Asus TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition in review: AMD notebook under the auspices of the 7

[Redaktion]

The Asus TUF Gaming A16 contains not only a CPU, but also a GPU from the current AMD generation. Find out in our review whether an upgrade is worthwhile or whether performance gains are insufficient.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-TUF-Gaming-A16-Advantage-Edition-in-review-AMD-notebook-under-the-auspices-of-the-7.694033.0.html

[neblogai]

Can you explain the power consumption testing please? For example: 'Idle minimum' power consumption is said to be 8W. The battery is 90Wh. But for it to last 20hours, as tests show, power use has to be 90Wh/20h= 4.5W, not minimum 8W. Another example: 'Load Average' power use was tested to be 97 Watts. Battery life at 'Load' was 90 minutes (1.5hours). But 90Wh battery/1.5h= 60 Watt average power use, not 97 Watt. So, where does this difference come from? Are you testing power when consumption plugged in, and battery life- when unplugged?

[Russel]

Excellent review.
Would be nice if you clarified whether there's screen wobble, the lid and keyboard flex too.
Waiting for the 7840 and 7700s, WQXGA model review.

[DanielG]

Actual muppet design

2x USB A ports for a large laptop - braindead.

[CmdrEvil]

Can you explain the power consumption testing please? For example: 'Idle minimum' power consumption is said to be 8W. The battery is 90Wh. But for it to last 20hours, as tests show, power use has to be 90Wh/20h= 4.5W, not minimum 8W. Another example: 'Load Average' power use was tested to be 97 Watts. Battery life at 'Load' was 90 minutes (1.5hours). But 90Wh battery/1.5h= 60 Watt average power use, not 97 Watt. So, where does this difference come from? Are you testing power when consumption plugged in, and battery life- when unplugged?

Good question, I was always wondering how these power draws work 👍

[NikoB]

Bad, slow (fake, as always, Asus in such series "165hz" with a monstrous response) screen with clearly visible pixels at 16", where only 4K@120-144Hz is suitable.

An obsolete Zen3+ generation processor with a shameful memory controller, which loses Raptor Lake in speed more than 1.5 times (by memory throughput and cpu).

A very unpleasant noise in office load and surf. But this is also an ordinary feature of such series from ASUS.

The inability to play modern games even with stable 60fps on a typical and obsolete FHD screen.

The keyboard, although with the presence of a numpad (but again narrowed), but worse than in the Legion series.

Even the sound quality from the speakers (usually a best proprietary ASUS feature, which is comparable only to Mac's) here is bad.

In total, this is a budget decision for poor people who are ready to pay about 900-1000$  for the belief that they buy a modern "gaming" laptop. And nothing more..but for real a modern laptop, it like a go to moon by foot...

[SyCoREAPER]

The lack of a vapor chamber is hurting thermal efficiency. That's getting toasty.

Even my G15 Advantage Edition has a vapor chamber and liquid metal to boot

[LL]

How is this better than a 2021 Legion?

[Russell]

Bad, slow (fake, as always, Asus in such series "165hz" with a monstrous response) screen with clearly visible pixels at 16", where only 4K@120-144Hz is suitable.

An obsolete Zen3+ generation processor with a shameful memory controller, which loses Raptor Lake in speed more than 1.5 times (by memory throughput and cpu).

A very unpleasant noise in office load and surf. But this is also an ordinary feature of such series from ASUS.

The inability to play modern games even with stable 60fps on a typical and obsolete FHD screen.

The keyboard, although with the presence of a numpad (but again narrowed), but worse than in the Legion series.

Even the sound quality from the speakers (usually a best proprietary ASUS feature, which is comparable only to Mac's) here is bad.

In total, this is a budget decision for poor people who are ready to pay about 900-1000$  for the belief that they buy a modern "gaming" laptop. And nothing more..but for real a modern laptop, it like a go to moon by foot...

I liked this ⬆⬆⬆ review more. LoL.

[Frans]

RX 7600S hardly distinguishes itself from its RX 6700S and RX 6800S predecessors, which is somewhat disappointing for a new model series

Not sure why you find it disappointing since 7600S basically perform similar to last gen higher tier part! Imagine buying 4060 and it has the same performance as 3070, is it disappointing? Performance wise, it is actually great! whether it is actually ended up being great for the consumer is another thing since price needs to be taken into consideration. If it is like current Nvidia pricing where they simply price the card based on the performance against last gen part, thus if 4060 perform as well as 3070 they will price probably around 3070 price instead of 3060 price, thus last gen part will not get cheaper which is not so great for consumer.
7600S potentially can be priced really close to 6600 series since it doesn't use bleeding edge process (6nm is an enhanced 7nm) and actually ended up with smaller die size (thus more chip per wafer) which can offset the increased price from using 6nm.

Performance wise, assuming the spec on this site is accurate, 7600S managed match last gen higher tier part with much less transistor, 13.3 billion vs 17.2 billion!

So overall 7600S is actually impressive! The key here is the pricing. If you previously can buy laptop with 6600S and now with the same money you can get 7600S, that is great! if it ended up replacing 6700S, then you can call it disappointing.

[Florian Glaser]

About power-measurements and battery life: We test the power draw with the power supply plugged in. Because of better / harder power savings in battery mode, the power draw without the power supply can be significantly lower, what explains the battery life.

[Räuber Hotz]

Performance wise, assuming the spec on this site is accurate, 7600S managed match last gen higher tier part with much less transistor, 13.3 billion vs 17.2 billion!

So overall 7600S is actually impressive!

Ok, I get your point. *The progress was only made in efficiency*. That in itself is impressive.

The thing is, buyers don't really see that in performance. And buyers mainly buy because of more performance. So they would have preferred the same 17.2 billion transistors as before with that same efficiency. That would have been a good performance jump. So in the end, buyers will be disappointed.

[RobertJasiek]

I appreciate efficiency gains and they are worth something but RTX 4000 prices are a rip-off nevertheless. When price per efficiency stagnates, it feeds technological progress directly into Jensen's leather jacket.

[neblogai]

Bad, slow (fake, as always, Asus in such series "165hz" with a monstrous response) screen with clearly visible pixels at 16", where only 4K@120-144Hz is suitable.

An obsolete Zen3+ generation processor with a shameful memory controller, which loses Raptor Lake in speed more than 1.5 times (by memory throughput and cpu).

I liked this ⬆⬆⬆ review more. LoL.

Well, part of it is cringy at best, especially the bit about memory controller. But overall- yeah, while i think the laptop looks good, and performs well enough, there seem to be many weak points- like poor cooling (=fan noise), low quality sound from speakers, etc.

[neblogai]

Performance wise, assuming the spec on this site is accurate, 7600S managed match last gen higher tier part with much less transistor, 13.3 billion vs 17.2 billion!

So overall 7600S is actually impressive!

Ok, I get your point. *The progress was only made in efficiency*. That in itself is impressive.

The thing is, buyers don't really see that in performance. And buyers mainly buy because of more performance. So they would have preferred the same 17.2 billion transistors as before with that same efficiency. That would have been a good performance jump. So in the end, buyers will be disappointed.

He is mistaken (not without a fault of AMD too)- 'higher previous gen tier' that he mentions, the 6800S, is actually using the same die (Navi23) as 6600S and 6700S, just like 7600S-7700S are both Navi 33. So 6800S is a 11Bn transistor GPU, not 17Bn like he thought. AMD actually used 2Bn more transistors for Navi33, but the performance seems to be only a bit better (although some of that extra transistor budget was spent on an updated VCE engine). Hopefully it is more power efficient. And clocks higher on desktop..