ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 Review

ASUS has been producing some excellent gaming laptops over the years. When people went for making their own custom rigs, ASUS is one of the companies that provided more value with their gaming laptops. Now, they’ve come up with a new gaming laptop in the name of ASUS TUF505DU-EB74.

In this ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 review, we are going to discuss this new upper mid-range gaming laptop. The laptop targets serious gamers who can’t afford a lot of money to play the most high-end games. With an impressive spec sheet, this TUF model does offer immense potential. But how good is the real-life performance of this laptop? Let’s find that out.

Design

When it comes to design in gaming laptops, people have started expecting a rugged and sporty design. ASUS has taken a similar approach here as well. The laptop comes with the said rugged look and comes in a darker shade of gray which looks both stealthy and premium. The design elements on the corner of the laptop make up for a nice touch.

The cooling on the laptop is pretty neat for a mobile gaming device. The fans can get a bit loud but you get a good gaming experience, so we wouldn’t worry about it that much. In addition to the fans inside, the laptop comes with an external fan as a part of a bundle offer. This notebook cooler improves the cooling performance of the laptop by a good deal.

The keyboard we have here is a chiclet keyboard. Some gaming keyboards have weird fonts on them but we have a sporty yet good font on the keys. The key travel is decent and makes up for a neat typing experience. This is also an RGB keyboard so you can program the backlighting on this keypad. The touchpad is decent and does that job well.

The ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 is not that portable. Portability is not a key feature in a gaming laptop, and sadly, it stays true here as well. The laptop weighs around 4.9 pounds which is still not that bad. However, it is not as sleek as some other gaming laptops out there. If you plan to use to the use the external cooling pad, then portability does take a hit.

ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 Specs

This ASUS gaming laptop comes with a 15.6″ screen that has a 1080p resolution. The display comes with an IPS-level panel and offers similar performance. The picture quality is sharp and colors are vibrant. You can enjoy watching your favorite series and movies and this display. The excellent viewing angle on this display also helps a great deal.

Gaming on this ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 is a pleasure, thanks to this display. Apart from the color and crispness, the display here comes with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The gaming is super smooth and that is something you wouldn’t have expected in an upper mid-range gaming machine like this one.

The audio output is more than satisfactory here. The speaker grill is found just above the keyboard. This is very good placement as the audio output will be at you rather than at the sides or at the bottom. The audio can fill a small to a medium-size room. Even at high volumes, the distortion od sound is very minimal which is a nice thing if you’re going to rely on this speaker.

Raw Performance

The laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 3750H which is a quad-core processor with a base clock speed of 2.3GHz. This is a mid-range processor from AMD that can go up to 4.0GHz with the help of turbo. The 6MB cache memory is a good thing to have and will come in handy when dealing with simple applications.

The ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 gaming laptop does well in benchmarks. It gets a CPUMark benchmark score of 9017 which confirms its mid-range status. How about the real-life performance? The processor does impressively well when it comes to your everyday activities.

You can browse the web, stream videos, edit photos for your social media profiles and do so much more. If you want to do a little bit of work, the laptop can handle it. The processor, though being a mid-range one, can handle some serious workload when needed.

The processor gets good support from the 16GB DDR4 RAM. For a gaming device at this age, you wouldn’t expect anything less. The memory is excellent and helps in achieving a lag-free gaming experience. Apart from gaming, this RAM also allows you to run multithreaded applications with ease. You can also multitask without having to worry about any performance issues.

The storage on the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 is one of the best features in this laptop. We have a 1TB HDD for your regular storage needs. In addition to this, there is also a 512GB SSD which provides the user with excellent performance. This combination is great as it gives you both the speed and also the space you need for your games.

Gaming on the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74

The ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. This GPU is based on the Turing architecture which means it is a much better product when compared with its predecessors. This GPU comes with a dedicated video memory of 6GB which is more than enough in most cases.

The gaming performance of the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 is excellent, thanks to the 1660 Ti here. If you’re a fan of MMORPGs, then you’ll have a lot of fun with this laptop. The GPU and the 120Hz display will give you brilliant gaming experience. If you want to play AAA titles, this GPU can handle that as well.

The following are some of the games and its frame rates when running with high settings on the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74.

• Total War: Three Kingdoms – 64 FPS
• Rage 2 – 70 FPS
• Anno 1800 – 72 FPS
• The Division 2 – 81 FPS
• Anthem – 77 FPS
• Far Cry New Dawn – 84 FPS
• Metro Exodus – 48 FPS
• Apex Legends – 102 FPS

Battery Life and Connectivity

Battery life is probably the most mediocre thing about the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 laptop. With light usage, you might be able to use the laptop for about 3 to 4 hours. But when you’re gaming, the laptop will not last for more than 1.5 to 2 hours. This is dismal battery life, especially in this day and age. However, gaming laptops usually come with similar battery life so you’re not losing anything here.

There is a decent selection of ports on the ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 gaming laptop. You get a couple of USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, an Ethernet port for high-speed internet, an HDMI port, and also a headphone jack. The lack of a USB type C makes this laptop not very future proof. Also, it is only fair to expect an SD card reader in a laptop in this price range.

The device does come with support for WiFi and Bluetooth standards. If you’re planning to eliminate wires from your computer table, this will surely come in handy.

Bottomline

The ASUS TUF505DU-EB74 is an excellent gaming laptop. It comes with an impressive array of specs that make this laptop a good choice especially considering the price. The laptop can handle pretty much any game you throw at it. Apart from gaming, the notebook can handle your everyday tasks and even your workload with ease. If you’re looking for a solid gaming laptop that can also handle your workload, then this is the one.