Asus The Asus TUF FX505 DV ES75 is the most affordable RTX 2060 laptop you can find in most countries. Despite this, it’s a well-built device with a fast RGB keyboard, a 120Hz IPS screen, and the ability to perform smoothly in everyday FHD use and gaming. But the devil is in the details, which include a washed-out panel and high CPU/GPU temperatures in games, but also the performance toll of AMD’s platform taking on an Intel-based PC with the same kind of graphics performance. All this is explained in the detailed review below.

Design Of Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74

The Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74 is not in the vein of the Asus ROG Zephyrus M gaming laptops, so it won’t be the best choice if you’re looking for a thin and light gaming laptop. Instead, it has a boxy design, literally keeping up with the TUF moniker, and includes a white keyboard color scheme like its predecessors. Unlike the ASUS TUF FX505DY-ES51 that we sampled earlier, it does not have red accents on the lid, along the ventilation grill and the keyboard. Instead, Asus opted for a solid black color with the signature “ASUS” logo on the lid.

Like all budget laptops, this one has an all-plastic construction that stretches from the lid, keyboard to touchpad. Recently, most high-end gaming laptops from Dell and Gigabyte come with bezel-less displays, but bezels persist on budget machines. The Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74 surrounds the screen with a 1-inch wide bezel cut from the same plastic material used in the rest of the chassis. At 1 x 14.2 x 10.3 inches (HWD), the TUF is about the same thickness as the Dell Inspiron 15 gaming laptop, but with relatively smaller dimensions. And it’s light, too, weighing 4.85 pounds versus the Dell Inspiron’s 5.85 pounds.

Display OF Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74

When you decide to play games on a budget, you have to make a few compromises, and screen quality is always to blame. Surprisingly, even at the low price point, Asus still managed to pack in a Full HD (1920 X 1080) 120Hz display with the kind of clarity you’ll find on more expensive gaming laptops like the Acer Predator Helios 300. Otherwise, in this price range level, we expected a 60Hz screen with a blurry TN panel.

It displays text well, images look better, but for fast videos we feel this laptop could do better. We’ve seen Chromebooks that cost a lot less but offer excellent color reproduction, which is another reason why we demand a more vibrant display on a gaming system, regardless of price. It covers 66 percent of the sRGB color gamut, far from the 98 percent baseline average.

Ports  Of Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74      

Connectivity is provided by two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, HDMI output, Ethernet port, power jack and headphone jack, all located on the left side. On the right side, there is only a slot for a Kensington lock. You don’t get a USB Type-C port here, but you can access wireless networks via Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2.

Also missing is an SD card reader, which is easy to overlook, just like we do with optical drives on laptops these days.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74 offers an RGB backlit keyboard that is as comfortable as it is practical. This chiclet keyboard makes typing easy and fast, has good key suspension and the keys are well spaced. The WASD keys are highlighted in bright white for better visibility, but the space bar has been adjusted so that the left side sticks out, in case you need more room for your left thumb.

To keep up with other 15-inch gaming laptops, the Asus TUF FX505DV has a numeric keypad whose keys are significantly narrower than those on the rest of the QWERTY layout. On the other hand, the touchpad is small and plain, which is typical for budget laptops.

Performance of the Asus TUF FX505DV

Asus pitches the Asus TUF FX505DV-ES74 as a gaming laptop, but it has everything you need to handle most of your productivity tasks. With a quad-core AMD Ryzen 7 3750H APU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, its performance is among the best you can get in this price range. In addition to an impressive spec-sheet, the laptop uses AMD Turbo Core to achieve a better 4.0GHz on all cores, making it a direct competitor to the Intel Core i7-9750H found on gaming laptops.

All of these components add up to a good productivity machine that lets you open about 20 Chrome tabs, stream YouTube videos in the background, and maybe have a few spreadsheets open. If you need more multitasking, you can always add more RAM, maybe up to 32GB, but it still works fine out of the box with 16GB preinstalled.

Games and graphics

With an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (8GB) GPU in tow, the TUF FX505DV stands out as a capable gaming laptop that lets you play modern titles at 1080p resolution at high settings. The RTX 2060 graphics card is the low-end version of Nvidia’s gaming GPUs released in 2019, coming to the market with the high-end Turing RTX 20-Series graphics cards (RTX 2070 & RTX 2080).

While not as capable as its high-end siblings, the RTX 2060 outperforms not only its predecessors, but even higher generation Pascal GPUs such as the GTX 1070 TI. That means the only graphics cards on top of the Nvidia RTX 2060 are the significantly more expensive GeForce RTX 2070, AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, and  GeForce RTX 2080.

This means that until AMD releases the new AMD Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT graphics cards and Nvidia releases its Super RTX series, you won’t find another mid-range graphics card more powerful than this one.

All this performance also translates into seamless gaming experiences. It delivers better performance than previous GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics cards. Battlefield V delivers 109 frames per second on medium settings and 1080p resolution, but the same game runs at 130 frames per second on medium settings. Of course, you suffer from pixel loss when you go to higher settings, up to 103 frames per second on ultra settings.

At the same settings, Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p with a combination of medium and high settings, the FX505 renders the game at 91 and 85 fps. That’s slightly better for a basic gaming laptop as it exceeds the 60fps average.

Battery life

Gaming laptops are never great when it comes to battery life, and the Asus TUF FX505DV we’re reviewing is no exception. Its battery lasts just over 3 hours and 56 minutes of normal usage, which includes continuous web browsing, watching videos at 150 nits brightness. That’s slightly below the base gaming average of 4:38 minutes, with the Acer Nitro 5 Spin leading the pack at 7 hours and 11 minutes.

Final Thought

The ASUS TUF FX505DV S75 is undoubtedly a great laptop that rarely comes across with similar features. The features you get for this price are simply amazing and we’d expect nothing less from a company of this scale. Speaking of performance, the ASUS TUF FX505DV delivers top performance when it comes to 1080p gaming thanks to the combination of a powerful processor like the AMD Ryzen 7 3750H and a powerful graphics card like the NVIDIA RTX 2060.

The performance of the laptop could have been better if it had used a six-core processor because the processor slows down the graphics card in various situations. Aside from raw performance, the laptop’s display felt amazing for gaming, although it could use some improvement in the color reproduction sector. In terms of appearance, this laptop is a middle ground between a gaming and a professional laptop, and thanks to the RGB lighting customization, you can always switch between visual profiles.

Overall, Asus TUFA FOX505DV S75 is a great laptop with its features and build condition, if you can afford this beauty, go for it.