Gaming laptops exist to fulfill diverse needs, largely depending on the consumer’s use case, but there’s one avenue that most fail to fulfill: Portability.
We’re not just talking about lightweight laptops, although that is part of it. Instead, we look at how every facet of a laptop’s design contributes to the convenience of taking it while traveling.
Categories for determining whether a laptop is travel-friendly include weight, size, durability, screen brightness, and, most importantly, battery life. It’s rare to find a product that hits the bullseye on each of these fronts, especially when considering aspects like gaming performance.
In the last year, we’ve started recommending Windows gaming handhelds as an alternative, as they are far more portable than any gaming laptop while also featuring higher-than-average battery life. After all, when the Asus ROG Ally X can yield over 8 hours of battery life in a gaming machine that can be played in the palm of your hands, it’s ideal for frequent travelers.
However, Asus has launched a gaming laptop that fulfills all the criteria we expect for travel-friendly categories, and it blew me away.
Enter the Asus TUF Gaming A14, a sturdy laptop boasting military-grade durability, a little over three pounds in weight, a small 14-inch size, a bright display, and phenomenal battery life.
The best we’ve seen in four years for this one category
The Asus TUF Gaming A14 excels in many areas, but there’s one which we haven’t seen a gaming laptop do this phenomenally in many years.
Long-lasting battery life is vital if you’re taking a laptop while traveling, as being able to play without worrying about an outlet is a great trick for reducing your anxiety while gaming. And on the Laptop Mag battery life test, which involves continuous web surfing over wifi at 150 nits, the TUF Gaming A14 lasted 10 hours and 4 minutes before running out of juice.
Not only is this the longest lasting gaming laptop we’ve seen in 2024, with second place (Asus ROG Zephyrus G14) being nearly two hours behind at 8 hours and 16 minutes, but it’s the best we’ve tested in a few years.
The last time we’ve seen a gaming laptop with battery life this long was from the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 in 2020, which lasted 11 hours and 32 minutes on a single charge during the same test. While the TUF Gaming A14 hasn’t quite reached the heights the G14 did four years ago, it’s incredible that this is the best we’ve seen in a gaming laptop since.
The longest lasting gaming laptop we tested in 2023 was the Razer Blade 14, which lasted 8 hours and 35 minutes. Back then, that on its own already blew my mind, so seeing a laptop go beyond it by a whole hour and 30 minutes is phenomenal.
The TUF Gaming A14 doesn’t just prove it’s the ideal portable companion through its battery life, but also with its 3.2-pound weight that makes it so much lighter than other similarly sized gaming laptops with a dedicated GPU do. I couldn’t believe how easily I pulled it out of its box when testing, and carrying it around has been a dream.
The last three 14-inch gaming laptops we tested are the Razer Blade 14 (4.1 pounds), HP Omen Transcend 14 (3.7 pounds), and Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (3.3 pounds), all of which are heavier, although the G14 does get pretty close.
It’s also a 14-inch gaming laptop, which is generally the smallest size you can get, as 13-inch gaming laptops with dedicated graphics are rare nowadays. The last 13-inch gaming laptop we tested was the Asus ROG Flow X13 back in mid-2023. Its exact measurements come out to 12.3 x 9 x 0.7 inches.
Screen brightness is the final important facet, as being able to see the display as clearly as possible is vital, even in bright conditions associated with travel like a well-lit public area or direct sunlight. We usually consider a display that can hit over 400 nits to be sufficiently bright, and the TUF Gaming A14 comes in at 411 nits, which is quite a bit brighter than the mainstream gaming laptop average of 364-nits.
Asus has crafted the best gaming laptop for travel in 2024
With staggering longevity that goes beyond 10 hours of battery life, a light build that’s just a little over 3 pounds, a lithe 14-inch display size, and sufficient nits of brightness for particularly luminscient settings, the Asus TUF Gaming A14 is ideal for traveling.
But let us not forget its RTX 4060 GPU that’s solid for mid-range gaming, alongside a powerful AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, meaning it’s more than capable of delivering quality performance while traveling, regardless of if you’re gaming or working.
