Asus has been making some big strides in the business of making some excellent gaming hardware with its accessories, gaming laptops and the desktops of the flagship ROG series. But what many people may not know is that the company also has a budget lineup of gaming laptops and desktops that are classified under the Asus TUF series that offers good specs at competitive prices. And it is in that particular lineup of devices that Asus has introduced new laptops and desktops currently. And one of these is the new FX505G gaming laptop that comes with options in terms of variants for the people to choose.
The lower priced variant of the Asus FX505 comes with a 1050 Ti GPU while the more powerful one comes with a GTX 1060 GPU. It also has higher default RAM compared to the lower variant. I recently received the Asus TUF FX505G Gaming Laptop for review which is the higher variant, priced at Rs 1,29,990. Here’s my review.
Design of the Asus TUF FX505G
The Asus TUF FX505G is a surprise package out of the box. It comes with an intriguing design and at the first glance, the device was a pleasant surprise. This laptop comes with solid specifications and is still light and thin at the same time. The Asus TUF FX505G comes with a patterned lid that has a sand-blasted black look on the metal. The laptop is stronger that most other laptops and I even got a live demo where the laptop was dropped from over 2 feet on a carpeted floor. Besides the sand-blasted black metal look the logo of the device has been changed from the red in the previous version to a pale gold this time around.
On the inside of the flap is a 144Hz 1080p display with thin bezels that make it one of the few gaming laptops in this price range to offer a such a display. It is accompanied by an RGB-backlit keyboard and and an exceptionally smooth touchpad. Coming back to the keyboard for a little while, this RGB keyboard comes with the ability to control the lighting with the TUF software that is available for download.
Typing with this keyboard was a pleasant experience, and it has a decent travel distance and this was pretty comfortable even while gaming. This is a very positive assessment from my end because I do not like using laptop keyboards while gaming because they usually have little travel distance for the keys. The keyboard has the WASD keys marked out as well which is again an advantage.
On the sides of the device, we only have the ports on the left and the right panel is free barring the small speaker vent. On the left panel of the device we have our charging port followed by the ethernet port, the HDMI port, one USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.1 ports and finally a 3.5mm port for headphone jacks. The rear panel of the main segment of the laptop has the exhaust ports for the dual-chamber fans in the laptop.
The laptop has dimensions of 360.4mm x 262.0mm x 25.8mm for length, breadth and height, combine that with a weight of 2.2 kgs and we have a laptop that is pretty impressive in terms of dimensions and weight. This makes it easier to carry around without much bother, as it fits perfectly into a laptop bag for 15.6-inch laptops with reduced form factor due to thinner bezels. The design of the Asus TUF FX505G has a sense of sophistication to it that isn’t usually seen on budget gaming laptops.
Performance of the Asus TUF FX505G
This is that one segment that the Asus TUF FX505G really impressed me. This laptop has been able to dish out consistent performance on all the tasks that it had been put to. It comes with a Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 VRAM GPU, M.2 NVMe PCIE 256 SSD, 2.5″ 1TB FireCuda SSHD, and 32GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM.
And as always I will begin talking about the performance of the device by talking about the display first. Asus has done quite the job in introducing 144Hz panels on laptops at this price range and this display was crisp as ever. Though the 144Hz is not the default setting on the laptop and it can only be properly used in the games while playing. But it hardly has any distortion when viewed at angles and even the daylight performance is impressive. It’s the most noticeable when playing games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
I have already mentioned that the keyboard and the touchpad were a delight to use. And now moving on to the general performance of the device, I noticed that it had a very efficient cooling system for the GTX 1060 GPU which honestly is a device that produces a lot of heat. The company has used Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) dual-fans along with OverBoost technology in the laptop.
Hence when gaming GPU intensive games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Call of Duty Black Ops 4 the fans come to life and push the heat out along with the dust using special channels. Incidentally the laptop is using the gaps in the keyboard to suck in air which will potentially dry out the hands of gamers as well. The Asus TUF FX505G hardly heated up the laptop keyboard which is impressive.
But when the fans did come to life while gaming it tended to make a lot of noise. And speaking about noise, the device seems to have only one feature that seemed unimpressive to me. The speakers used in the Asus TUF FX505G seem to not be the most powerful and at one point even my smartphone felt louder.
It comes with the latest Windows 10 Home edition with the laptop which is definitely one of the most flexible right now. Including all the features that Windows 10 provides, the laptop also has its own Asus software which helps the user keep an eye on things and even set up preferred profiles.
On to the most interesting part of the performance of the Asus TUF FX505G which is the performance of various games on the laptop on Ultra settings. I used the laptop to play Dota 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive, PUBG, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and some Rainbow Six Siege. The Asus TUF FX505G ran Dota 2 at around 210fps, Counter Strike Global Offensive at 180fps, PUBG at 60fps, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 at 75fps and Rainbow Six Siege at about 80fps. The device had impressive battery and could run for about 4.5 hours without gaming and about 2 hours with gaming.
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Verdict
The Asus TUF FX505G as it turns out is a very impressive release from the company which intends to give tough competition in this price segment. It has a very interesting minimalist design which is a good fit for office purposes along with its lightweight body and small form factor. Having a good keyboard for typing and a smooth touch pad also contributed to this cause.
It has great configuration which is ideal for playing almost all the games that are available today. It has an excellent 144Hz display which is tough to find in this price segment. Considering that the only downside of the device are its speakers which frankly isn’t as important since gamers prefer to use headphones, it turns out to be a very positive device. This is a recommended buy for those considering a gaming or performance-centric laptop in this price segment.
