When it comes to gaming laptops

when you go below $1,000 typically you have to deal

with a lot of compromises.

Take the Acer Aspire 5.

It's $600, I've been incredibly impressed with this laptop.

And sure it's not going to be the most powerful thing

in the world, but it delivers a ton for the money.

Step up to something like the Dell Inspiron 7000 series

and for $800 you are going to be getting

a ton more performance

but you're still going to be lacking

the fun toys at the higher end laptops.

At $700 though the ASUS TUF FX504 looks like it

could be the perfect sweet spot.

At least on paper.

Let's see how it actually stacks up though.

At first glance it looks pretty decent

so they're definitely going

for the whole gamer aesthetic with the red accent

and the fake brushed metal which I will mention

is entirely plastic.

Now something that ASUS claims on Amazon

and well pretty much

in all the marketing material this is

a thin and light laptop weighing in at only five pounds

and one inch thick.

But I mean (laughs) thin and light this definitely is not.

You're gonna notice this guy in your backpack.

This is one

of those cases where I actually feel like

the laptop looks better on video than it does in person.

Now the idea of having brushed metal is nice

but honestly it feels very plasticy.

And that comes across the stuff like the screen.

So I mean if you just do a little bit

of flexing here, it doesn't really inspire a lot

of confidence.

Especially considering that this is going to be

a $700 laptop.

Speaking of the screen, it's exactly what you

would expect at this price point.

So it's going to be a 15.6 inch 1080p panel

and it's going to be pretty much mediocre.

Now sure, the resolution is going to be decent.

When it comes to the color

and especially the contrast it's not going

to be particularly accurate or particularly contrasty.

And on top of that as soon

as you get it even remotely off-axis

the viewing angles fall off

and even though it does get bright

when you start to crank up

that brightness it washes out even more.

It's going to be fine

but at $700, it would be nice to see a little bit

of an upgrade.

iPhone X is the most expensive iPhone ever.

It has a bigger screen, smallest bezels.

Speaker wise is actually going to sound pretty decent.

It does have a pair of speakers

that are going to be on these sides

so it's not going to be quite as good

as something that's going to be on

the decklid facing directly toward you,

but it's a lot better than most laptops

that fire down into well whatever it is you're sitting on.

Now the keyboard is going to be backlit

in the same red that's all over the laptop

and there's some good stuff with it.

So I do think it actually has

a really nice layout and I was able to get up to speed

with it almost immediately.

However there's a lot of key travel and it kind

of feels a little bit mushy.

It's maybe not quite as precise as I would like,

but kind of splitting hairs here.

For $700 laptop there's really no complaints.

We've also got a decent track pad.

So it is using Windows Precision drivers and

while it's not going to be the biggest trackpad

in the world, again it's totally fine.

What isn't so great is the port selection.

We have a pair of USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, HDMI as well

as ethernet.

That's going to be fine.

Those are going to be the essentials.

What you are losing are things like

an SD card reader, USB-C, Thunderbolt support.

It's going to be pretty basic here.

Don't let the looks fool you, even though this

does look like a premium laptop,

the build quality is only going to be so-so.

However it is clear

that ASUS spent the money on the internals.

What really drew me to

the FX504 is the Core i5 8300H inside.

Now this is one

of the new eighth gen 45-watt H series processors

that are coming out in laptops.

If you guys caught my videos that I did last month

where I took a look at all

of the new chips including

the new i7s and i9s, you know this is

actually really exciting.

This is the first time

in a long long time

that gaming PCs are getting

a major update on the laptop side.

Where the Core i7 and Core i9 are jumping up

from four cores to six cores,

the new Core i5s are adding hyper-threading.

Essentially giving you four cores and eight threads.

Very similar to what you used to be able to get

in the last generation Core i7s.

There that's simple right?

The idea of having a cheaper computer that's on par

with a Core i7 gaming laptop

from last generation is exciting.

And as you'll be able to see it is

a step up, however it's not going to be perfect.

Take a look at the benchmarks

and you'll see this is going to be

a step up over the last generation i5

although it's not going to be a massive leap.

And what comes close to

the i7, the low 2.3 gigahertz base clock actually

does hold it back a bit here.

Paired with the i5 is the GTX 1050 GPU.

This is actually going to be

a pretty decent performer at 1080p

as you guys will see a little bit later

in the gaming section and if you stack it up to some

of the other competitors including the 1050 Ti

in the Dell as well as the MX150

in the Acer, you'll see it slots right in there

as you would expect at the price.

Remove about 12 screws to get at the inside the laptop,

and you'll see there's actually going to be a fair bit

of space here.

So first of all you're going to see our eight gigs of RAM.

You can expand that to 16 gigs pretty easily or 32

if you really want to go all out,

and you're also going to find an M.2 drive slot.

Now that is

because this only has a one terabyte hard drive.

Mind you it is going to be an SSHD

so it is going to be faster especially

when it comes to things like Windows.

However if this is going to be my everyday system,

I would definitely install a full SSD in this guy.

The battery is going to be

a fairly small 48 watt-hour cell

so don't expect to do hours and hours

of gaming on this guy.

What you can do is well, not overheat.

This is going to have two cooling fans

as well as a pair of heat pipes

for the CPU and the GPU.

That combined with the heat sinks on

the back should keep this fairly cool under

extended gaming sessions.

Just remember to bring your charger.

Get into some gaming and first

of all we have Rocket League.

Now here at 1080p on high settings we're getting

a pretty impressive hundred frames per second.

Rocket League is not exactly

a demanding game especially

with the GTX 1050 inside it is absolutely no problem.

Next up we have everyone's favorite, PUBG.

Not like people play any other game these days.

So oh if I don't get shot.

We have 1080p low settings here and with

that we're getting somewhere between 50 to 60

frames per second.

If you do want higher settings, you will

sacrifice some framerate so if you're okay with 30

you can probably go up to medium.

But for me I like having something that's going to be

a little bit smoother and this is again totally playable.

It's almost like when you spend $700 on

a laptop you're able to play games at reasonable settings.

Amazing right?

Moving on to everyone's actual favorite game,

we have Fortnite.

Now here on 1080p on medium settings we're getting

a still very impressive 75 to 90 frames per second.

I think this is really a good example of the kind of game

that is really meant for a system like this.

I mean sure you're not running it epic settings

like 300 frames per second, but

for most people I would say the vast majority

of people a medium 1080p experience that's going

to be running at this high

of a frame rate is going to be more than good enough.

Moving on to a game that's going to be much

more demanding, we have Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

Now here at 1080p on low settings we're

still hovering around the 60fps mark.

Again you can bump some settings up to medium

if you want a little bit

of a better graphical experience but

if you really do want to get

that 60 frames per second, you're able to get it

in pretty much any game at 1080p.

Providing you turn things down a little bit.

This laptop is kind of in a weird position.

On one hand, for $700 the performance is really impressive.

Getting that new eighth gen Core i5 processor paired

with the GTX 1050 allows it to really handle

1080p gaming very easily.

But at this kind

of price, the trade-offs do start to add up.

So stuff like the build quality and

the screen I can mostly overlook,

when it comes to the SSHD, that's

where I start to have real problems.

For $700, I don't want to deal

with a slow hard drive making Windows feel

super super slow.

The fact that it's

in SSHD helps some, but I would much prefer to find

a full SSD like you would find in the Aspire or the Dell.

At the end of the day, there are options

that are going to be cheaper and better in some ways

and there are going to be options

than a little bit more expensive and better

in pretty much every way.

It's an interesting laptop, there's a lot that I like

with it, but it's kind of hard to recommend at this price.

If only, if only they had an SSD.

I know you guys are really tired of me complaining

about SSDs but you need an SSD in a computer in 2018 okay?

Especially when you're spending $700.

Anyway let me know what you guys think about the ASUS

in the comments below,

as always there will be

a link to this guy to check it out over on Amazon,

and I will catch you in the next one.