CES announcements are well underway, and ASUS has announced a couple of gaming laptops under its The Ultimate Force (TUF) brand. While not quite as popular as the company"s Republic of Gamers brand, these laptops attempt to strike a good balance of performance and price.
The two laptops, FX505DY and FX705DY, are mostly identical, aside from the display and battery sizes. They"re both powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor, which was announced earlier today, and coupled with Radeon RX 560X for graphics. They feature up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, up to 515GB of SSD storage or 1TB of hybrid storage. Both models also have a MIL-STD-810G rating, so they should survive some tumbling.
The main differences, as mentioned above, lie in the displays. While both models feature Full HD (1920x1080) displays, the FX505DY comes in a 15.6-inch size, while the FX705DY measures in at 17.3 inches. The smaller model also has a refresh rate of up to 120Hz while the bigger brother only offers up to 60Hz, but both support AMD"s FreeSync technology. The larger model also includes a 64Wh battery, which boasts over seven hours of battery life, according to ASUS, while the 15-inch variant lasts "nearly six hours" on its 48Wh battery.
The laptops come in two colors, Red Matter and Gold Steel, and while they"re mostly similar, only the Gold Steel variant incorporates RGB backlight on the keyboard, with the Red Matter color scheme being stuck with a red backlight. Both color variants and models include a number pad, though, which might be welcome for some.
The ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY and FX705DY should launch sometime this quarter, but ASUS didn"t provide pricing or more specific availability details.