Dave Miller – Tech Enthusiast & Security Expert – December 17th, 2021
When I was in the market for a lightweight gaming laptop, it felt like everyone around me was buying an Alienware m15 R4. That’s when I remembered Asus being in the business of awesome laptops too. So let’s cut to the chase – in this article, we’ll be looking at Asus TUF Dash F15 vs Alienware m15 R4 to see which one reigns supreme.
In this article, you will find a detailed review of both laptops, each machine’s positives and negatives, a clear choice at the end. Firstly you will see a head-to-head comparison and then a detailed review of both laptops followed by a final pick.
Asus TUF Dash F15 | Alienware m15 R4 |
It comes in a solid design, but it doesn’t contain a webcam. | M15 has a solid build quality and contains a webcam, but its lid is scratch-prone. |
It has a tactile keyboard and a larger trackpad. | It has an excellent keyboard but a tiny trackpad. |
Four-cell 76Wh battery | 86 Wh, 240 W charger |
Low-powered Nvidia RTX 3070 | High powered RTX 3000 GPU in a thin form factor |
16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM | 16 GB DDR4 2933Mhz Soldered RAM |
Starting with the design, Asus TUF Dash F15 is marginally thinner and lighter than Alienware m15 R4. It also comes in black, while the Alienware has a few more color options. However, that’s where the pros for the Asus end. The Alienware has a much nicer aluminum build quality and feels more premium as a result. Additionally, Alienware’s display is sharper with more vivid colors. So in terms of design and display, Alienware is the clear winner.
When it comes to performance, it’s a close tie. Both laptops offer a great gaming experience and can easily handle most tasks. However, Alienware does have a slight edge with its slightly more powerful hardware. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, Alienware is the better choice.
Both laptops sport identical CPUs with Ryzen 2600H processors. Asus TUF Dash F-15 has 16 GB of RAM, while Alienware m15 R4 has 32 GB. Both laptops use SSD for storage, but Alienware offers a faster NVMe M2 SSD with a PCIe chipset, whereas Asus “only” provides SATA type M2 SSD. However, Asus can provide you with a 1TB HDD and 256GB M.2 PCIex4 flash drive in addition to the primary M2 SATA SSD, which can be helpful if you plan to install software on that additional storage. On the other hand, Alienware only allows one HDD or one SSD slot.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 is the clear winner in terms of battery life. It lasts significantly longer on a single charge than the Alienware. So if you’re looking for a laptop that can last through long gaming sessions or meetings without needing to be plugged in, the Asus is your best bet
The Asus TUF Dash F15 features a 15.6-inch IPS full-HD display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and a pixel density of 141 PPI. The Alienware m15 R4, on the other hand, comes with a 15.6-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and a pixel density of 246 PPI. So, the Alienware m15 R4 offers significantly better picture quality than the Asus TUF Dash F15.
So overall, there are some clear pros and cons for both laptops. If you’re mainly looking for a good design and display, Alienware is the better choice. However, if you’re more interested in performance or battery life, the Asus TUF Dash F15 is the better option. It all comes down to what you prioritize most in a laptop. Moreover, you can choose one according to your choice after seeing more detailed reviews of both the laptops below.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 is a budget-friendly option for those looking for a gaming laptop. It’s also one of the thinnest gaming laptops on the market, measuring at .7 inches thick. The downside to this thinness is that there’s no room for a traditional webcam, so you’ll have to make do with using your phone or an external webcam.
The laptop has a matte black finish and is made from plastic, which gives it a bit of a cheap feeling. However, it’s still lightweight and easy to carry around. You’ll find all the standard ports on offer, including two USB-A and USB-C 3.1 ports, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack.
The laptop’s keyboard is comfortable to type on and backlit in teal. The trackpad is also large and comfortable to use.
The Asus TUF Dash F15 comes with a 15.6″ display resolution of 1920x1080px. Asus has stuck to a standard 16:9 aspect ratio, which is fine for most users. Colors are reproduced accurately, and viewing angles are good, making the Asus Dash F15 a decent laptop for multimedia consumption. This 15.6-inch Full HD display comes with a refresh rate of 144Hz. It’s not the brightest or most colorful display around, but it’s still good enough for gaming and watching videos.
The bezels around the display are relatively thin, and Asus has used an all-plastic chassis that doesn’t feel as premium as some of the other laptops in its price range, but it is still sturdy and should withstand everyday wear and tear.
The Asus TUF Dash is a gaming laptop that can be used as an ultra-portable system and desktop replacement. It comes with an RTX 3070, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It has the power of your average computer, but it’s small enough to take with you on any adventure.
Despite its limitations, the latest Asus laptop is an excellent choice for gamers. It is built with both Intel and Nvidia silicon to avoid overheating issues in such a small chassis that can pack up some heat under the hood but doesn’t burst into flames like many other laptops do when you’re gaming on an RTX 3070 graphics card.
No matter what game we throw at this (Watch Dogs or even Dirt 5), it still performs well enough without breaking too much immersion while playing AAA computer games.
With the RTX 3070 here, you can experience Nvidia’s second-generation implementation of ray-tracing. However, it does not just help out in games that support this technology but also provides an advantage when playing at Ultra settings with Metro Exodus as our benchmark example. We saw drops down from 59 fps without R&D Luma SV4 Render.
Asus TUF Dash F15 comes with a 6-cell battery with the Asus Power4Gear option. There are three modes in Asus Power4Gear – Entertainment, Balanced, and High Performance. Asus TUF Dash F15 with a six-cell battery also comes with an Asus Battery Health Charging technology that can prolong its lifespan by avoiding being charged constantly to 100%.
The Alienware m15 is a beast in terms of performance and build quality. It comes with an RTX 2080, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD while still staying compact enough to carry around while you’re on the go. Measuring just under .75 inches thick, it’s just as thin as its Asus competitor. The m15 also has all the ports most users need: one USB-C port, two USB-A 3.1 ports, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack. It also comes with an ethernet port for those who need a more stable internet connection.
The laptop has a sleek, all-black design with copper accents. It’s made mostly from aluminum, giving it a high-end feel and making it one of the heavier gaming laptops on the market at 5.5 pounds.
The keyboard is backlit in white and offers comfortable key travel. The trackpad is also large and feels good to use.
The Alienware m15 R4 comes with a 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS panel with a refresh rate of 144Hz, G-Sync, and 400 nits of brightness. The viewing angles are good, the colors look great, and the blacks are nice and deep. Dell also offers a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) option on the Alienware m15 R4, but we don’t think it’s worth the extra money.
There’s no webcam on the laptop, which is something that has become increasingly rare in today’s laptops. But at least there’s a Tobii eye-tracking camera.
The Alienware m15 R4’s bezels are pretty thin, but they’re not as light as those on the Asus TUF Dash F15.
Overall, we think that the Alienware m15 R4’s display is better than the Asus TUF Dash F15. It has a higher refresh rate, looks better, and has G-Sync. But if you don’t care about those things, then the Asus TUF Dash F15 is an excellent option because it’s cheaper.
The Alienware m15 R4 is a powerful laptop that offers excellent performance. It features an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H six-core processor and 16GB of RAM, allowing you to run multiple applications and tabs simultaneously without any lag. The graphics are provided by an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 8GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM so that you can play the latest games at high settings.
The Alienware m15 R4 also comes with a 256 GB PCIe M.2 SSD, which offers fast boot times and loading speeds. The Alienware m15 R4 also features a Killer 1550 802.11ac Wi-Fi card, which offers fast and reliable internet connections.
The Alienware m15 R4 is an excellent laptop for gamers and power users. It offers exceptional performance and plenty of storage, and its graphics are some of the best on the market. The Alienware m15 R4 is also very portable, making it an excellent choice for on-the-go use.
Alienware m15 comes with a 4-cell Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery. The battery lasts for up to 5 hours, and Alienware claims that it is the thinnest laptop with a 6-cell battery in the market.
The Lithium-ion battery has a capacity of 76 Wh. It is one of the largest batteries available in laptops, and it makes the Alienware m15 significantly heavier than other laptops in its class.
The Alienware m15 uses a 135W adapter which charges the battery quickly. The laptop can be fully charged in 2 hours.
The Alienware m15 R4 is a clear choice if you care about straight performance. It comes with an RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, slightly better than the RTX 2060 of the Asus TUF Dash F15. But if you don’t plan on professionally playing Esports or engaging in heavy application use, then you can get away with using either one of these laptops.
For anything else, where gaming performance isn’t essential, both laptops are very similar and offer more than enough power for any use case. However, the Alienware m15 R4 still has a slight edge over the Asus TUF Dash F15 because it offers G-Sync support out of the box (while Asus will soon release an update to add this), and its build quality is slightly better.
In conclusion, the Asus TUF Dash F15 is an outstanding laptop cheaper than the Alienware m15 R4. If you care about gaming performance, it’s not the one for you, and you should go with the Alienware m15 R4 instead. But if you don’t mind losing out on a little bit of graphics performance and want to save some money on your new laptop, then we highly recommend getting either one of these laptops. The Asus TUF Dash F15 is also available in two other variants.
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Dave Miller is an IT Consultant for Online Cloud Security and has over 7 years of experience in the Information Technology space. He also specializes in repairing laptops & computers. In his spare time, he loves to talk about new technologies and hosts monthly IT and Cyber Security meetings in the Houston area.
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Online Cloud Security is here to recommend you the most secure devices, from laptops to smartphones, we only want to provide you with products that we have tested and used ourselves for online security. Every product that we recommend is heavily inspected and tested for security against hackers, viruses, malware, and any other intruders that may want to steal your information.
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