A week with the ASUS TUF FX505DU

Budget gaming laptops usually come with a red flag or two, but to my surprise the ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DU left little to be desired. As far as gaming laptops go, it boasts great specs at a relatively affordable price point. And it's not only a good gaming machine but also a reliable workstation. There are a few different configurations available for the FX505 series of laptops. We had the FX505DU-AL092T version which comes with 8GB RAM, a GTX 1660 Ti and a Ryzen 7 3750H. With that being said, it's time to get into the thick of it.  

Performance and Build

While I thought that it was a plastic finish through and through, the top lid is actually made of some kind of metal and the laptop is certified to meet military standards in terms of durability. The laptop also has great cooling with a dual-fan setup located on the back of the chassis. So while it did get loud during prolonged gaming sessions, the top of the laptop stayed cool throughout. Speaking of things getting loud, the left and right speakers are one of the best I've found on any laptop ever. There's a red protective lining on the air exhaust vents and on the speakers to stop dust from getting into the device, doesn't hurt its aesthetics either. The laptop weighs approximately 2.2 Kg and by gaming laptop standards it's one of the lighter ones on the market. The 15.6 inch 1080p display features really small bezels to the side with a sizeable chin down bottom. What makes the screen great however is the 120Hz refresh rate making it ideal for gaming.

Gaming

Sure it's a gaming laptop, but can it run Crysis? Yes it can run Crysis and then some. In fact, there were only a few moments where I ran into issues with FPS counts when running games in ultra. Battlefield V clocked in at an average on 60FPS with some dips into the higher 50s, same with Apex Legends. The laptop chugged the most with Far Cry New Dawn and The Witcher 3 with Far Cry pushing 35 to 40FPS on ultra-settings. The Witcher 3 however presented some new issues in the form of rendering Geralt's free flowing hair. Hairworks in The Witcher 3 is a highly demanding graphical feature which most setups struggle to cope with in ultra-settings. It was hitting 50-55FPS sure, but it was also all over the place with the frame rate dropping to the lower 20s. Turning off Custom HD textures and Hairworks fixed the issue and the game ran at a smooth 60FPS with some dips into the higher 50s. The last two games I had the chance to try out were Metro: Exodus and Devil May Cry V both of which ran smooth as butter on the system. There were however some dips into 40FPS during the desert section of Metro: Exodus.

In short, it's a gaming laptop and it delivered on that front, running current generation AAA games at their highest settings. The interesting pairing of the Ryzen processor and Nvidia graphics card works well and manages to provide very satisfactory in-game results.

Battery

The battery life on this machine isn't the best but it was serviceable. Around 5 hours of YouTube and casual browsing is all I was hoping for and the device made good on that expectation. It can by no means run games efficiently on battery. But for numbers sake, The Witcher 3 ran at a whopping 15FPS and the battery only lasted for an hour. And while turning on high performance mode on battery did push the FPS into the lower 30s, the battery lasted for just over 40 minutes. But ultimately if and when you do game on the system, you will almost always be plugged in. For everything else like browsing the web, using Facebook or YouTube, the battery works just fine.  

VERDICT

The ASUS FX505DU is a reliable and affordable gaming laptop. It's also built like a tank when comparing against its plastic laden competition. Most games will run smoothly at 1080p but hitting 60FPS on some demanding titles will probably require some tweaking. While it does not have the best battery life or touchpad on the market, the new AMD Ryzen 7 3750H performs smoothly and the pairing with the Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti is what makes the laptop super affordable while still being a proper gaming laptop. 

SPECS

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3750H Processor 2.3GHz (6M cache, up to 4.0GHz)

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GDDR6 6GB,  IGPU-AMD VEGA Graphics

RAM: DDR4 2666 8GB (Total 2x slot, 1x blank)

Storage: PCIE NVME 256G M.2 SSD, SATA 1TB 5400RPM 2.5' HDD

Display: 15.6'' FHD 1920×1080 16:9 120Hz IPS

Weight: 2.20 Kg

Webcam: 720P HD

Keyboard: Illuminated Chiclet Keyboard RGB

Operating System: Windows 10 (64bit)

Battery: 48WHrs, 3S1P, 3-cell Li-ion 

Price: Tk 107,000/-