ASUS TUF FX504, ROG G703 hands-on: Next-gen gaming power for all

ASUS is one of the few brands in the world of PCs that take gaming very seriously. Their ROG series of hardcore gaming laptops have been in the Indian market for a while across various price points. However, ASUS now wants to make PC gaming more affordable for enthusiasts who want substantial firepower without spending substantial money. Therefore, the company has introduced the TUF range of gaming laptops in India and the FX504 is the first model to wear the badge. The entry-level model with an 8th-gen Core i5 processor starts at Rs 69,990 and goes up to Rs 89,990 for the Core i7 equipped model.

Apart from the TUF series, ASUS also unveiled their flagship model in their ROG series — the G703. The model brings the 8th generation Intel Core i9 processor along with all the best stuff one could find in a gaming laptop, for a price of Rs 4,99,990. We had a brief time with both the laptops and this is what we felt about these laptops.

TUF FX504:

The FX504 sports a plastic body that imitates a brushed-aluminium finish found on ASUS’ more expensive laptops. The lid’s design reminds us of the ROG Strix series laptops. Open the lid and you will be greeted with special graphics that makes it sure that you are using a gaming laptop. The FX504 also gets a red backlit keyboard that has a moderate amount of key travel, which is impressive for a membrane keyboard. The trackpad is sufficiently big and supports Windows 10 gestures.

The FX504 has a 15.6-inch LCD display with full HD display that supports a refresh rate of 120Hz. Users can spec it up to an 8th generation Core i7 processor and an NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti GPU with 4GB of DDR5 video memory. The FX504 is equipped with 8GB of DDR4 RAM as standard and a 1TB Firecuda Hybrid SSD + 128GB NVME PCI-E Gen3x4 SSD for storage. As for connectivity options, the FX504 featured all of the essential ports required by gamers — USB-A ports, Ethernet, HDMI and many others.

In our brief time with it, the TUF FX504 felt reasonably fast. We tried our hands at certain e-sports favourite titles such as DOTA 2 and PUBG. The laptop was comfortably hosting those games with high graphics settings, delivering healthy frame rates of above 60fps most of the times. We felt that the display has narrow viewing angles. We couldn’t put the laptop through its paces with some more resource-intensive titles. However, we will try that in our full review of the FX504.

ROG G703:

The G703 feels like a typical gaming laptop from ASUS’ ROG series. The G703 wears a robust outfit for a gaming laptop — a metal armour design with ASUS’ classic hairline brushed finish, with a backlit ROG logo stamped in the middle. Open the lid and you will be greeted with a familiar loud design language that you have come to expect from ASUS’ conventional ROG gaming laptops. There’s an RGB backlit keyboard along with a reasonably big trackpad. The laptop is noticeably heavy and thick; therefore, it’s advisable to look elsewhere if you want something more portable.

The G703 sports a 17.3-inch LCD display with a full HD resolution. The display sports a refresh rate of 144Hz and also supports NVIDA’s G-Sync with a response time of 3ms. However, the highlighting feature of the G703 is its brand new and extremely capable 8th generation Intel Core i9 processor that has been factory-overclocked up to 4.8GHz and is paired with up to 64GB of DDR4 memory. The graphics department is handled by an NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU. The laptop offers up to 2TB Firecuda + 3x 512GBPCIE Gen3x4 SSD as storage.

With such potent hardware onboard, the G703 can handle anything at the highest graphics without breaking a sweat. We tried some heavy titles such as Rise Of The Tomb Raider, PUBG, Forza Motorsport 7 and some others — all of them were yielding heavy frame rates at highest graphics settings. The Core i9’s extreme processing performance could be felt while playing these games. In fact, if you are looking for a run-it-all gaming laptop, the G703 definitely comes across a recommendation.

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