Gadgets Philippines – July 2019

20 JULY 2019 http://www.gadgetsmagazine.com.ph

VALUE

At PHP 39,995, this is quite the affordable gaming

laptop. It would easily have gotten a higher score

with a little more RAM, but as it stands, it’s still a

good base on which to build a better-performing

device. Drop some more RAM in there, maybe an

SSD, and you’ve got yourself a winner, at well under

the asking price for the vast majority of gaming

laptops out there today.

DESIGN

The TUF Gaming line of devices is meant to appeal

to gamers on a tighter budget, but you wouldn’t

necessarily be able to tell that just by looking at it.

The lid is smooth and black, broken up by the ASUS

logo done in gold or red depending on the model,

and accent lines that come in from the corners,

giving it a dynamic look befitting its gaming status.

Cracking open the laptop reveals solid corner

hinges, wonderfully thin bezels, and RGB lighting.

One nice little touch that I saw and appreciated

was a little extension on the spacebar that allows

for better reach with the left thumb when in the

traditional WASD FPS hand position. The laptop

is reasonably skinny, at about an inch thick then

closed, and tips the scales at 2.2 kg—light enough

to carry around should the need arise.

There aren’t a whole lot of ports, with a 3.5mm

combo jack, a single USB 2.0 port, 2 type-A USB 3.0

ports, a LAN port, and one HDMI port, along with

the jack for power. All of the ports are located on

the left edge of the laptop, keeping connectors and

cables well away from your mouse.

One of the things that makes this laptop special is

ASUS’ focus on toughness. The TUF line of laptops

passed military-grade MIL-STD-801G tests, making

it certified to stand adverse conditions, and the

occasional drop or bump.

HARDWARE

The FX505 is a gaming laptop by design, and it

shows in the specs. Running a powerful Ryzen

5 3550H, coupled with the second-generation

Radeon RX 560X GPU, it’s no slouch. While the

configuration delivered to our office had just 4GB

of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM, it can take up to 32 GB, so

you can upgrade should you feel the need to.

To complement the muscle under the hood,

it also comes with a 15-inch, AMD FreeSync-

enabled display with a maximum refresh rate of

120Hz, for smooth, tear-free graphics. You also

get a HyperStrike keyboard for quick, responsive

keypresses, RGB lighting, and 20 million keystrokes

for both great gaming, and comfortable typing.

A slight hit on the spec sheet is the inclusion of an

HDD main drive, though you do get 1TB of storage,

so this bluntts the blow somewhat. Should you

want to, a drive swap is easy enough to accomplish,

so it’s not a major loss. Rounding off the specs is a

48Wh battery for use when you find yourself away

from a wall outlet.

USER EXPERIENCE

For the course of the review, I switched from my

old ASUS Strix, to running the TUF as my daily

driver. I installed all my usual daily programs,

signed in to my usual accounts, and installed

some of the games that were on rotation when

the demo unit was sent over.

Daily use wasn’t a problem for the FX505. AMD has

delivered great processors with decent numbers

across its previous generation, but the 4GB of

RAM on our test unit throttled the performance

somewhat. While general use was smooth for

the most part, there were moments when a

background process would start, and things would

go noticeably slow. It’s wasn’t quite enough for us

to write the laptop off as a non-starter, but more

RAM should be on the table should you consider

this an option. Coupled with a slower HDD, the

experience would occasionally take a hit.

The gaming experience on the FX505 was

adequate. I was able to run a few titles, including

CS:GO, The recent Resident Evil 2 remake, and

Rainbow 6 Siege, and the games ran fine on

Medium settings, with perfectly playable frame

rates. There were moments that it would drop to

single digits, and I would notice that HDD usage

would skyrocket to 100 percent. This might be due

to an issue with Windows, or the lack of RAM, but

it didn’t happen all too often. I do expect either a

Windows update, SSD, or more RAM might make

the situation a lot better.

Comfort was great though. Action games such

as R6:Siege were great on the keyboard, with

the shallow, positive travel translating to quick

in-game results. Once the CPU and GPU start

flexing their muscles though, the laptop can get

quite loud. The fan did an excellent job in keeping

the temps down, so it does get a pass. There’s

far more cooling than the CPU and GPU need, so

there’s a lot of headroom should you be looking

for that.

Another thing that I appreciated with the FX505

was battery life. While it wasn’t superlative, it did

offer about enough power to survive well over

five hours for non-gaming tasks.

BOTTOMLINE

Not the greatest out there, but you’d be

hard-pressed to find any other fighters at

its price point.

Reviewed by Ren Alcantara

What’s Hot:

• Extremely affordable


• Great looks


• Thin bezels

What’s Not:

• Not enough RAM in base configurration


• Occasional slowdowns

Something I have thankfully not outgrown is

gaming. Though I don’t get as much time to do so

because of the responsibilities of adulthood, it’s still

something I look forward to whenever I can find the

time. Asus was kind enough to feed this habit with

the TUF Gaming FX505DY, which lives up to its name

being one of the tougher gaming laptops you can

get your hands on.

ASUS TUF Gaming

FX505DY

SPECIFICATIONS:

OS: WIN10/WIN10 Professional

Processor: AMD R5-3550H

Display: 15.6 FHD 120Hz

Memory: 4 GB DDR4 2400

Graphics: RADEON-RX560X

Storage: 1TB HDD

Ports: 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1, 1 x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI

2.0, 1x RJ-45 Jack, 1x 3.5mm headphone and

microphone combo jack

Connectivity: WiFI 802.11A/B/G/N/AC+BT

Battery: 48Whr

Dimensions: 360.4 x 262 x25.8 mm

Weight 2.2 kg