Asus TUF FX505DT Gaming Laptop
USD
Pros
- Good specs
- Solid performance
- Competitive pricing
- Wide display
- Good thermal management
Cons
- Battery life isn’t very satisfying
- Does not have G-sync
- Can get loud
- Speakers could have been better
- Single-channel RAM would have been better
In This Article
Verdict
For anyone planning to buy the Asus TUF FX505DT, it is a great gaming laptop at an affordable price tag. But there are certain quirks, like average battery life, sub-standard color depth on the display, etc. If gaming is your primary concern, then you should still go for it though.
Asus TUF FX505DT Gaming Laptop & Variants Price
Introduction
Be it premium looks, affordable pricing, or good specs, Asus always brings such stuff in their products that make one want them over the other options.
Their TUF gaming laptop series has always targeted those people that want a gaming laptop, but don’t want to spend much.
Today’s review is about the TUF FX505DT gaming laptop, one that you’d love if gaming is your main concern.
Being a modern-day portable gaming device, the Asus TUF FX505DT comes with all those things that gamers would love. The rugged design for example, which most gamers would prefer.
It comes with a 3rd gen Ryzen 5 processor, a GTX 1650 GPU, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, etc.
As a result, this isn’t a very thin device, although you cannot expect a gaming laptop to be so either.
The display, however, is quite slim and as we would be discussing in the next section, has very narrow bezels too.
You get two display options as well, like we have the 120 Hz panel, while there is another 60 Hz option.
Now it is true that the build is plastic, and we feel that some parts are lacking in terms of looks.
But considering its price, and the performance it offers in it, we are in no mood of criticism.
Buy for: Good specs │ Wide display
Beware of: Battery life isn’t that great │ Old gen connectivity
Best uses for: Gaming, A Hat in Time, Gothic, Elder Scrolls Online, Destiny 2, computer science students and other purposes.
The alternatives:
Design and Build
The Asus TUF FX505DT is essentially a gaming PC, and there’s no shortage of signs that show it.
You get a black chassis on this, and although plastic, it feels quite sturdy.
The brand also promises MIL-STD-810 certification, so there’s some more assurance about how tough it is.
One other thing about the plastic construction is that the laptop is not very heavy, and at 4.85 lbs (2.2 Kg), it is much at par with most budget laptops in this segment.
One thing that you’d notice is that the corners of the laptop aren’t rounded or curved. Instead, these are chipped off uniformly so there’s a distinctive look.
The bezels, other than the bottom one, are very thin, which adds more points to the overall design.
This is a 15.6-inch screen, and an FHD display that you get on this, which is big, but the color depth and brightness could not impress us.
The sRGB and Adobe spectrum scores stand at 62.50% and 47.34%, which equates to less-colorful display quality.
There have been improvements over the last generation, but they aren’t as good as the competition.
So while this makes it a big no-no for creative users, gamers, computer science students, and others that have not much to do with color accuracy should have little problems.
Then comes the keyboard that also has a dedicated Numpad. The keys have excellent, customizable backlighting, and you might often mistake it for an external keyboard. The WASD keys are highlighted too.
The response of the keyboard, and its quality, however, are only as good as you’d find on a laptop. So slightly softer feedback is what you’d be getting. And some keys are a bit too small.
The touchpad, on the other hand, feels responsive and is big enough. There’s also auditory feedback, and it’s not the quietest clicking touchpad.
Performance
For a mid-range budget gaming laptop, the Asus TUF FX505DT has some great specs.
The Ryzen 5 3550H processor, for example, has 4 cores, 8 threads, and a peak frequency of 3.7 GHz.
The latest mobile Ryzen 5 CPUs have slightly better figures, but this one here is still a very good CPU.
And it has got the integrated Vega 8 Graphics too, which consumes less power when the device is not running graphics-heavy stuff.
With this is the GTX 1650 video card, a nice companion to the processor for handling heavier graphics.
This 4 GB video card allows you to play games, edit videos, and all that at 1080p comfortably.
Other GPU options include a less powerful GTX 1050, and a better GTX 1660 Ti.
For games specifically, depending on the graphics settings, you can get around 50 fps on average.
The device does have the 120 Hz panel, so if you’d like more fps at the cost of lower graphics, then you’re free to do that as well.
It isn’t a very powerful GPU but helps keep costs down, and thus the TUF FX505DT has been priced within affordable margins.
And not just that, with the 8 GB of RAM present, you can also run most mainstream software on the laptop, and multitasking is also a breeze.
Windows 10 Home is already installed on this, so not just gaming, the experience of running general productivity tasks on the device is smooth too.
The good thing is, unlike some of the other devices of its kind, this one from Asus does not go through severe throttling, and as a result, it can maintain higher clock speeds for longer durations.
But, like is the case with most gaming laptops, the fans on the TUF FX505DT can get loud.
Though we are sure that a bit of fan noise would be more preferable over an overheating laptop.
Storage and RAM
The storage on this laptop is 256 GB, present on a quick Nvme SSD. You can also spend a little more and purchase the 512 GB option directly.
The RAM present is 8 GB, in single-channel, however.
While dual-channel memory does have a positive effect on the overall system performance, it is doubtful that an average user would find a real-time difference between the two.
But you can upgrade memory on the Asus TUF FX505DT to 32 GB, so running anything that needs more RAM is not an issue.
Ports and Connectivity
You can also count the connectivity on this laptop as one of the decent things that it offers you.
It may not have luxuries like USB Type-C charging or Thunderbolt ports but offers enough at its price.
All the ports on the Asus TUF FX505DT are on the left panel, so the right side is clean.
You have 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a USB 2.0 port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack.
The HDMI output allows you to connect to a bigger monitor if the device’s 15.6-inch screen feels insufficient.
There isn’t an SD card slot on this, and we are sure you’d also be missing a USB Type-C port.
Other than that, there’s also WIFI 5 and Bluetooth present on the laptop that you can use for wireless connections.
Battery Life
The Asus TUF FX505DT, given the price tag, offers tons of performance, although it’s not that great in terms of battery life.
The meager 48Wh 3-cell li-ion battery, given the specs and average usage patterns, only lasts for about 4 hours before you have to rush to the nearest charging station.
It takes around 2 hours to fully charge the laptop with the native power adapter provided in the box.
So if you’re a student or someone that takes this laptop to work, make sure you don’t forget to carry the power adapter and cable.
These figures are not very bright, but we wouldn’t consider this as a major flaw since to get the most performance out of it, you have to keep it plugged in anyway.
Additional Features
The Asus TUF FX505DT laptop has got side-firing speakers which are surely loud, but there’s nothing that special about the sound quality.
There is the DTS software to make things more pleasurable, and you can also use the headphone jack for a more accurate audio experience.
And there’s a 720p webcam and microphones that can be used for casual video conferencing.
The keyboard on the laptop features single-zone RGB lighting that can be controlled and customized through the pre-installed Armory crate software.
The keyboard is rated at 20 million keystrokes, pointing out that the laptop is supposed to be a durable one.
The already efficient cooling mechanism also houses anti-dust tunnels, that keep away dust and other air particles from hampering your system performance or stability.
A warranty period of 1-year is offered on the laptop by Asus.
Specs:
- Brand: Asus
- Screen Size: 15.6 inch
- Display: FHD (1920x1080p)
- Storage: 256 GB
- RAM: 8 GB
- Storage Type: SSD
- RAM Type: DDR4
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
- Processor Speed: Base frequency 2.1 GHz, can be boosted to 3.7 GHz
- Processor Brand: AMD
- Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 10.3 x 1 inches
- Operating System: Windows 10 Home
What Do Users Think About Asus TUF FX505DT?
The buyers of the Asus TUF FX505DT are those that were looking for a budget-friendly gaming laptop that didn’t miss any important features.
The device was as good as they expected and other than a few hiccups here and there, it was overall much liked by the users.
The screen size and thin bezels made sure that budget gamers didn’t have to use external monitors for casual sessions.
However, as it lacked sufficient color accuracy, creative users steered clear from it, and either used calibrated, external displays or chose a different laptop altogether.
The frame, even though it may look slightly bulky, was light enough for the buyers to carry it.
This meant that both students and professionals that needed to carry their laptops every day to the place of education or work could choose it. And the build quality was found to be great too.
Now coming to the more important aspect which is performance, the laptop impressed the buyers even further.
They could use it for a variety of applications, multitasking, gaming, and so on. Check out Asus TUF FX505DT Manual.
But most of them had to add some more RAM as the 8 GB of it already present couldn’t cut it in certain scenarios.
The SSD made sure that system responses and boot-ups were quick. And there was another hard drive bay to expand storage as well.
Now the keyboard and touchpad were found to be satisfying by some, while others did not share a similar impression.
For example, the lighting and Numpad on the keyboard were liked by most, but the feedback, not so much. The same goes for the touchpad as well.
Other things that weren’t much liked were the battery life, connectivity, etc.
There weren’t any major flaws in it, but the users, like us reviewers, also believe that they could have been better.
To sum up, however, the laptop with all its advantages and disadvantages proved to be a successful product on the brand’s part, and a great buy for the user’s.
Our Testing & Analysis Report
Since the ASUS TUF FX505DT is a gaming laptop, we straightaway tried playing games like Overwatch and others on it.
We found that the display is quite nice and can handle reasonably high FPS. It does heat up, but not as much as to cause throttling issues.
We also took it to some professional gamers to find out what they had to say about its display quality. They were very satisfied with its resolution and reasonably thin bezels.
However, when the professional photographers used it, we were informed that they would be better off using some other laptop with a better display than this.
We asked some video editors to use this laptop as well. They suggested that it offered quite satisfactory performance in spite of being a gaming laptop.
We wanted to find out how this laptop handles casual computing tasks, so we asked a few colleagues in our office to use it for office work.
To them, the keyboard seemed to be pretty good, with satisfactory key travel that allowed them to type quite quickly.
However, the trackpad is not all that good. There is a lot of clicking noise, and its response is pretty average.
The laptop, however, could not satisfy the needs of students and users who work on the go simply due to its meager battery life.
The rough users, on the other hand, were pleased with the tough build of the device, which can even sustain drops from a height without any scratches on its body.
This is, in short, a good and ‘TUF’ gaming laptop.