ASUS TUF FX506HEB-IS73

The TUF brand from asus is quickly becoming a fan favorite it really offers some great value laptops overall especially when you consider some of the miscellaneous features which shape up the devices making them very versatile the tough gaming f-15 fx 506 is new for 2021 bringing a refreshed design brand new hardware and an abundance of features which are nice to see in a laptop at this price the unboxing experience is great especially for a mid-range device the laptop comes in a black box from recycled material which fits the overall minimalist aesthetic inside you get the laptop itself proprietary mounting brackets screws and a cable for a 2.5 inch sata drive along with some cool stickers the laptop is also very well built with asus managing to construct a durable laptop by using ingenuity first of all you can choose between either an aluminum or a plastic lid which have a different design making the laptops look entirely different the plastic lid looks more gamer-ish with a hexagonal pattern which combines a brushed design with a dotted pattern making for an interesting look the aluminum lid is very flat with a tough inscription on the left and the new tough logo on the upper right corner the laptop’s looks aren’t the only positive here like most tough laptops this one has also passed the mil std810h tests which put the devices through the ringer having them endure vibration humidity drop shock and extreme temperatures tests basically the laptops are able to survive through harsh environments this is further helped by the honeycomb pattern on the inside which strengthens the chassis in our durability tests the laptop hardly flexed when we tried so the build quality is on a very good level the i o and support that you get on the laptop are also really good the i o consists of a total of three usb type a 3.2 generation 1 ports a single thunderbolt 4 port hdmi and rj45 connectors along with a 3.5 millimeters audio jack and a power plug we also can’t forget the lock slot which can be very useful you would also be pleased to hear that the laptop supports wi-fi 6 and bluetooth 5 allowing for faster connections and a wireless lifestyle lastly the area which is arguably one of the most important during gaming the keyboard the unit here has long key travel and decently clicky feedback also this wouldn’t be a gaming laptop without an rgb backlight while this might be marketed as a gaming laptop it can be so much more it already has the performance from the new tiger lake h-45 family of cpus and the new rtx ampere graphics cards yes it will totally crush games but with a quick addition of a good display this laptop can be a versatile device for content creators we tested the 144 hertz variant which due to its low srgb coverage isn’t suitable for professional work but it’s pretty good for gaming it has excellent viewing angles and since it doesn’t use pwm across all brightness levels it will be comfortable for your eyes even during long gaming sessions being a gaming device the upgradability is on point with a total of two ram and two ssd slots which support nvme ssds for ultra fast raid configurations the ram slots can fit up to 64 gigabytes of ddr4 ram working in dual channel the cooling setup consists of a total of two fans three heat spreaders and four heat pipes three of them cool down both the cpu and gpu while the last one is there to cool down the graphics memory and vrm modules the so-called self-cleaning cooling design makes it so dust and litter go through separate air channels at the back of the laptop asus has also improved the air tunnel improving airflow by 15 in reality the cooling performed well keeping the cpu cool while not throttling down on the speed after 30 minutes of stress testing the core i7 11 800 h had a frequency of 3.44 gigahertz while running at 87 degrees celsius the gpu also maintained good temperatures and clock speeds despite having a tdp of 95 watts the battery on the laptop is absolutely huge coming with a size of 90 watt hours however like most gaming laptops that doesn’t mean that you could leave your charger at home our tests show that its juice is enough for four hours of web browsing and video playback and one hour and 21 minutes of gaming tough gaming f15 is equipped with up to intel core i9 11 900 h from the latest tiger lake h-45 architecture while the gpu department is covered by the geforce rtx 3050 3050 ti and 3060 video cards the latter is the 95 w variant which is powerful enough to provide at least 60 fps at 1080p ultra settings even in the most demanding games