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FX504 owners?

Zeroed85
Level 8
I'm in the market for a new laptop. I have been researching for many weeks and am fairly confident the Asus FX504 is suitable. It's purpose is for a period of time I may be away from my desktop which will also provide a bit of enjoyable light gaming. The FX504 has the latest 8750H i7 which should provide a fairly long life. I was considering the Asus ROG GL503GE but I am just not willing to spend that much. Coming from a desktop with a high refresh G-Sync monitor the 120hz screen on the ROG GL503GE is hard to let go... I realize this is a fairly new release but are there any owners who can share their experience with this laptop or any users who would like to offer their opinion on this laptop? The reviews seem fairly positive, I just need to confirm whether the model I'm looking at has the IPS panel.
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KunalK
Level 7
I know Austin Evans made a review on this laptop basically taking a **** on it, but I'll be honest, he's not very accurate in that video because he's all like "theres better for a little more expensive" and kinda missed the point this laptop was going for. So here is my take:

I've handled several other series of laptops (alienware, MSI, ROG series, and Acer's Predators). They are all great laptops and not a single knock can be made on them so kudos to the manufacturers. Only thing is, not everyone wants to spend upwards of 1.3K on em so I get it and apparently ASUS did too. So lets go over what I like about this laptop.

Good:
I know people say "ugh if you don't go metallic what are you doing with your life" and "but its so pretty". First off, ya getting this laptop for the horsepower, not for the looks (I got black matter and honestly people can't seem to find a flaw in the design cuz its quite nice looking). Don't get too worried over looks, my recommendation is black matter and enjoy the nice little black and red combo.

5lbs isn't light. I'll say it again, 5lbs is not light. BUT, if this is the only thing you're carrying around or you have it with other stuff, THIS IS JUST ABOUT THE LIGHTEST GAMING LAPTOP (razer stealths aside) YOU CAN GET. HOLY HELL I HAVE HELD SOME BEEFY STUFF AND THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM. It's not gonna be the most slim or easiest to carry, but its not gonna break your back if you put it in a bag. I have put this in a bag on a trip abroad and it wasn't half bad to carry.

How it performs: I've had it for about a month. Works great. I switched from an ENVY series laptop and it feels sharp. Boot times are wonderful and just general speed is good. Also, I've noticed the cores tend to try and hit that 4.0 GHz mark more times than not so you are getting some oomph to it.

I went from a touchscreen ENVY to this laptop AND OH LORD IS IT WONDERFUL. That review by Austin Evans is really damn inaccurate considering that many laptops when turned to the side do that annoying thing you know I'm talking about. At low brightness you can tell but that's because its at low brightness. At mid range in a non-glare environment you can't even tell. At max brightness it looks crisp and nice. Obviously not 4K but thats what a desktop is for.

Questionable things:
Its rather thick. Thats all I have to say on that front. The weight doesn't represent the thickness though. Carrying it in one arm is quite feasible but of course, thickness.

Red on black doesn't make for a good natural keyboard contrast now does it ASUS. No worries though, you can keep the backlight on low and it'll work just fine.

Fan speed. If you don't like noisy fans, why the hell are you getting a gaming laptop. Most of them have thick fans that have to circle out air anyways. Other than that, they are rather loud ONLY if you have them on overboost and you are gaming, but if you wear headphones like me, they aren't noticeable (but maybe to the other people in the library :P). One good thing I have to give asus, since it uses a dual exhaust type style you'd find in cars, it works damn well to push the air away instead of keeping the heat under. With a nice, comfortable, cool room, you could stick your hand behind the grills while it is cranking out heat and feel it be comfortably warm I find.

Audio. I once had a laptop with Beats audio and another with harmon kardon. This doesn't compare. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT I have to give credit where credit is due and say that the audio speakers being on the side of the laptop is quite nice and while isn't all "surround sound" and stuff, its pleasant.

Things that won't appeal to 90% of people:

Ports. If this was a dock it would probably fit about 1 jetski in the laptop world. 1 HDMI, 1 audio jack, 3 USB. Thats all ye get. If I'm being honest, I'm used to it because I never had a laptop with a CD drive, and I haven't had any need for an SD card slot as of late since modern DSLR's have wifi connection straight to your phone and/or laptop but I can see not having an SD slot annoying. Also, the whole USB type C thing hasn't taken over the world so you are ok. The only thing I own with a type C port is my switch so far. It's useful, but the world isn't gonna break.

Battery life. You could get more battery off a lemon with wires. I can do random stuff like watch videos for about 4 hours on low power setting but everyone should know by now that you aren't gonna get a good battery off a gaming laptop lmao. Speaking of battery, if you are running an extremely powerful game PLUGGED IN, your laptop could be discharging.

Last thoughts. I paid an extra 100 off of the base 700$ price to get a 1050 TI with 4gbs of ram. There was a deal at the time and personally, it was well worth it. The TI over the regular doesn't matter that much but the extra 2gbs gives your computer a total of 12gbs of ram to work with (8 DDR4 and 4VRAM) and it CRANKS hard. Also I suggest getting a CPU heat monitoring program because the CPU can hit temps of 90 degrees celsius if you aren't handling it properly under intense loads. I find that you can manage it at 80 degrees on gaming sessions and that should be completely ok as it doesn't bottleneck the GHz output and keeps it at 3.7-3.9 (looking at you new macbook pro with I9 processor). It's been about 2 months since investing and I think it does ok, and for everyone who is tight on their wallet, it does what you want it to.

BTW I have the GE, so I have the i5-8300H but I also have the TI. Obviously in your case those i7-8750H would kill it so you'd be even more powerful but at the 1K asking price, I may look at the Acer Predator Helios 300 series.

Zeroed85
Level 8
@KunalK

Awesome write up! Cheers.

What design did you get? I'm really keen on the more subtle Black Matter or Premium Steel design, the Red Matter/Fusion with the red lines everywhere is a little too bold for me. Well I am rather pi#$% off because the ETA for FX504 in NZ is supposed to be the last week of July which is next week and now they're saying they won't arrive until the end of August!!

Maybe there is something a fraction lighter out there but generally it will not be a gaming laptop. The way you've described it it sounds very manageable. I suppose a thin form factor is desirable but there are not many notebooks especially gaming that are... Overall does the laptop feel solid? Not flimsy or cheap? I alway's think of Asus as solid.

These newer Coffeelake chips come with Speedshift which are supposed to make them a lot more responsive. I believe that's why they constantly hovering around the 4.0Ghz mark. There's no doubt I'd rather have one of these Coffeelake chips over the older Kabylake.

Some reviews mention that the screens RGB space isn't covered very well, well as long as it is IPS it should look good. I'm not colour critical anyway...

I do like RGB and I may miss it with the static red but I dunno, we're starting to talk high end desktop features and this is just a laptop..

I'm not sure how unique the anti dust cooling system is but if it is unique to Asus there is an advantage there it has over others. I probably can't comment on fan noise without seeing in person. What about the wasd keys, there supposed to fan under them, do you feel it? Does it keep your hand dry? lol.

At least there is 7.1 ch audio for gaming, that's nice. Is there any software for configuring that? Battery life isn't anything exciting but 4 hours isn't too bad.

For some reason it doesn't look like we are getting any FX504 with the 1050Ti rather just the 1050. It is disappointing considering the over pricing we pay in NZ but I suppose I will have to be content. It's still a 4GB 1050 though... The Acer Predator Helios 300 is actually still $500-600 over the i7 8750 FX504 here in NZ so that's off the cards. There's not much really to compare to the Asus FX504 line in it's price range, particularly the i7 8750H model, I think a couple of Dell and Acer models but the Asus definitely sticks out to me and I think I am making the right decision. Your comments are very helpful, thanks!

@Zeroed85

I got black matter and it looks really smooth and clean so I'd recommend that one but premium steel also looks really cool.

The laptop itself really does give you confidence with it's build quality. It is a plastic body but it feels sturdy nonetheless. I can even accidentally bump the screen on something or press it down and it really feels like ASUS did a solid job with the chassis. Of course, only about 2 months of experience so need to really just mess around with the thing more to understand it's capabilities but I feel confident.

Oh yeah these chips are absolutely wonderful. Right now I'm checking at what heat it starts to dip but as of right now I don't see it happening.

No worries about the screen, and right now as I type this up I realize that sunlight really does illuminate the keyboard quite well so you don't even need the backlight. I'm also noticing that I have the screen at about half brightness and its doing a rather good job at keeping the screen crisp and not glarey.

OH MY GOD IS THE FAN UNDER THE WASD KEYS A FEATURE I THOUGHT IT WAS A DESIGN LIMITATION 😮 when you put your hand over the general qwerty area and the fan is going full it feels REALLY damn nice.

So for audio it comes with DTS audio and Windows Sonic. You can get dolby atmos but thats paid 😛 but since windows does a rather decent job with the DTS and some tinkering with its built in EQ, audio should be quite nice. Also DTS comes with preset audio settings for certain headphones you may have like some Sennheiser headphones.

Ah damn I live in the US so for us the Helios 300 is about a little bit off the 1060 price for the FX504. A shame that y'all don't have the option for the TI because it really does give that nice little boost. Either way, the 4GBs of ram is really the more important part because the base FX504 with the 1050 2GBs is pretty limiting for future graphics intensive things.

No worries my friend! Hopefully you find as much enjoyment with your laptop as much as I have with mine.

Also, for reference, the laptop likes it if you play plugged in as it's able to direct power as many gaming laptops do. I play a lot of Warframe and I'm able to put it at max settings graphics and I get about 80-90 FPS with about 5-6 ms time differential from human input into game. I do have the TI so it's a bit different. I also used fortnite as a benchmark and could set to nearly max settings with stable FPS (I forgot how much but its good). If you play unplugged the computer likes to throttle fps to save battery depending on how you set it (but thats the settings for unplugged out the box and you can change it).

EDIT 1: NEW DISCOVERIES 😄
So apparently 2 things I figured out.
One: if for any reasons you have issues with this stupid new fancy wifi card just redownload the drivers. Also the BIOS is incredibly intuitive.
Two: If you set the computer to power saving mode, the GPU speed will dip below 2.3 GHz and even go to 1.0 GHz to prioritize battery.

Zeroed85
Level 8
I like the premium steel too but I doubt we'll get that one here. As long as I get Black Matter. Glad to hear build quality is solid.

Wow yeah fans under the wasd, that must be a first. I'm definitely interested to see this! Especially in summer to prevent sweating hands, excellent!

DTS is the one that comes with many onboard mobo sound chips I think right? Before I got a soundblaster sound card I used it and it was pretty good. You don't get any interference noise anywhere do you? The reason I got a soundblaster sound card was because my GPU was sending horrible noise through the audio circuit, might have been coil whine.

I will inquire about the 1050ti, it seems unusual to not get any models with it. It makes sense to have it plugged in for more demanding games, the battery just wouldn't have enough juice and will go into power saving anyway by the sounds of it.

The laptop sounds great, just still waiting on the arrival 😕 There are some Red Matter models here but I really want Black Matter or Premium Steel.

3 days ago I bought FX504G for my wife.
ASUS TUF GAMING FX504GE_FX80GE Black Metal, black aluminium and Asus logo turn red when laptop is started. Very good quality.
i5 8300H 2.3 GHz up to 4.0 GHz
Nvd 1050Ti 4gb
Display 120 Mz ???
1TB FireCuda Solid State Hybrid Drive

We play Diablo 3, WoW, BnS.
Test with Diablo 3 high resolution - smooth, no lag, no freeze, but area around the ENTER is very hot.
The problem may be in incorrect Nvidia control panel settings or Geforce Experience game optimize settings.
Noise - normal. Compared to my Alienware 17 R5 is very quiet.
DTS Audio - Sound is good.
Display - good quality and good reaction

Issues with displey refresh rate.
The vendor said the display supports 120 Mz refresh rate, but it actually show 60 Mz.
Problem with drivers or Win 10 ? The lockal support said to reinstall win 10 or reinstall all drivers.

I recommend.

I Really understand the pain. I have been facing this issue on my FX504GD for 3 months. After doing several attempts, reinstalling drivers, undervolting etc. Somehow it worked fine today. It works perfectly now. Gives me a huge boost in FPS in every game (aabout 25+). Can you give me the screenshot of Power Options- High Performance(Change plan settings)- Advance power settings- processor power management - Expand both Minimum power and maximum power state and upload the screenshot. I may help you guys get your boi back, because I tweaked some settings in this window and I would like to see if this was the problem of all that stuttering.

Gration_Roshan_
Level 7
If you are buying the lap fx504 for gaming please dont i have bought this lap and used around for 6 months everything works fine accept gaming any game i play after a few hours or sec or min it hard freezes you cant do anything but hold the power button to turn off the lap and restart it .It always happens randomly when it hard freezes the airplane led turns on i have seen many complaints of this in other forum but there were no solutions for it honestly its very disappointing to spend soo much and not being able to play games in my lap. Asus is doing nothing to fix the issue so you better go for another laptop.