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Asus TUF Dash F15 gaming laptop walks the line between work and play at CES 2021

Thin and light but with a whole lot of gaming performance from Intel and Nvidia.

Joshua Goldman Managing Editor / Advice
Managing Editor Josh Goldman is a laptop expert and has been writing about and reviewing them since built-in Wi-Fi was an optional feature. He also covers almost anything connected to a PC, including keyboards, mice, USB-C docks and PC gaming accessories. In addition, he writes about cameras, including action cams and drones. And while he doesn't consider himself a gamer, he spends entirely too much time playing them.
Expertise Laptops, desktops and computer and PC gaming accessories including keyboards, mice and controllers, cameras, action cameras and drones Credentials
  • More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Joshua Goldman
2 min read
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Josh Goldman/CNET

Over the past couple of years, we've seen a lot more gaming laptops designed for people who want something that doesn't necessarily look like a gaming laptop. However, because they're typically thinner and lighter, they don't always have all the processing and graphics performance you may want. The Asus TUF Dash F15 announced for CES 2021 seems like just the right combination for a laptop with top gaming performance in a 

The Dash F15 still leans more toward a typical gaming laptop design with its highlighted WASD keys, angular fan vents and TUF printed large on the lid. Still, with its mix of white and light gray for the body color and that it's thin, compact and relatively light at about 4.4 pounds, it's portable and won't stand out too much at the coffee shop or office when you're getting work done. Also, it can be charged over USB-C and has a rated battery life of up to nearly 17 hours of video playback, Asus says -- not something you can generally expect from a gaming laptop. 

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Asus TUF Dash F15

Josh Goldman/CNET

What's crazy is the amount of potential performance packed inside its slim chassis. It can be configured with up to an 11th-gen Intel Core i7-11375H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 memory and up to a 1TB SSD. Up to 16GB of memory is onboard and there's an available slot for another 16GB stick. There are also two M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD slots and Asus made getting inside to add components easy. 

Asus will offer two display options. Both are 1920x1080-pixel resolution 15.6-inch displays, but one will have a 240Hz refresh rate with a 3ms response time and 100% sRGB color gamut coverage while the other will be a 144Hz panel. 

Asus used a new cooling system with a large heat spreader and five copper heat pipes, 83-blade fans and a self-cleaning module to keep as much dust out as possible. The laptop also has two-way AI noise cancellation for chat and DTS:X Ultra technology for 7.1-channel virtual surround for stereo headsets or speakers. What you won't find is a webcam -- an odd move given how much more time people are spending on video chats. 

No pricing was for the Asus TUF Dash F15 was announced. It's expected to be available in Q1 2021 in North America.