Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021

ASUS choose the old and reliable way of updating a device for the next model year by reusing the same exterior and just pumping it up with new components.

This has yielded great results for many manufacturers, as they can reuse the same manufacturing processes, bringing down the overall cost, so that more focus is placed on the hardware and features, which in the end are the most important. The older laptop which used the Ryzen 4000 H-series chips set a good baseline, which now got upgraded with Ryzen 5000 and RTX 3000 Ampere GPUs.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021.

ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021: Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021

1. Upgradeability

The laptop offers wide upgradeability, both in the RAM and storage departments. There are two SODIMM RAM slots, which can house a total of 32GB of DDR4 in dual-channel mode, which is plenty for gaming. Storage-wise, there are two M.2 PCIe x4 drives.

Here is our detailed teardown video which shows exactly how to access both the SODIMM and SSD slots.


2. Battery life

Props to ASUS for giving us a huge 90Wh battery pack. It managed to last for 10 hours and 41 minutes of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 11 minutes of video playback, which is quite a lot, especially for a gaming notebook. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


3. Input devices

We liked the keyboard here, as it had an RGB backlight, transparent WASD keys. The key travel was quite long and the feedback is clicky and tactile, which is good for both gaming and typing. The unit also features a NumPad, as the 17.3-inch form factor allows it. On the flip side, the arrow keys are tiny.

The touchpad has a good size and has two dedicated physical buttons, which are by now endangered species. The touchpad offers smooth gliding and accurate tracking.


4. Performance

The laptop offers great specs, with both the old Ryzen 7 4800H and the newer Ryzen 7 5800H being available. Of course, we would advise you to pick the new one, as it brings a new architecture, higher speeds, and more cache. GPU-wise, you get to choose between the RTX 3060 and the RTX 3070, which are decently more powerful than their predecessors, the RTX 2000-series.

CPU benchmarks

Our laptop came equipped with the Ryzen 7 5800H.


GPU benchmarks

In terms of graphics, we tested the RTX 3070 (Laptop).


1 reason NOT to buy the ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021

1. I/O

The laptop’s I/O is quite lacking, both when it comes to Thunderbolt 4, which is inaccessible on AMD devices and can be excused, but also lacks an SD card slot. The laptop has a security lock slot and a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port on the right. On the left, you can see the power plug, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI connector, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2), and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


All ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021 configurations:

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Steve
Steve
9 months ago

I am getting nowhere near 10 hours of battery life even with power options scaled to minimum the best I am seeing is 4 hours just browsing, no gaming. If I game with power options scaled back up, I’d be surprised to get as much as 2hrs. Really dissapointed. Windows 11 power options being as confusing as they are is not helping either. Frustrated isn’t the word. Wish I hadn’t bought this.