Asus TUF Gaming A18 Review

Design and Keyboard

• Expectedly bulky
• Excellent port selection
• Snappy keyboard and large trackpad

The first key takeaway about how the TUF Gaming A18 looks and feels is that it’s big.

Predictably, as an 18-inch laptop, it is quite a large lad, although only in the direction of screen size. Build quality is generally solid here too, and the grey lid offsetting the predominantly black chassis, complete with TUF logo, is a pleasant touch.

The 2.6kg weight is more in line with some beefier 16-inch laptops I’ve tested, although I wouldn’t exactly call this laptop portable as a top-line statement. In addition, a 26.7mm thickness is almost double that of many modern ultrabooks, meaning it can take up a lot of space in all directions in a bag.

Being slightly thicker means the TUF Gaming A18 has room for a lot more ports than modern ultrabooks, though. The left side houses a full-size Ethernet port for wired networking, as well as an HDMI 2.1 port, two high speed USB-Cs, a USB-A and 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right, you’ll find a further two USB-As.

There is a full-size layout keyboard, which provides a full complement of keys, including arrow keys, a number pad, and a proper function row. It’s a snappy keyboard to use, and one I found satisfying for extended periods. In addition, the backlighting is also quite bright, making after-dark working a breeze.

The trackpad, as you’d arguably expect for a bigger laptop, is huge. It provides oodles of real estate for your fingers, and works a charm with zippy and responsive navigation.

Display and Sound

• Reasonable 1920×1200 144Hz IPS screen
• Decent brightness, contrast and black level
• Middling speakers and colour accuracy

It’s on the display front where Asus has done things a little differently, as this is the first 18-inch laptop to be released in the TUF laptop range, making it one of the largest screen laptops available from the brand, full stop.

The type of screen you get depends on where you purchase it, however. Folks in the US are blessed with a large 2.5K resolution (2560×1600) 240Hz IPS option, while this UK model I have has a lower 1920×1200 resolution 144Hz IPS panel, which is a bit of a shame.

Having a 144Hz refresh rate means we’re getting pleasantly smooth and responsive output – handy for games as well as for general productivity work – while the 1920×1200 resolution is easier to drive and isn’t too lacking in detail for a more affordable gaming laptop of this spec.

Nonetheless, the panel here is still a reasonable one, with decent brightness at 324.5 nits peak SDR brightness measured with my colorimeter. It gives images a solid punch in conjunction with the reasonable 1260:1 contrast ratio helping the dynamic range. The 0.15 black level measured out of the box also helps the depth of images, too.

As for colour accuracy, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. 99% sRGB coverage means mainstream colours for generalist work are virtually perfectly represented, although the sub-80% DCI-P3 (75%) and Adobe RGB (75%) numbers mean this isn’t a display that I’d recommend for more colour-sensitive workloads.

The TUF Gaming A18’s speakers aren’t much to write home about. They can get to a decent volume, but are mostly just mid-range with little in the way of bass or treble. They’re fine for casual listening, but little else.

Performance

• Decent CPU performance
• RTX 5070 is powerful for 1080p gaming
• Solid RAM and storage configuration

For a laptop at a more modest price point, it features some solid specs, packing in an eight-core/16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 260 processor alongside an RTX 5070 laptop GPU. Considering the TUF Gaming A18’s modest 1920×1200 resolution, it should theoretically mean some fantastic gaming results.

The Ryzen 7 260 shows itself as a decent chip in the Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 benchmark tests, with solid single and multicore performance. With this in mind, it is some way behind the slightly older Intel Core i7-14700HX found in the similarly-priced Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 that has faster cores, and more of them to boot.

With this in mind, the presence of the RTX 5070 proves itself to be a handy upgrade over its predecessor, with the TUF Gaming A18 coming with stronger gaming performance. At 1080p, we’re seeing 98.77fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 100fps in Returnal, giving a 10 percent or so boost over the Predator Helios Neo 16, although the 181fps result in Rainbow Six Extraction is some 50 percent better.

Adding in the powers of DLSS Transformer in Cyberpunk 2077 pushed the 1080p result up to 109.27fps and helped move the needle on RT: Ultra settings from 41.87fps up past the magic 60fps mark to 61.95fps for some rather playable results.

As a 50-series laptop, the TUF Gaming A18 has access to Nvidia’s latest features with this Blackwell generation, including the clever Multi Frame Gen tech that adds in up to three ‘fake frames’ for every traditionally generated one, thanks to AI for a perceivably smoother experience. The addition of these frames is reliant upon a base FPS figure that is high enough to mean the displayed image with Multi Frame Gen isn’t choppy or laggy.

With it enabled, it can take 1080p RT: Ultra Cyberpunk up to 199.20fps, going beyond the confines of the 144Hz display, and turning ray tracing off pushed it up even higher to 315.62fps. 

The 16GB of DDR5 RAM here is solid for multi-tasking and gaming loads, although competing rivals can double this quantity. The 1TB SSD is decent in capacity too for a larger games library, while its measured reads and writes of 6985.49MB/s and 6048.84MB/s are decently strong, too.

Software

• Clean Windows 11 install
• Some Asus apps are pre-installed
• Not enough AI horsepower to be a Copilot+ PC

Software-wise, Asus hasn’t splurged too much of its own stuff on the TUF Gaming A18, with this laptop coming with quite a clean Windows 11 install.

There is MyAsus, the brand’s catch-all system app for controlling things such as different power modes, or audio settings, and Armoury Crate, Asus’ software for controlling more advanced items such as the keyboard’s RGB lighting and GPU power.

There isn’t enough AI horsepower for this laptop to be deemed a Copilot+ PC, which means it misses out on AI smarts in the likes of Paint and Photos, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects. There is a Copilot key on the bottom row of the keyboard, so you can call Microsoft’s AI assistant at will.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 10 hours 35 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for one working day

The TUF Gaming A18 impresses with its endurance, especially thanks to Asus’ decision to put a large 90Whr battery inside. They don’t quote an exact estimate for how long the laptop is due to last, though.

With the brightness at the requisite 150 nits in our customary PCMark 10 battery test, this Asus laptop managed to last for just over ten and a half hours. That meets our general target for laptops, and is fantastic for a gaming laptop of any guise. It means you’ll be able to get a working day out of this laptop before needing to plug it back into the mains, which isn’t something I can usually say about gaming laptops.

The 240W DC charger provided with the TUF Gaming A18 is fast to get juice back into it, taking just 24 minutes to get it back to 50 percent, while a full charge took 65 minutes.

Should you buy it?