, the best thing to do with the TUF A16 is wait for some sort of discount.