ASUS for many years it has been producing devices in different price categories. Laptops are no exception. The most advanced gaming mobile stations of the company are the solutions of the line ROG, and more affordable options come under the brand TUF Gaming…
More recently we met with one of the most advanced laptops from ASUS in the ROG clip – ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550LXS on the top 10th generation 8-core Core i9 processor with discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Max-Q…
Today we are testing a representative of the TUF Gaming line – the model TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU on the processor AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with discrete mobile GPU NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti… The official cost for our configuration with a 512 GB SSD and Windows 10 is about 93 thousand rubles. In addition, there are models based on Ryzen 5 4600H processors, as well as with GTX 1650 Ti 4Gb or RTX 2060 6GB video adapters with or without Windows 10 installed. The cost of such models starts from 68 thousand…
PACKAGING AND DELIVERY
TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU comes in a small cardboard box with TUF Gaming and ASUS logos. The box opens like a chest, and inside you will immediately find not only a laptop, but also a set of stylized TUF stickers. Under the computer, you’ll find a notch with manual, warranty, and visual instructions, and on the sides in secret areas are the power supply and power cable.
APPEARANCE, LOADING AND NOISE
The laptop is made in the military style, its body is mainly made of black plastic, with the exception of the top cover – it is made of dark gray aluminum. There are also completely black models on sale.
On the lid of the device, you will find the TUF Gaming brand logo, and along the edges of the metal panel there are decorative plastic rivets with a hexagonal shape in the middle of each. The metal on the lid is strong enough, but flexes slightly if you push it in the center. At the same time, no prints or other traces were noticed on the metal panel or on other parts of the case, so the laptop certainly cannot be called soiled. This will delight everyone who does not like stained devices.
According to the manufacturer, the device has passed rigorous tests for drops, bumps, high and low temperatures, and was tested in high humidity conditions based on the American military-industrial standard MIL-STD-810H. In appearance, the case of this device is really very durable.
In the recess between the lid mount with the bottom of the laptop, you will find four LEDs, as well as the textured TUF Gaming inscription next to it. The first on the left glows when the device is turned on, the second – when charging is in progress, and the third blinks with any load of the built-in drive. The rightmost LED only lights up when airplane mode is activated.
The thickness of the laptop, excluding the legs, is 25 mm. The length is 359 mm and the width is 255 mm. The exact weight of the TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU is 2 kg and 262 grams. Another 0.55 kg weighs a complete 180-watt power supply along with a power cable.
In total, the weight of the laptop with charging does not exceed 3 kg, which is quite light for a gaming solution.
The bottom surface of the case has a honeycomb texture that looks very nice. It also has cutouts that serve as ventilation holes. Along the edges are 4 rubberized hockey stick-shaped feet that provide excellent traction, making it impossible to move the laptop effortlessly.
As for the connectors and holes, on the left side you will find a connector for charging from a power supply, an RJ45 port for connecting a wired Internet, HDMI output version 2.0b, two USB 3.2 Gen-1 Type-A connectors and one USB 3.2 Gen2 Type- C supporting DisplayPort 1.4 mode and monitors with NVIDIA G-Sync, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone / headset jack.
On the right you will find a hole for installing a Kensington lock to protect the device from theft. There is also a lonely USB 2.0 Type-A connector and cooling system windows. On the sides on the rear edge, there are two more holes for the cooling system symmetrically. Copper radiators are hidden behind a grille in the form of several connected hexagons. The front and side edges are made of soft-touch plastic, polished to match the metallic black texture.
The lid has an 85mm projection through which the laptop opens very conveniently. Due to the weight of the base, the cover can be lifted effortlessly with one hand.
The TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU received a display from the Chinese giant Nanjing Panda Electronics that opens approximately 120 degrees. The screen has a diagonal of 15.6 inches, and the surface has a matte anti-reflective coating. The thickness of the screen frame is 6 millimeters on the sides, 9 millimeters at the top and about 34 mm at the bottom. On the top of the frame in the middle is an HD (720p) webcam for video conferencing, which does not support the Windows Hello facial login feature.
The device uses a Full HD IPS-matrix with a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz and support for Adaptive-Sync technology, designed to synchronize the refresh rate of the screen with the frame rate of the graphics accelerator. The brightness of this screen is 220 cd / m2, and the contrast is 810: 1. The brightness will not be enough if you decide to use the TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU in direct sunlight. We found no problems with viewing angles. On black, a barely noticeable glow was found in different areas of the screen, which in general are not noticeable if you do not look closely.
The laptop is started by the power key in the form of an asymmetrical hexagon located in the upper right corner above the keyboard. The button has a small LED that glows red when the device is on and cannot be turned off. The time from pressing the power on and until full loading takes 15 seconds. Typical for M.2-based systems. Just to the left of the button above the keyboard, there is another small perforation in the cooling system.
Most of the base inside is occupied by the keyboard, which is slightly recessed into the case. Its travel is quite pleasant – the presses are very quiet, unless, of course, you hit the keys like on a typewriter. There is a numeric keypad for the delight of calculator lovers. The WSAD buttons are made of transparent plastic, while the rest are black plastic with transparent edges. The keyboard has signature Aura RGB backlighting that can be adjusted using the FN button and arrows. The backlight shines evenly. The up and down arrows adjust the brightness of the glow in 4 positions (off, low, medium and high brightness), and the right and left are responsible for choosing the animation of the glow (breath, stroboscope, color cycle, static). Also, by combining FN with other buttons (F1-F12, Windows, Enter on the numeric keypad), you can control the sound and microphone, the system operating mode (quiet, efficiency and turbo), turn off the display and adjust the brightness, project the screen to external sources, turn off touchpad, send to sleep and in flight mode, block the Windows button, and also launch the calculator.
The touchpad is quite small here – its size is 106 x 60 mm. It supports all gestures that are available in Windows. Below it are two mechanical buttons that imitate the right and left mouse buttons. As mentioned above, the touchpad can be disabled using the keyboard (FN + F10) so that it does not accidentally interfere with you when using a keyboard and mouse combination in games.
The device is quite quiet – in normal mode the noise level is about 31 db. Under heavy loads, powerful cooling starts to work, as a result of which the TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU not only gets hot, but also noisy. The average noise level under load is 48 db.
WORK AND TESTS
The laptop is supplied with a 4-cell rechargeable Li-Ion battery with a passport capacity of 90,000 mWh. A full charge will last for 5-6 hours of normal use, such as surfing the Internet, working with documents, watching videos and listening to music. In active gaming (efficiency) mode, the laptop runs for about 2 hours. It should be noted that the maximum (turbo) performance mode is available only when external power is connected. There are also models with a smaller 48Wh battery, where the remaining space is reserved for an additional 2.5 ” hard drive.
The computer itself was produced in April 2023 and is based on the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor, clocked at 2.9 GHz. The processor is 8-core and operates in 16 threads, and the maximum frequency is 4200 GHz. The laptop has 2 DDR4 memory sticks of 8 gigabytes each (operating at 1600 MHz) with a maximum frequency of 3200 MHz from Micron. The memory can be independently expanded up to 32 gigabytes. INTEL SSDPEKNW010T8 (NVMe v1.3.0) for 1 terabyte plays the role of internal storage in the test sample. It is also possible to install a second drive in a free M.2 slot. The built-in Realtek 8822CE Wireless network adapter is responsible for the wireless connection in the laptop, and the gigabit adapter from the same Realtek is responsible for the wired one. There are two video adapters in the laptop: an AMD Radeon RX Vega 7 accelerator built into the CPU with 512 MB of video memory and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti card with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. Three solutions are used as a sound adapter: AMD K17.6, Realtek ALC256 and NVIDIA TU116.
In standard (quiet) mode, AIDA64 shows on average the following temperatures:
- CPU – 32 ° C
- GPU – 37 ° C
- INTEL SSDPEKNW010T8 – 28 ° C
CrystalDisk Info tests indicate an average solid state drive temperature of 50 ° C. The disk speed in Crystal Disk Mark was 1904 MB / s, and 1775 MB / s read and write. The AS SDD benchmark shows less impressive speed results – 1711 MB / s read and 1620 MB / s write.
In graphics tests, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti delivers satisfactory results.
In the Unigine Superposition Benchmark at 1080p at high settings, the system showed 48 to 72 frames. In Final Fantasy XV Benchmark, the laptop in Full HD at the maximum graphics setting was able to earn 5723 points and a Fairly High rating. The device performed excellently in Full HD games at high settings.
Thus, in the Gears 5 ultras test, the device was able to produce an average frame rate of around 67.
DOOM Eternal is not the most demanding project – it was able to produce an average of about 93 frames at maximum graphics settings.
And finally, running on ultra settings, Shadow of the Tomb Raider showed an average of 69 frames per second without rays and DLSS.
The hardware of this laptop is quite enough for comfortable Full HD gaming at high settings without ray tracing. In the maximum performance mode, the temperature during the tests was kept around 89 degrees. The GPU was heated to a maximum of 77 degrees.
Finally, I would like to mention the sound in this device. TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU received two speakers, the sound of which comes out on the sides and bottom. The sound quality is quite average – their volume is not enough if you play with the turbo profile turned on, where the cooling system is clearly audible. But the laptop does have DTS X Ultra support, which will only open when you plug in the appropriate headphones.
RESULTS
ASUS TUF Gaming A15 FX506IU is an excellent mobile gaming device at the moment in the mid-price category. The laptop proved to be not only a worthy solution for modern games in Full HD resolution, but also in everyday life is quite suitable for many work tasks.
Although it is unlikely to be ideal for work in graphic editors on the road, since the color rendition of the built-in screen is far from the reference, but if you connect it to a good display via HDMI or DisplayPort, then it will cope with this task. Well, those who don’t have enough of a 15-inch screen should pay attention to the TUF A17 lineup with similar hardware, but with Full HD displays with a diagonal of 17.3 “and a refresh rate of 120 Hz.
Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)
Photo: Alexey Olkin
Read also: The first month with the PlayStation 5: Impressions of the GameMAG.ru editors from the new Sony console…
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