ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop - 15.6" Full HD - AMD Ryzen 5 3550H - RX 560X - 8 GB DDR4 - 256 GB PCIe SSD - Gigabit WiFi - FX505DY-ES51

Pros: Delivered fast and packaged well. Bright IPS display without dead pixels and evenly backlit. Speakers are loud and sufficient for an indoor environment. Design is not too flashy and I would not hesitate to bring this with me to work or cafe. Notebook is pretty light and fits in an average notebook backpack. Hot air exhaust vents are on the back of the notebook (improvement over my Eluktronics notebook that is exhausting hot air on the left side warming up anything I place there). IPS panel used in this notebook is Panda LM156LF-CL03 and refresh rate can be set to 40 or 60 Hz only.

Cons: Keyboard would not accept more than 3 keys pressed at the same time. That makes gaming difficult - for example, in GTA:Online it is impossible to move forward, upward and use boost at the same time, or move forward, upward and see players list at the same time. Also the keyboard flexes when keys are pressed, it does it way more than my Eluktronics gaming notebook. Keyboard has toxic red backlight and color cannot be changed (backlight brightness can be changed, but then keys are not easily readable as they are red-on-black scheme). One egg deducted for the keyboard. Comes with 256 GB solid state drive (WD NVMe SN520), which is not large enough for modern games and user will have to upgrade it if titles such as RDR2 (188 GB) or COD:Modern Warfare (200 GB) must be installed. Insufficient space between for air intake on the bottom of the notebook (rubber feet should be taller than they are). I placed a notebook on an ideally flat table made of wood and when cooling fans are running, there's a whirring sound that changes pitch when any keys are pressed.

Overall Review: I'm an avid gamer and always interested in gaming systems, both desktops and notebooks. I've built numerous desktops since 2003 and always enjoyed PC gaming. Keep in mind, this notebook is equipped with Radeon RX 560X, and I was able to play many titles on medium settings, such as GTA:Online, Metro 2033, Portal 2, Half-Life 2, Fallout 4 with acceptable frame rates. This notebook should be sufficient for occasional gaming, but is underpowered if you plan to play on High or Ultra settings. Body of this notebook is made black plastic. All 3 USB ports are positioned on the left side of the notebook, right edge only has Kensington lock. All components are recognized by Windows 10 and I did not have to hunt for any additional drivers. I also tested this notebook with Linux Mint, everything worked great except the builtin WiFi adapter that was not recognized. I also benchmarked this gaming notebook with many tools and got following results (all benchmarks were run on default resolution 1920x1080 and 60 Hz refresh rate): Superposition Benchmark 1080 Extreme scored 1023, PC Mark 8 scored 4355, 3DMark Night Raid scored 6840, 3DMark Sky Diver scored 15527. I also run AIDA64 Extreme stability test for 1 hour and did not see any throttling with max temperatures 74 degrees Celsius for CPU and 67 degrees Celsius for GPU.

Pros: • Great 60hz panel • Best Chiclet style keyboard I’ve typed on • Capable gamer when on AC power • Plays Destiny 2 at all medium settings @60 FPS • Add another 8GB stick of RAM = Destiny 2 at medium settings with high textures + low FPS dips improved by 7-10 frames • Minimal bloatware (Office 365 trial and McAfee trial are the standouts) • Nice even backlighting • Great performance for the price • Sound decent for laptop speakers • Handles up to 32GB of RAM • Additional internal slot for 2.5” SSD/HD

Cons: • Battery only = no gaming • Battery life while attempting to play Destiny 2 = just under 20 minutes • Dual fan setup is loud with any kind of load • Light on storage and RAM (cost saving measures for sure) • Pretty plasticky felling overall • All of the ports are on one side (makes wired peripheral connections tricky) • AC power plug is “L” shaped (always puts strain on the plug unless the brick is sitting on the table) • Left-side fan makes a “crinkling” sound (like a spindle hard drive under load)

Overall Review: Very solid offering from Asus. Overall build quality feels solid, but a little on the light/cheap side. I’m used to dealing with Dell Latitude machines, and they have a sturdy feel to them that the Asus doesn’t come close to matching. At the same time, that tough feeling might not impact the long-term reliability, so we’ll have to see. Something going for the Tuf Gaming is screw length and placement around the rear edges/hinges. I’ve seen a lot of laptops this size fail badly in that area because of short anchoring screws in those critical use areas. The plastic around them weakens over time, and the next thing you know, you have a loose corner around the hinge, and things start falling apart. After removing the back, and checking that area out, I don’t have any fear of that happening with the Tuf Gaming – looks good. Keyboard is excellent. I’m not normally a fan of Chiclet keys, but these sit a little higher than your average Chiclet keys, making them easy to hit and control in FPS games. A dedicated keyboard is always going to be better, but these work well in a pinch, and are generally nice to type on for every day use. Only real qualms on my part are having all of the ports on the left side of the laptop. When connecting a mouse, keyboard, power, and Ethernet, makes for a lot coming out of one side, especially if you want to use an add-on keyboard (like a Logitech G13) that actually lives on the left side of all of that (right-handed user). I’m also not a fan of L-shaped power plugs, as there is always strain on the port unless the brick sits up on your desk. Small qualms that might just bother me, but worth noting. Gaming experience on battery is a no go, as I couldn’t find any Win10 power settings that would get me better than 20 FPS, and more than 23 minutes of battery life playing Destiny 2 (most resource demanding of the games I tried out on the Tuf Gaming). That last sentence was for the few out there that thought they might be gaming without cables. Plugged in is a different story, as I was able to play Destiny 2, CS:GO, and Dishonored at a blend of medium and high settings, with D2 the only one of the three showing any real frame dips. Adding another 8GB stick of RAM was definitely a difference maker, and well worth the $40. The IPS panel is nice, though I found out quickly that I’m really used to playing on a 144hz panel running off a fast desktop. Colors on the panel were solid, with very little tweaking needed. I installed a lightweight editing application (Luminar 3), and output colors were similar to my calibrated screens. The Ryzen 3550H is a nice little quad, and keeping expectations realistic, I was totally happy with how it performed in Luminar 3, and it was clearly fast enough for 1080p gaming. The 560x is a decent midrange GPU that was helped out a lot by adding the 8GB stick of RAM. I’ve never used an actual Freesync setup (use nVidia cards in desktops) and I was impressed with its ability to smooth out gameplay when there were frame dips. One area of note is the fan noise – intense. You get solid temps with that fan power, but the silent profile in the Gaming Crate application allowed too much heat. You either tune the noise out, or you wear headphones. It’s a trade-off for a gaming capable machine in a small laptop chassis. To go along with that fan noise, the fan on the left side makes a ticking noise (like a spindle hard drive under load). I removed the back, didn’t see any obstructions, and flicked it a few times with my finger. The ticking sound always came back after a couple minutes. We’ll have to see if I end up going through Asus for a replacement. It’s very audible, but is drowned out by the fan roar while gaming. Overall, I’m really happy with the Tuf Gaming, and while it will be used primarily for on-the-go photo editing. It’s nice to know that I could do a lot worse for the form factor as a reliable gamer. Really nice performance for the money, and recommended by me.

Pros: this laptop is really affordable and has a lot of features that come on more expensive laptops its super sexy the ips panel is clear and very responsive the freesync helps gaming a lot . has a new generation AMD quad core processor and an ssd so programs are very responsive as well. comes with a gigabytes of Ram which is enough but I wish it had 16gb but the good news is its upgradable to 32gb there are 2 Ram slots with 1 slot populated currently the graphics is labeled as a hybrid vega rx 560 and games fairly well some games on high settings have lower framerates but on medium it run most games pretty good so all in all its a decent gamer but really good as a work station comes with an L.E.D lit keyboard with WASD keys highlighted and a function key for other controls such as audio. the audio is clear and fairly good for a laptop it distorts a little when turned all the way up and depending on what is playing. comes with a 256 nvme ssd drive with the ability to upgrade or add a 2.5 inch drive for storage. I would definitely recommend this laptop if you need a good work station or game on the go and are not to worried about high settings on your graphics

Cons: this is a very nice laptop but I have some concerns like the panel is very flexable like really flexable i'm afraid it will brake easily . Neweggs site says that the keyboard is RGB it is not its just red L.E.D lit which is fine but I was hoping for RGB. the battery only last for about 3 1/2 hours and it came completely dead so I had to charge it first and it doesn't matter much the packaging was bare bones brown box and it came with a charger and instruction manual and that was it. Asus usually gives you some extra feature with their stuff. the graphics is labeled as a hybrid which uses part of the 8 gb to work it doesn't have its own Ram and only uses 125 mb I don't know if that goes up if it needs more or that's just it most games these days take gigs of Ram to run so i'm wonder if the graphics subpar performance is because there isn't enough Vram either way the graphics are great for lower end games and workstation applications but if you want this for your main gamer I would buy something better

Overall Review: its a sexy laptop and a decent performer for what you pay for it has some really good features and plenty of upgradeablity so for the price point or if you can catch it onsale its a great laptop

Pros: + Fast NVMe SSD, Western Digital brand + Nice 1080p screen, good brightness + Very few useless apps (McAfee and Office 365) + FreeSync compatible, up to 60hz + Good thermals + Good battery life with integrated GPU

Cons: - Very poor gaming performance, struggles to maintain 15-30 fps in games at 1080p - Aura service will not link to keyboard, keyboard is ONLY red - All plastic with metal texture - Only a 60hz screen - Only 8GB RAM, single channel - Very dark keyboard without backlighting, almost impossible to read/see - No case lighting (although the pictures look like it has it) - Getting kind of pricey for the specs

Overall Review: After spending quite a lot of time with an Asus ROG Strix Scar II as my primary mobile computer, I had very high hopes moving over to their TUF line. I expected a rugged computing experience with great battery life and I've heard nothing but rave reviews of the new generation of AMD Ryzen/Radeon products... I could not have been more disappointed. First of all, I'm not sure what has changed with this new generation of TUF machines, but they might as well have just called it "CHEAP." It's all plastic, and not even nice plastic - this is like 1990's General Motors interior plastic. You're also stuck with one color on the keyboard - red. So hopefully you like red backlighting, because the keyboard is impossible to see without it. Performance-wise, the CPU isn't the worst ever, it's a quad core with multi-threading, so you've at least got 8 threads to work with - normal every day tasks run fine. Would have definitely liked to see a Ryzen 7 in this machine, at least. It'll play YouTube videos at 1080p full screen with no problem. All the normal productivity software (Office, etc.) opens quickly and runs great - one thing this laptop has going for it is a very fast NVMe Western Digital SSD. If it wasn't for that, I'm not sure I'd recommend this laptop at all. Graphics and gaming are another story - I struggled to maintain 30 fps at 1080p with medium to low settings in almost everything - Destiny 2, COD Warzone, even older games like CSGO and TF2 seemed to really fight for performance. Dropping resolutions down to 720p helped, so the lower video memory in the RX560X may be part of the performance bottleneck... but that card just really can't cut it anything FPS intensive. Strategy games, MOBA's, casual games - anything where FPS and refresh rate aren't really important would probably be OK at medium to low settings. All in all I'm just very disappointed with this outing from Asus - I feel like the AMD platform at the heart of this laptop really let down what could have been a great performer for the price. Because of the performance issues, and the fact this machine has been creeping up in price (plenty of other options in the sub-$1000 category these days), I'm awarding the Asus TUF FX505DY-ES51 3 out of 5 Eggs. I'll keep tweaking settings and updating drivers and hopefully I can revisit this review in the future with some positive updates. Here are some benchmarks scores, as well as comparisons to other platforms I've reviewed: Asus TUF FX505DY-ES51 AMD R5-3550H/RX560X Time Spy 1955 Fire Strike 5477 Sky Diver 15354 Night Raid 6793 Asus ROG Strix Scar II Intel i7-8750H/RTX2070 Time Spy 7169 Fire Strike 16455 Sky Diver 36955 Desktop PC Intel i7-4820K/GTX1080 Time Spy 6274 Fire Strike 13970 Sky Diver 28305 Alienware 17 R3 Intel i7-3820hk/980M Time Spy 3042

Pros: - Great gaming performance, specially with Vulkan API. Tested with Doom and Dolphin and never went below 60 FPS. Very capable on DX12 and DX11 as well. - Blazing fast boot times thanks to onboard M.2 SSD drive. Also, smooth app loading times on windows. - Room for upgrade: It has a free SATA port for additional SSD / HDD and a free DDR4 slot if you want to go dual-channel. - Very silent when workload is low, like web browsing, light-gaming. - I like that the fan blows towards the back of the machine instead of sideways. - Fast WiFi. If you pair it with a dual-band AC router. 150-200 MB/s transfers over WiFi average.

Cons: - Would need to remove screws and lift the whole bottom cover if opting for upgrades. Would have liked individual doors for RAM / SSD slots.

Overall Review: - Great AMD combo for the price. Both the Ryzen 5 and dedicated RX 560X does a great job both at gaming and general app processing. - Add an SSD and one more DDR4 RAM stick to make it dual channel and should further improve overall performance. - Really recommend this machine.

Pros: It's got great bang for the buck It's perfect for what I need it for No extra frills I don't need (touchscreen, RGB, fingerprint sensor, etc.) Which add to the cost Plastic Shell feels pretty sturdy. Could be sturdier but for the price it's great. Cooling is absolutely wonderful. Under passmark performance test the cpu peaked at full turbo, 100% on all cores and only briefly peaked at 60 degrees, and the gpu at 49. Awesome. Technically you could overclock this thing.

Cons: Not really a con but I do wish the keyboards red backlight was white (or green, my favorite color) rather than red. But that's just a personal preference. Trackpad could feel a little better, but I use a mouse majority of the time anyways. the fn keys by default trigger f1, f2, f3, etc. and you have to press fn + to change the volume or brightness. I know it's for gaming but I wish there was a more obvious way to change it. I'm sure there is a way to change it I'll just have to do some digging. Not a con for me, actually a plus, but the fans do get loud. They work great. The built in performance profiles though work excellently and for day to day things it's mostly silent.

Overall Review: I bought this laptop for audio engineering. Recording, producing, mixing, and mastering. For that what I need is a fast cpu, ram, and hard drive. I need the laptop to have good cooling and be able to sustain under heavy load for 8+ hours in a row. Before this I had a 2 in 1 that would thermal throttle almost instantly and would rarely if ever hit turbo. It had good specs (almost identical actually, without the 560X) but it could never fully utilize them because of poor cooling. The clock speed wold sit in the 2GHz range even after tweaking the power settings. I don't want to say what brand but it was a very reputable one. This laptop has been able to run Ableton Live 10 and Pro Tools 12 for long sessions, sitting at turbo clock the whole time and never peaking above 60, usually sitting between 45-55. It performs excellently, not as good as my desktop but that's fine. It's more than enough for on the go recording and rough mixing, I am confident I could do full production and mixing of a track from start to finish with no issues, I may have to be smart about my cpu usage but it would be no problem. The only game I really play is Minecraft Java. I can run that with Chocapic13 High shaders with about 40 fps, medium, with 60, and Low with 100. Plenty for me, it looks absolutely great and I feel no lag whatsoever. The fans do get loud, which is fine with me because it means I can actually use the hardware to it's full potential. Asus Armoury has different performance settings built in (with a handy hotkey) and the Silent setting does great work at keeping this very quiet, just doing day to day things like surfing the web it's mostly silent. Under passmark performance test the results are as follows: CPU Mark: 8377 2D graphics: 260 3D Graphics (using the 560X): 4123 Memory: 1840 Disk: 11874 The average for the 3550H is 8,130 and for the 560X is 3,520, so as you can see the cooling really does help. Overall this is a wonderful laptop and I would highly recommend. It's got exactly what I need without extra frills adding to the cost. I will update this review in 6 months to a year to talk about the reliability.

Overall Review: My unit has caused me to have to reset, and reinstall windows more than a few times. For some reason the device just does not work. Its specifications are great, but something is simply wrong with it. It is too buggy, and that presents a very real risk, as my personal data may eventually be lost following one of these events.

Pros: it’s a good laptop for most people snappy and quick on basic tasks like browsing and media

Cons: not powerful enough for lots of new games

Overall Review: minecraft is fine the rest is too demanding for this i’ve returned it after 2 days