ASUS TUF Gaming 15.6" TUF516PE-AB73 Grey 2021

A genuinely portable gaming laptop held back by a weak CPU and stingy base RAM. Buy it cheap, upgrade the memory, and keep your graphics expectations in check.

The RTX 3050 Ti here is a mixed bag. It's running at 60W with a 75W Dynamic Boost, which puts it in the "solid" category for 1080p gaming, but don't expect miracles. You'll hit 60fps in esports titles and older AAA games on medium settings, but newer stuff like Cyberpunk will need DLSS just to stay playable. What surprised us is how much that 4-core CPU holds things back. In our database, it lands in the 29th percentile for laptop CPUs, which means it gets smoked by even budget 6-core chips from the same era. For everyday tasks and light creative work it's fine, but it's a bottleneck in CPU-heavy games.

The obvious rival here is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, which absolutely demolishes the TUF Dash in raw performance with its higher-wattage GPU and proper HX-series processor. But the Legion is also thicker, heavier, and usually more expensive. If portability is your top priority, the Dash makes sense. Against something like the HP OmniBook X Flip, the ASUS wins on gaming grunt but loses hard on battery life and CPU snappiness for daily work. For pure gaming, skip the Dash and get a Legion. For a do-it-all thin machine that can game on the side, the Dash is a reasonable compromise.

Pricing on this thing is all over the place. We're seeing it listed anywhere from $798 to an absurd $25,484, which is clearly some third-party seller nonsense. At the $800 mark, it's a decent deal for a portable gaming machine, especially if you snag a config with 16GB of RAM. Once you creep past $1,000, you're in territory where newer RTX 4050 and 4060 laptops with way better CPUs exist. Stick to the lower end of that range and you won't feel burned.

The ASUS TUF Dash 15 is the gaming laptop you buy when you're tired of hauling a brick in your backpack. At 0.8 inches thin and 4.4 pounds, it's genuinely portable in a way most budget gaming rigs aren't. The 144Hz screen is smooth, the build feels solid, and it won't scream "gamer" in a coffee shop. But here's the thing: that slim chassis comes with some serious compromises. The 4-core i7-11370H is a weird choice for a gaming machine in 2024, and the 8GB of RAM in the base config is just not enough. You'll want to upgrade that immediately.

If you're looking for a no-compromises gaming experience, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion Pro with a proper HX-series CPU and a higher-wattage GPU instead. The Dash is for people who value portability over raw frames. If you don't care about weight, you can get way more gaming horsepower for the same money.

The ASUS TUF Dash 15 is a laptop of trade-offs. You're giving up CPU power and out-of-the-box RAM for a chassis that won't break your shoulders. If you find it under $900 and you're willing to slap in another stick of RAM, it's a solid entry-level gaming machine that doubles as a clean daily driver. Just know that the 4-core i7 is already showing its age, and the RTX 3050 Ti is a 1080p medium-settings card at best. For hardcore gamers, this isn't it. For students or travelers who game casually, it's a good fit.