If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop, you’ve probably come across beasts like the Alienwares, and the ROG Strix series of laptops for heavy-duty gaming. However, if you’re looking for a gaming laptop that doesn’t break the bank and still packs in quite the punch, the Asus TUF Gaming series might be something you’d be interested in. Case in point, the Asus FX505DY gaming laptop that comes in at a starting price of Rs. 59,990 and brings pretty great value for money, along with performance that you wouldn’t be disappointed with. Asus was kind enough to send us a review sample of the laptop, and I’ve been using it for some time now. So this is our review of the Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY laptop:
Let’s kick things off with the spec-sheet for this laptop. The FX505DY is a budget gaming laptop, and the specs here reflect the obvious in that statement. There’s no high-end over the top features here, like the ones you’d find on expensive laptops, but the FX505DY packs in great hardware nonetheless. Here’s everything you’ll find under the chassis of this laptop.
Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY: Design and Build
As far as the design and build of this laptop are concerned, the FX505DY screams Asus TUF Gaming in every sense of the word. It’s a design that has been consistently featured across the TUF Gaming line-up of laptops from the company, and that’s perfectly fine. I like how these laptops look like gaming laptops, but they don’t scream it out to the world. So you can use this laptop at work, without looking out of place, and you can game on it with just as much ease.
Asus’ TUF Gaming laptops have always had displays that look pretty great, and the FX505DY is no exception. The laptop packs in a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS LCD panel, with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. So yeah, it’s not one of those 120Hz, or 144Hz panels that you might find in more expensive laptops, but this isn’t trying to be an expensive laptop anyway, and for the most part, this display won’t leave you wanting.
Media consumption on this is a nice experience too, the display isn’t the best when it comes to separating shades of blacks, so if you find yourself watching a lot of horror movies, or superhero movies with dark settings, you might have to squint at times to figure out just what is happening there.
Since this is a gaming laptop, let’s move on to one of the most important aspects of it — the performance. The TUF Gaming FX505DY comes with the Ryzen 5 3550H APU with an integrated Radeon Vega 8 GPU and a dedicated Radeon RX560 GPU as well. There’s also 8GB of RAM here, and with specs like that, the laptop performs exactly the way you’d expect it to.
While all that is great, none of it really means much unless the laptop can actually handle games well enough too. So naturally, I tried playing a bunch of games on this laptop, including Far Cry 5 and PUBG and the laptop performs pretty well in both the games.
I also played PUBG on the FX505DY, and the game worked perfectly fine, albeit on low and medium settings. In low settings on 1080p, the game easily got over 60FPS at all times, and switching to Medium on 720p, the game still managed over 50FPS easily. However, do note that you’ll have to install the Radeon software for the RX560X and set PUBG to High Performance otherwise it won’t even be playable.
Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY: I/O and Ports
The FX505DY also offers a pretty wide-ranging selection of ports that you can use. The laptop comes with a USB2.0 Type-A port, 2x USB 3.1 Type-A ports, an RJ45 ethernet port for the times when you need a more stable connection for multiplayer games or for LAN parties, 1x HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm combo jack so you can connect your gaming headset to it.
Moving on to the keyboard, the laptop comes with a full-sized keyboard complete with a number pad — personally, I don’t find the need for a numpad much, but if you’re playing games like FIFA where the numpad is used for trick moves, or any other game that needs a numpad for additional moves and stuff, this is definitely a great addition to have.
The keyboard follows the same design as you’d find in every other TUF Gaming laptop out there, and that’s perfectly fine. There’s ample travel, so typing on this keyboard is pretty great, and not tiring at all, and even though this is a chiclet keyboard, it’s pretty great to type on, or for playing games for extended periods of time.
The FX505DY also features a typically ‘TUF Gaming’ trackpad design. It’s not too big, but it’s not small either, and it comes with cut-out corners so it’s not really a rectangle in shape. It doesn’t, however, mess up at all, and even though I’m used to the massive trackpad on my MacBook Pro, I didn’t find the trackpad here annoying at all.
Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY: Battery
The Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY comes with the same 3-cell 48Whr battery we saw in last year’s FX504 gaming laptop from Asus, and the battery life is pretty much the same as well. The laptop lasts around 5 hours with the “best battery life” setting selected, and that’s quite alright, at least to me. Gaming laptops don’t really last as long as ultrabooks do, and you shouldn’t be expecting them to, anyway.
While the FX505DY is a pretty great budget gaming laptop, it does come with its own set of pros and cons. Let me take you through them:
Cons:
- No USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Screen has considerable flex
- 8GB RAM might not be enough for every one
