Stuff Verdict

Fantastic performance from gamer-friendly hardware that manages to stay on the right side of affordable. The TUF Gaming A15 also fares just as well for daily duties.

Pros

Great 1080p gaming performance

Very respectable battery life

Crisp high refresh rate screen

Cons

Intel internals fare better at certain workloads

Not everyone will like the ‘tough’ design

Introduction

Convincing whoever’s footing the bill that you ‘need’ a gaming laptop for back-to-school season can be a tricky conversation at the best of times – but we bet it’s even more of a challenge now a new generation of GPUs has pushed prices to stratospheric levels. And even if you have the cash to buy one yourself, manufacturers are more focused on beefy desktop replacements rather than portable all-rounders. Thankfully Asus is here to help, with the TUF Gaming A15.

This sensibly-sized, more mainstream machine promises military-grade strength, so should have no issues being thrown in a backpack, and has efficient enough hardware to last all day away from the mains. It’s also packing an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU, which should have enough gaming grunt to play even the latest titles at 1080p, and best of all arrives with a price that’s surprisingly wallet-friendly. Does that make it a more entertaining educational upgrade than a stack of textbooks? You betcha.