“Red Matter“, it is the name that Asus bestowed upon the TUF Gaming FX505DY that they have on shelves right now – an unbelievable gaming notebook under Php 40K. Let’s face it, component prices have been soaring this year and most gaming notebooks seem beyond reach but this particular one presents in a very – very enticing price point.
What Red Matter is, is a combination of AMD components inside of the Asus TUF chassis with just the right amount of flair and power that elevates its classification into gaming category. The keyboard lighting is a familiar red hue, a single color but a very powerful one at that – this is a conscious aesthetic limitation that is able to bring the price point down. Visually it is that much different from per-key RGB setups of some of its brothers in the lineup but it does the job well and with the expected x-factor that comes with gaming notebooks.
When the TUF series was introduced into Asus’ notebook lineup, this compact version of it feels like all the design cues have been mated to this particular size. The diagonals on the keyboard deck, the depressions and how they line up feel really good and fleshed out with the 15″ machine.
Typical of TUF notebooks is the focus of ports on the left side of the device, the non-mousing side, and it is in full effect here. AC, LAN, full HDMI, USB, a couple of USB 3.0 ports and a combo jack, all line up at the left with only the Kensington port at the opposite side. There isn’t an SD card reader but hey you’ll do fine without it and it’s an understandable compromise.
Really the only thing that a user might find initially daunting here is the chin at the underside of the 120Hz panel, but that in itself does a great job of raising the display enough so that you don’t strain yourself too much from looking at the screen if it were flushed closer to the body.
The keyboard comes complete with a keypad and a somewhat expanded space key offset just a bit to the left of the spacious trackpad and wouldn’t take long to get used to. The feedback is a tad squishy for my taste but you’d definitely know that you’ve hit a key because of the travel.
Apart from the regular shortcuts bound to the function keys there is also a Turbo feature upon hitting F5 available when connected to AC power. It ramps up the fan speed to increase component efficiency under heavy load.
Arrow keys feel a bit narrow but that is to be expected with the number pad made available as well… that leads to an abnormally large right CTRL key which hardly ever gets used, where compressed arrow keys usually are on smaller devices.
What makes this particular version of the TUF notebook different from other TUF configurations is the integration of a Ryzen 5 coupled with the RX560X GPU, you’ve got a full AMD setup right here and, speaking from experience, this kind of setup is likely to cross multiple generations without incident. In fact, I still have one running in the house and that is almost 7 years in service…crazy right?!? That’s already a dinosaur in computing age.
The usual benchmarks are below, pretty decent and serviceable for current generation games and productivity, just don’t push the graphics too much and very playable framerates can be had.
Do note that the unit doesn’t come with the Radeon Software pre-installed, you have to get that first to fully utilize the RX560X graphics. On an Nvidia card, you can right click to “run with high performance graphics” on an application but on the Radeon all of this is automatic – the software manages the identification for you, which of course is something you can also tweak to your preference.
When I ran the FFXV benchmark on this, it achieved a slightly low score on 720p windowed and high graphics totally within expectation. At 40k this is already more than just “worth it” it is a veritable steal! If I didn’t own some other daily driver, this would be a definite contender for purchase… in fact, even now, I’m seriously thinking about it.
Do check out the Asus TUF Gaming FX505DY at authorized Asus and ROG stores near you. You might try asking for “Red Matter” and the attendant might just get the very specific drift and bring out this beauty.
There’s very little on the market that matches the price to performance AND aesthetic combo that the FX505DY offers
Add Comment