Asus TUF Gaming F17 (2022) Review

With the prices of even budget gaming laptops having climbed steadily throughout 2022, the Asus TUF Gaming F17 (starts at $899.99 and available for $699.99 at this writing) offers a rare wallet-friendly option. The TUF's spacious 17.3-inch display features a 144Hz refresh rate, and its entry-level CPU and GPU combine for a comfortable 1080p gaming experience. The heavy chassis feels a bit chintzy, and the battery life is short, but you have to make concessions somewhere at this price. There's arguably more value in some MSI Katana GF66 and Acer Nitro 5 configurations, but the Asus is worth a look for shoestring shoppers craving a bigger screen.

Looking Tough: A Big Screen Means a Big Laptop

As both a jumbo gaming laptop and a member of Asus' TUF product line, the Gaming F17 looks the part—a big, dark, seriously styled laptop that aims to convey a beefy, muscular energy. Some more expensive configurations may live up to that image, though our starter model masks some pretty modest parts (more on them in a minute).

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The design also looks less impressive the closer you get. Even given the limited expectations of an economy laptop, the Asus' plastic chassis feels pretty cheap. The lid and deck offer two different spins on textured plastic, both aiming to imitate brushed metal, but neither good enough to fool the eye or to feel especially solid. If I paid for a more expensive configuration of this laptop, I'd be pretty underwhelmed by the build, though at our test model's price it's acceptable.

As you'd expect, the TUF Gaming F17 isn't remotely what we'd call a portable system. It measures 0.92 by ‎15.7 by 10.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.73 pounds. Some 17-inch laptops are heavier still, but it's still a drag to carry. Of course, Asus doesn't pretend this machine is a daily travel companion, but a mostly stationary desktop replacement that can be moved from room to room. To its credit, the AC adapter is reasonably sized, better than the gigantic thick bricks we see with some machines.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The upside of a bulky chassis is a roomy 17.3-inch IPS display. The big screen delivers a more desktop-like experience, and with full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate, it's well suited to gaming at mainstream frame rates.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Keyboard and Connectivity

As for the rest of the build, the Gaming F17's keyboard is of pretty good quality. The keys have some bounce and travel to them, better than most at this price; there's a slightly mushy quality to the bottom of keypresses, but that's just nit-picking. There's also room for a numeric keypad. The touchpad feels small for a laptop this size, but it performs and responds smoothly. Its left- and right-click buttons feel a little cheap but are serviceable.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Finally, we come to the port options. On the laptop's left flank are a USB Type-C port, two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI monitor connection, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an Ethernet jack. The last is a benefit of the thicker chassis and a boon for gamers who want a fast and reliable connection for downloading games and playing online. The right side holds just one USB-A port, but altogether it's just about everything you need for general use and gaming.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Additional features include anti-dust fans, preinstalled utility software with a choice of performance modes, and easy access to the memory and storage compartments for upgrades down the road. (The RAM is upgradable, and there’s an extra SSD slot.)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Component Check: Previous-Gen Intel, Entry-Level Nvidia

What kind of components does a budget price buy you? Our $899.99-MSRP model FX706HCB-ES51, on sale for $200 off at this writing, combines an Intel Core i5-11400H processor, 8GB of memory, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, and a 512GB solid-state drive. It's the entry-level unit among 11th Generation F17's, though you may find a newer unit or a higher configuration for more money.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

While Intel's mobile and desktop CPUs have reached their 12th and 13th generations, respectively, its 11th Gen silicon is still very capable as well as affordable. As for the GPU, the RTX 3050 is certainly near the bottom of Nvidia's hierarchy, but the baseline has climbed far enough that you should be able to play most mainstream and AAA titles (even if not at maximum image-quality settings). Let's put these parts to the test and see if they stack up to expectations.

Testing the Asus TUF Gaming F17: Capable Mainstream Gaming, But Not Much More

To give our benchmark results some context, we're pitting the TUF Gaming F17 against four other affordable gaming laptops. It's worth noting that there aren't many 17.3-inch budget gaming rigs, so the Asus doesn't have a lot of direct competition—we've reviewed a big-screen Acer Nitro 5, but it was considerably more expensive than the TUF. Our comparison group here includes the 15.6-inch Nitro 5 with a 12th Generation Intel CPU, and the MSI Katana GF66, one of our favorite budget gaming notebooks of the last couple of years.

The HP Victus 16 is a big-screen alternative with a step-up GeForce RTX 3060 GPU. Finally, we weren't wild about the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 at $884, but it serves as a good point of reference for the Asus considering the closely matched price.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage.

Three further benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The F17 didn't lead the pack by any measure, but taken as a whole its results point to all-around competence. Intel's 12th Gen and AMD's Ryzen 6000 CPUs have an edge over the Asus' 11th Gen chip (Intel's transition to Performance and Efficient cores with 12th Gen is a definite factor), but it still hangs close, helped in part by its extra chassis room for cooling. In general, this hefty laptop can handle everyday tasks with ease when you aren't gaming.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

The Asus failed to run one of our two DirectX gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, but the other is included here along with two additional tests from the cross-platform OpenGL benchmark GFXBench 5.0, run offscreen to allow for different display resolutions.

We also run the built-in 1080p benchmarks of three real-world games, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, F1 2021, and Rainbow Six Siege. We run Valhalla and Rainbow twice with different image-quality presets, and F1 with and without Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing activated.

This is the TUF Gaming F17's main area of importance, and the results are mixed. On key tests like Assassin's Creed, you can see how it trailed some of the other laptops, falling short of the 60fps goal. That said, maximum settings are rarely the expectation for a laptop in this price range—you should expect to dial back the eye candy. The Assassin's Creed medium preset was much more successful.

You'll certainly be making some performance concessions for this laptop's affordability, with frame rates I'd call serviceable rather than sensational. But the TUF should be able to play any mainstream title you throw it without breaking the bank, even if it's not a frame-rate world-beater.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

I'm not exactly disappointed with the Gaming F17's battery life, because expectations aren't very high for big-screen gaming rigs, but its four-and-a-half-hour runtime doesn't impress. We've seen lower, but you shouldn't plan to use the Asus off the charger for more than a fraction of your day, especially if you play any games on battery power. As for the display, its color coverage is underwhelming, and its maximum brightness just about reaches an acceptable threshold.

Verdict: A Big-Screen Bargain Buy for the Most Budget-Conscious

The Asus TUF Gaming F17's best attribute may be its price tag, but in this inflated PC market that may be enough. The laptop's performance won't blow you away, but it delivers acceptable 1080p gaming as long as you keep your expectations in check. The plastic chassis similarly won't win any awards, but with its large, high-refresh screen, the total package is all that a cash-strapped casual or mainstream gamer might need. There are some better values if you can stretch your budget (the MSI Katana GF66 and several Acer Nitro 5 models come to mind), but the F17 is a very fair big-screen deal, especially if you can grab it at a discount.