Asus TUF FX505 review: Asus TUF Gaming FX 505 review: Rough and ‘TUF’ performance machine
Rating
Critic
3.5
User
4.1
Click Here For Gallery
Top Features
Solid build quality
Powerful performance
Effective cooling
Close
Asus TUF FX505GM-ES065T Laptop (Core i7 8th Gen/16 GB/1 TB 256 GB SSD/Windows 10/6 GB)
1
6
In the Spiderman movie, Peter Parker’s uncle just before dying tells him, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” The same can be said for laptops. Laptops today are packed with top of the line specifications, that’s power. Churning out the total performance without breaking a sweat and providing overall smooth experience to users is responsibility. Asus TUF Gaming laptops are not mainly focused on the people who want to play games on weekends but also need a powerful machine as their daily driver.
There are two variants in the FX 505 series. One with 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor; 16GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD ; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics with 6GBGDDR5 VRAM, priced at Rs 1,29,990. The other model costs Rs 79,990 and offers Intel Core i5 8300H processor along with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM. Other specifications of the laptop is similar apart from some differences in the display specifications. Asus has also packed this laptop with 144Hz display which makes it even better gaming machine.
But does the new TUF FX505 is a capable gaming and performance machine? Does it have what it takes to be called as a good gaming laptop. We have been using this laptop from quite some time now and here’s our final thought on the laptop.
Asus TUF FX 505: Design
The TUF FX 505 is a mid-range durable laptop from Asus but does not look like one. The laptop is well-built with good quality materials. The bottom and keyboard is made out of plastic but the top panel is metal with sandstone finish which also keeps the fingerprints away. We haven’t noticed any flex in the body or the display.
According to the company, the laptop has passed the U.S. military grade MIL-810G tests as claimed which results in better drop and damage protection to minimise the possible risks to the structural damage to the laptop. The hinge feels solid and one can easily open the laptop with one hand.
The design of the laptop seems to be inspired from some of the ROG series laptops from the company but with a new treatment which makes the laptop looks fresh and appealing, which is a good thing and enough to take out the gamer in you. The best part here is that the laptop does not have any ‘Red’ accent which makes it look a little professional as well.
The top panel of the laptop has metallic feel to it and Asus has given some good-looking fresh lines to the laptop along with a glowing Asus Logo. The gaming line treatment can be seen throughout the laptop, in the keyboard area, at corners and in fact at the back side of the laptop too.
The laptop houses a 15.6-inch display in a thin bezel or nano-bezel as Asus likes to call it. We have already seen this technology in some of the ZenBook lineup as well as ROG series laptops. Now, the Nano Bezel has made its way to the TUF series, which is a nifty addition considering the fact the no other brand offers such thin bezels in this price bracket. With reduced bezels around the display, the company has managed to reduce the overall footprint of the laptop and the laptop feels a lot compact than others with the similar display size of this category.
Talking about the keyboard, the keyboard comes with RGB backlighting and number pad which is a good thing considering the size of the laptop. The keys have the right amount of travel and make very little noise when pressed. They also provide good amount of feedback but are a bit spongy and soft.
Let’s talk about the number pad, the keys are smaller compared to other keys of the laptop. The arrow key is placed in a weird location between the QWERTY keys and Number Pad. The Up arrow is in the place where ‘0’ is found and the rest of the three keys are shifted further down that leads to lots of typing errors. The WSAD keys are transparent which adds to the overall aesthetics of the laptop.
The touchpad of the laptop is also good and just like other Asus laptops it uses Windows precision drivers. The touchpad surface is smooth and it also feels responsive and accurate. The gestures felt snappy throughout our review process.
In terms of I/O, the company has equipped the laptop with three USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, Ethernet port and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. But the main issue here is the placement of these ports as all of them are placed at the left side of the laptop and there’s nothing at the right except that large air vent for cooling. Now, this is something which bothered us as all the I/O on the left does not make sense despite the fact it’s a gaming-centric laptop. Though the company claims that the gamers want the right side of the laptop clean from wire clutter. However, this laptop is not only meant to be used for gaming and it would have been great to see at least a few ports on the right side of the laptop too.
Overall, in terms of design nothing much has changed compared to the previous generation TUF laptop—FX504—except the thin bezels and smaller footprint of the laptop makes it more compact than its predecessor.
Asus TUF FX 505: Display
Asus TUF FX 505 features a 15.6-inch full HD matte display with 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time which ensures less ghosting time during gaming. The 144Hz is a good bump up from its predecessor 120Hz. Considering the price, the display is acceptable and most of the users won’t have any complaints about the display. The viewing angles are good, brightness is more than sufficient for almost every scenario. Overall the display in this laptop will please most of the users.
Asus TUF FX 505: Performance
Our review unit came with Intel Core i7 eighth-generation processor coupled with 16GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666MHz and combined 1TB FireCuda SSHD and 256GB PCIe SSD storage. Though 16GB RAM sounds sufficient, the best part here is that it’s upgradable and can be upgraded up to 32GB in case you need more power and performance out of the laptop. The FireCUDA SSHD and SSD feels fast and gives good read and write speed which keeps the laptop fast and snappy throughout the process.
Talking about the storage, as mentioned above the laptop comes with the combination of SSD and SSHD drive and during our test, the laptop performed well and smooth. The read and write speed from both the drives are fast. We tested the read and write speed of the drive and here they are
Seq Q32T1 Read: 1730; Write: 627.4
Coming back to the overall performance of the laptop, the eighth-generation Intel Core I7 processor handles all the regular tasks like a piece of cake and while gaming the CPU also manages to keep up with the performance.
In terms of graphics performance, the laptop comes equipped with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. The 1060 graphics card manages to deliver great performance and most of the games can be played at high graphics settings without breaking a sweat. However, a few open-world titles such as Witcher 3 or GTA might need to tone down the graphics setting to medium.
In terms of gaming, the laptop performed well and didn’t show any lag or stutter while playing. We tried playing Call of Duty World War 2 for around 7 hours continuously with a few hours in idle with the game running at the background. The laptop performed really well.
The laptop comes with Anti-Dust Cooling(ADC) system with fan over boost for enhanced cooling. Asus claims that the ADC system expels the dust via two dedicated tunnels built beside the fans to keep the thermal fins clean. The cooling on this laptop is great and as we have already mentioned about our continuous gaming session.
Somehow, the laptop and its cooling system managed to keep everything cool starting from keyboard area to the bottom surface. The fan did a great job of automatically adjusting its speed based on the system load. However, the laptop also comes with a manual over boost feature that allows users to take control of the fan. The silent mode is suitable for normal browsing, watching movies etc and in this mode the fan noise was minimal and it wasn’t noticeable. Another mode is ‘Overboost’ which rotates the fan to its full potential to keep the laptop cool. Though we understand that Overboost mode is meant to overclock the fan but the fan noise is way too loud.
Overall, Asus did a great job of managing the heat dissipation of the laptop.
In terms of audio, the built-in speakers of the laptop are just average, lacks in clarity and loudness too. However, gamers always use headphones while gaming, so it shouldn’t be much of an issue. If you want to watch a movie on this, we recommend you use external speakers. The laptop does come with DTS enhancements for headphone which changes everything the moment you plug in your headphone. The DTS Audio software allows you to tweak every possible setting and it also comes with dedicated sound modes such as Entertainment, Games etc.
Asus TUF FX 505: Battery
The laptop comes packed by a 48Wh battery and considering it as a gaming machine, we were not expecting great battery life with this machine. However, the laptop on a full charge lasted for around 3-4 hours with Wi-Fi on, screen brightness at about 75 percent and moderate usage. On the other hand, on slightly heavy load, it lasted just for 2.5 hours. It took around 1.5 hours to charge the machine.
Asus TUF FX 505: Verdict
The Asus TUF FX 505 gaming laptop is a machine for those looking for a versatile yet powerful performance laptop in a relatively compact form factor. With the right amount of performance and a few compromises, the laptop maintains the dignity of the TUF series line up. It handles most modern day games like a piece of cake along with day-to-day tasks. The price, of course, is the USP of the laptop especially the Core i5 variant which offers more value for money.
user reviews & rating
4.1
Based on 9 ratings
Rate & Review
end of article
