It’s the cheapest gaming laptop ASUS TUF FX504 from the new budget series TUF Gaming.
This laptop I bought in the Amazon.
It cost $700 and I got a 15 inch laptop with the top mobile 8th Generation Intel Core i5
processor, discrete graphics GTX 1050 and other minimal characteristics for the ability
to call it gaming laptop.
Links on the store, where you can buy this laptop I left in the description.
Shot about bundling.
It includes a laptop, an AC adapter and instruction.
The case of ASUS FX504 is not ultra-thin, but as for a gaming laptop it’s quite compact
and the thickness is 2.5cm.
Plastic lcd cover designed quite expressive, I would even say catchy.
The Asus logo is made with a metallic red insert and it looks pretty nice.
I want to note that the quality of plastic is not the best,it isn’t difficult to scratch
the cover and it bends well enough.
As for modern laptop the screen frame is very wide, but I think this is quite expected for
a budget gaming laptop.
Inner surface repeats the design of the top cover, in general it looks quite harmonious,
all in a gaming style.
Despite the fact that the case is plastic, when you strongly press the case of the laptop,
it practically doesn’t bend.
The keyboard is full-sized that is good enough and also ir has a red backlight that fits
well with the overall style of the laptop.
As befits a gaming style, the WASD key group is highlighted with a red edging.
The touchpad is quite comfortable, left and right buttons are built-in.
ASUS FX504 has not the best speakers, in many tracks the bass is hard to hear.
To watch the movie it's still going, but for music they are frankly weak.
The speaker are located on the ends of the laptop.
Not the best location, but, luckily not on the bottom as it’s found on many laptops.
All ports are located on the left side
under the left hand all successfully connects and will not stick out a lot of wires from
all sides of the laptop.
But I was very surprised by the lack of a card reader and USB Type-C.
For a gaming laptop this is at least not convenient in nowdays.
On the back of the laptop is a hot air blow out from the cooling system.
And the air supply for cooling comes from the hole on the top and bottom covers through
the grid.
Screen is the thing that disappointed me and now I’ll explain why.
In the FX504 series, used 15-inch lcd with a Full HD resolution , but in cheaper revisions
installed 60 hertz screen with only 45% of the NTSC (65% sRGB) color space coverage,
but in a more expensive revision of this laptop, the lcd refresh rate is 120 hertz and already
covering 94% of the NTSC space (130% sRGB).
In other words, in a package that is cheaper installed a basic TN display with terrible
viewing angles, and for comfort gaming you will have to constantly adjust and sit at
an even angle to the screen.
Now lets take a look inside of this laptop.
The disassembly process of the ASUS FX504 is quite simple
As you can see can be upgraded memory modules, hard drive, wireless module and m.2 ssd.
Lets take a look closer to each of the ones.
There’re 2 DDR4 memory slots, 1 slot might be used for manufacture installed memory and
1 might be empty.
Maximum amount that can reached is 32Gb.
In the laptop is installed a 1TB hybrid Seagate FireCuda hard drive.
More expensive revisions, in an additional has m.2 ssd.
Even if your laptop has only hard disk, you can install m.2 SSD to empty slot.
Wireless module also can be replaced.
Basic module might be Intel 9560NGW that is supports MU-MIMO technology.
ASUS FX504 has a 48 Watt-Hours battery that is a very small capacity for a gaming laptop.
For Internet surfing, this battery is hardly enough for 4 hours.
But in game it will be long not more then an hour.
The cooling system in the ASUS FX504 laptop looks impressive and has two coolers.
In my tests, I got these results
Under the stress test, the temperature of the cpu was not rised above (sixty three degrees)
63 ° C, and the temperature of the graphic core kept at (sixty eight degrees) 68 °C
- which is a good result for a gaming laptop.
Also I want to note that at maximum load the fan noise was not loud and generally I was
pleased with the cooling system.
The positive aspect that colling system can be simply removed.
After removing the bottom cover you only need to unscrew 6 screws, after that you can cleen
both fans of apply new thermal paste on cpu and gpu.
By the way about the dust - the manufacturer claims that the cooling system in the ASUS
TUF FX504 series has a special design that blows dust out of the fan casing, and thus
the grid is not polluted by the dust.
This is even demonstrated in the example of foam balls, but time will tell how it will
work in life with ordinary dust.
The cpu and gpu can not be replaced, because they are soldered on the motherboard, and
you should consider this when choosing a configuration.
Ok guys, now let's see some game tests.
The results of the test will be recorded using a special video capture card, so the results
of
the FPS will be lossless.
In Doom on high graphics preset it show sixty five and more frames per second.
Fortnite on very high preset shows between thirty-seven and forty-two frames.
But on high preset this result twiced.
Battlefield one on ultra settings and with DirectX 12 it shows about forty frames, in
moment of huge explodes result decreased to thirty frames.
On high preset frames rate increases to fifty-five.
The witcher on high preset showed decent thirty fps.
On medium preset result is forty-five frames.
The moment that I want to note is mostly in testing usage of video memory was about one
hudred percent.
As I said 2gb is bottle neck of this gpu and laptop in particular
Also I left a link in the description for the full playlist with tests in the games
of this laptop.
My revision of the Asus FX504GD is considered as initial, it is based on quad-core i5-8300H
meanwhile a more expensive revision is based on a six-core i7-8750H.
The same goes for the gpu, in my revision this is the initial GTX 1050 with 2Gb of video
memory
And in more expensive versions of this laptop there may be GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB or even
GTX 1060 with 3Gb or 6Gb.
I can even say that the GTX 1050 with 2Gb video memory can be called conditionally gaming
, because for games it's better to take a bundle with GTX 1050Ti 4GB.
Okay let's sum up.
I'll start from the facts that I liked:
this is a fairly simple process of disassembly and access to the inside of the laptop.
It is possible to expand the RAM up to 32GB, it is possible to install an additional m.2
ssd drive.
The cooling system is quiet enough and coped well with the temperature.
The cpu performance meets the needs for both the gamer, and for rendering video and any
other multitasking directions.
I did not like the display of the laptop, the small volume of the battery and the sound
quality of the speakers.
The display in the budget version is frankly weak and I did not like it at all.
As for the sound, you can always use additional acoustics or headphones, but screen issue
can’t be resolved so simple.
As for the gpu, as I said earlier, the GTX 1050 can be called a conditionally gaming
and it's better to take at least its Ti version – memory is twiced and the performance is
higher by (ten fifteen percents) 10-15% depending on the game.
I mean that gtx 1050 is enough to play any modern game , but not always at high graphic
quality presets.
I think that this a gpu will be enough for about two years if you are not very demanding
gamer.
The laptop as a whole is not bad, but I recommend buying a bundle that will be more powerful.
As I said earlier, for me the display of the laptop is important and I did not expect that
it will be so mediocre in the budget version, so I will sell this laptop and look after
something else.
I hope this review was useful for you, and I helped you with the choice.
More information will be in the description.