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It’s been quite a tick since you’ve reviewed an ASUS gaming notebook, so what better way than to restart coverage with the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401? It’s a nifty like machine, packed with decently beefy hardware, and it won’t make you go broke!
That’s pretty much the holy grail for gaming notebooks right?
I’ve had my hands on the machine for nigh on two weeks now and here’s what I think of the laptop.
What is the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401?
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is a 14-inch gaming notebook. Being a 14-inch notebook, the machine sacrifices a bit of power for portability. In this case, it’s all about the lightweight nature of the machine (it comes in at just 1.4KG) with some gaming muscle added in.
It’s super thin too, at just 1.69cm at its thickest point and has the awesome 180-degree bendable hinge for the monitor that most ASUS gaming laptos have.
Speaking of monitor, it also comes with a 2560 x 1600 display (16:10) that’s G-sync capable, with a 165hz refresh rate, a 3ms response time and an 88% screen-to-body ratio (which means its bezels are super thin).
As for the ports, here are what’s available.
All of the ports are located on the sides, leaving the back of the machine clear. I personally love it this way, because I really hate having to turn around a laptop just to find an open USB port. On the flip side, the power adapter port is also at the side so it might be a tad unsightly for you.
The main reason the back of the machine is clear of ports are due to the vents. They pretty much span the whole length of the notebook.
It does help a lot to keep the machine cool, however, i do feel the keyboard getting hotter after some hours gaming on it. If you’re using a controller, you’d likely have no issues here.
On the plus side too, there’s not much noise from the built-in fans. They’re certainly audible in a relatively quiet environment, but if you’re gaming with the sound on or wearing headset, they’re virtually undetectable even at full blast.
To that effect, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is a tremendous value if you’re in the market for something lightweight and able to game. It won’t game like the high-end gaming machines, but it will hold its own with older games from the past few years.
Our review model came with the following specs.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 starts from a relatively low price of SG$2,799 onwards, depending on your configuration. You can head on to the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 website to get yours.
If you’ve been in the ASUS ecosystem before, you’ll find the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is a fantastic piece of hardware. It comes pre-installed with the ASUS Armoury Crate app, which allows you to configure gaming settings easily from a single location.
Owners of the ROG Ally (and Ally X) will be especially familiar with this program and how useful it is on that machine. On the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 it is no less useful and just as easy to use. It’s an essential piece of software for the machine. So essential that it even has its own dedicated shortcut button above the keyboard.
The keyboard itself is lighted (which is nice) but it’s weirdly not RGB. At least I sure as hell couldn’t find the setting. I looked in the Lighting section of the Armoury Crate and it wasn’t there so I assume it’s not RGB at all.
That’s a bit strange considering how premium the machine itself is. It’s also strange that the Power Button (located on top of the F12 key) is not lighted at all. That means if you’re playing in the dark, you’ll never be able to see it. It’s not a bit thing in the grand scheme of things (after all, you can just feel for it) but it’s a weird omission.
Otherwise, the keyboard itself isn’t really that noteworthy. It’s membrane based so typing on it is relatively silent, but it’s nowhere near as enjoyable to play or type on as a mechanical keyboard. The keys depress well enough (I’m writing this review on the machine) and are adequately sized for a 14-inch machine so it’s not like it’s a bad keyboard.
I love that ASUS added more keys on top of the keyboard (instead of making some keys dual function). There are four of them (Volume up and down, mute mic and Armoury Crate shortcut) and all of them are very useful at any given time.
The trackpad is nicely smooth too.
It’s not lighted (unfortunate), but it’s smooth on the fingers and doesn’t seem to trap oil on it easily. The clicks are noticeably ‘crunchy’ without being sluggish. While I’d still recommend a mouse over any trackpad, the one in the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is of decidedly better quality than most.
I’m not joking at all when it comes to the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 feeling and looking like a premium machine. The matte top, combined with the aluminium lid and underside makes the notebook stand out in a sea of plastic gaming hardware. What it lacks in garish RGB trappings, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 makes up for it with its sleek looks.
On top of that, the machine does well in regular computing tasks too.
Here’s what I got when benchmarked it with PCMark 10.
It’s great news if you’re planning to use the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 as a school or work machine. Multimedia content creation is a breeze too, especially with the 32GB RAM in our machine. You can have a gazillion Google Chrome tabs up, rendering being done in the background, files being transferred and Photoshop running and still have everything moving as smooth as silk.
Unfortunately, the machine lacks a bit in the gaming department due to its relatively weak GPU.
Here’s what I got when I tested 3DMark on the laptop.
Firestrike, a DX11 benchmark gave the machine decent scores.
If you’re interested in older games running on the API, then you should have a great time. It should be able to play most games on their highest settings and still get you framerates upwards of 60fps.
Here’s how the machine performed on Direct X 12.
As you can see from the scores, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 performs decently enough, though the scores are a bit lower than I’d have liked. In both benchmarks, the laptop posted scores below the average, which means that it’ll likely have trouble running games on high settings well in the very near future.
The latest scores on 3DMark’s newest benchmark bears that out too.
Raytracing performance is similarly below average too, owing to the GPU. While the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 in the machine is current generation, it is unfortunately one of the weakest GPUs in the 4000 series RTX lineup.
Despite the somewhat unimpressive scores, real world testing via games showed that the machine isn’t as lacking as you’d think.
On Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail’s benchmark, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 performed quite well, which should bode well for gamers who are in love with the game.
Even on the Ultimate setting, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 had a performance rating of Very High. That’s more than enough to ensure a great gaming experience, though the caveat here is that the benchmark was running on 1080p instead of the native 2500 x 1600 resolution for the display.
Similarly, the numbers were also decent for Cyberpunk 2077.
Do note that some of the benchmarks are labelled Custom due to the fact that they default to AMD’s FSR instead of NVIDIA DLSS. Changing them to DLSS changed the settings to Custom, though the rest of the settings are unchanged from whatever original preset was selected. Since the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 has a NVIDIA GPU, it doesn’t make sense to use FSR. Instead, just look at the texture quality to see what preset the game benchmark was running (Lowest, Low, Medium, High or Very High).
While ray tracing is a bit above the GPU’s paygrade, if you decide to enable the feature, you can technically enjoy the game with it enabled at its lower settings. Without ray tracing though, the machine performs much better, even on higher settings.
That bears out on Rise of the Tomb Raider as well.
Here are its benchmarks.
Ray tracing will still bring the machine to its knees (48fps average isn’t stellar at all), but all the other settings have the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 running in excess of 60fps without ray tracing enabled.
It’s great news if you’re catching up on your backlog of older games, but newer games with all the fancy ray tracing and other nifty effects will quickly bring forth the inadequacies of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 GPU to the forefront.
The Bottom Line.
The ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is a capable laptop that brings a great many things to the table. It’s lightweight and compact, with a premium build quality to die for. It comes with hardware that can do a host of things well too!
It is however, not a stellar gaming machine.
The GPU isn’t as good as it should be (an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 would’ve paired better with the 2500 x 1600 display), though that definitely would’ve driven up the price a decent amount. However, I suspect that gamers who are interested in the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 would definitely have appreciated having that as an option, despite the higher price tag.
Gaming performance on 1080p is pretty good, but as the native display on the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is 2500 x 1600, you’re basically being forced to give up on sharpness for performance. It’s a tradeoff I personally have no issues making, but that might put some people off.
On the flipside, the laptop does everything else well. It can do content creation without missing a beat and is more than qualified for regular office or school work. It’s like using a cannon to open a door. In other words, it’s overkill.
If you’re looking a pure gaming laptop, the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 is unfortunately not it. However, if you’re looking for a jack of all trades, then look no further because the ASUS TUF Gaming A14 FA401 brings a ton of features, all at a relatively low price point.
TLDR:
A superb laptop which does everything but gaming well.
The Good:
- Decent specs at a decent price.
- Performs well at most tasks, including content creation.
- Lightweight, with great build quality.
The Bad:
- Display resolution is too much for the GPU for gaming.
- GPU could be better.
- No RGB on the keyboard.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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