The number of gamers worldwide has increased tenfold due to the rise of streaming services and e-sports competitions. Many users no longer feel restricted to just playing games with their friends at home and enjoy investing in multiplayer gaming titles that help them play with gamers around the world.
For PC gamers, the story is entirely different. After Dell introduced Alienware products in the market, many gamers shelled out a lot of money to get powerful gaming machines they can carry around when travelling.
But the bulky design and weight of the Alienware laptops became its own Achilles Heel over the past couple of years.
Laptops and graphics card manufacturers have now worked to bring powerful gaming machines in slimmer form factors at much more affordable rate.
And ASUS is one of those who is aiming to take over the market share from Dell with its Republic of Gamers (ROG) and TUF range of gaming products.
While ROG targets pure enthusiast gamers, TUF products are primarily for those users who prioritize durability.
Asus has launched its new TUF505DU-EB74 gaming laptop in the market and here is our complete review.
Table of Contents
Military Grade Durability
The specialty of Asus TUF series of products has trickled down to the new TUF505DU-EB74 laptop just like all its predecessors.
The TUF series of motherboards, gaming laptops and CPU cases all have Military Standard 810G durability certifications.
This means that the laptop can withstand drops without causing any damage to the internal hardware or the display of laptop.
During our testing, we did observe that the TUF505DU-EB74 can withstand drops that most other laptops could not have survived.
120Hz Gaming Display
Every gamer’s dream is to enjoy their gaming titles on a display with the highest refresh rate. The Asus TUF505DU-EB74 comes with a15.6-inch 120Hz IPS Full HD display.
We played games like Battlefield V and Apex Legends without any dropped frames. However, most games never reached 120 frames per second due to the GTX 1660Ti that comes with this laptop (which we shall cover in detail) in the later part of the review.
For now, it seems that the 120Hz is being under-utilized unless you have a really old gaming titles that have never been remastered for 1080p resolution.
Graphics Downside
The new Asus TUF505DU-EB74 comes with the latest NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti graphics card that has 6GB of VRAM.
The new GPU is an upgrade to the GTX 1060 with improved processing power. When it comes to performance, the GTX 1660Ti can smoothly handle most AAA titles including Battlefield V and Apex Legends at Ultra settings but only at a resolution of 1920×1080 giving us an impressive 80 FPS performance.
The only games that took advantage of the 144Hz refresh rate were Doom and Fortnite delivering close to 120 FPS purely because they are older titles. Had the TUF505DU-EB74 come with the RTX 2080, things would have turned out quite differently.
AMD Powerhouse
At the heart of the Asus TUF505DU-EB74 is AMD’s new Ryzen 7 3750H chipset that comes with 4 cores and 8 threads. It is clocked at 2.3 GHz but also has a max boost clock speed of 4 GHz. The Ryzen 7 chipset also benefits from an in-built Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics chip.
Ryzen chipsets are known for their multitasking performance, and the TUF505DU-EB74 works well for streamers, gamers and content creators alike. We were not at all disappointed by the performance of the Asus TUF505DU-EB74.
Storage and Memory
The Asus TUF505DU-EB74 comes with 16GB of DDR4 RAM with a frequency of 2666 MHz. For storage, you get 256GB and 1TB of storage in SSD and HDD forms respectively.
The read and write speeds of the storage units were good without any lag in file transfers. Games loaded quickly when installed them on the SSD, but we ended up installing other titles to the HDD due to the large game files.
ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 Specs | |
---|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 3750H up to 4GHz |
Graphics | 6GB NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti VRAM |
Memory | 16GB DDR4 RAM |
Storage | 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD |
Display | 15.6-inch 120Hz IPS Full HD |
Operating System | Windows 10 |
Connectivity & Ports
The TUF505DU-EB74 did not have any shortage of connectivity ports. It comes with an Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.1 ports and a headphone jack in case you decide to bring your gaming headphones while travelling.
The ports are neatly placed to the left of the laptop making it easier for users to instinctively look for ports only on one side of the laptop.
The laptop also supports the latest Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 which improves connectivity and can handle transfer speeds of upto 1.7Gbps. Most gamers do use ethernet cables to ensure smooth multiplayer connections while others stay wireless. The latter users can benefit with the stable connections due to the new technology from Intel.
Miscellaneous features
The Asus TUF505DU-EB74 has a backlit RGB keyboard that supports the Aura RGB technology. As gamers, we love to customize the backlight of the keyboard in different ways.
With ASUS Aura RGB, you can change the colors of the keyboard to your taste. The colors can either be static or pulsating. Showing off your gaming rig to your friends start right here.
ASUS is also the first company to introduce a new technology when it comes to air-flow and dust filtering withtin laptops.
The company claims that their new Anti-Dust Cooling system increases system stability and longevity by removing dust from a dedicated dust tunnel placed next to the air-vents.
The two fans within the laptop not only pushes hot air out but it also keeps the internals clean by avoiding long-term dust build-up within the chassis.
The Verdict
Asus has yet again entered Alienware territory by bringing in new updated affordable gaming systems in the market. But on closer observation, the GPU is the only downside that makes the TUF505DU-EB74 a hard-to-swallow buy.
Had the company given options for better RTX cards, then gamers need to look nowhere else for the best durable and portable gaming machines.
At $1,100, gamers can invest in the ROG laptops which come with RTX cards and more gamer centric designs but loosing out on the Military grade drop protection.