After doing some research on laptops, I was looking for something that could fairy reasonably replace my desktop build (not exact as the Desktop runs a 16 core / 32 thread CPU, and an RTX 3090) at least good enough that the tradeoff between mobility and performance would balance out.
My price limit was $1500, and Macs were out, because their gaming capabilities are weak overall, and they cannot emulate Windows Server operating Systems. Maybe in the future all that will change, but for now it’s a Windows world.
I wanted the device to be upgradeable, as I didn’t want the machine to be stuck at whatever generic specs Best Buy had in stock, so I wanted a 2nd Drive slot and removable RAM sticks, as well as Wi-Fi and BT Upgradeable options.
I decided to give the budget friendly TUF FX507ZI4 Best Buy configuration (more on that later, as that is a turnoff for some).
I do not usually do this much testing, but there were so many questions regarding the laptop, that I decided to see if I could answer them. I used a noise level meter for the sound, my LG C2 OLED to verify the HDMI Port, while using HWINFO to find the panel model and specs of the LCD. Everything else that was tested was purely using web resources or scripts I personally wrote.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Best Buy Configuration
• Single 1 TB M.2 Drive
• 16 Gigs of RAM (DDR4 3200)
• Intel AX201 Intel Wi-Fi / BT 5.2 LE Module (Wi-Fi 6 Dual Band)
My Hardware Upgrades
• Secondary 2 TB M.2 Drive (Samsung 980 Pro)
• 64 Gigs of RAM (DDR4 3200)
• Intel AX210 Intel Wi-Fi / BT 5.3 LE Module (Wi-Fi 6E Tri-Band)
Most of the troubleshooting and testing were done before upgrading anything.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The Issues I ran into really centered around power efficiency as I couldn’t figure out how a CPU with 8 Efficiency Cores, 6 Performance Cores, and 6 Virtual Cores, had such poor battery life on a 90-Watt Hour Battery when the GPU was set to use Nvidia Optimus and switch between GPUs (probably the biggest battery you will find in a laptop)
I was getting less than 4 hours on battery and the performance was stuttering a lot at times. Digging in, I started to try different settings in the Armory Crate and the first success I had was tweaking the core configuration of the CPU (but I found a more permanent solution) …
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Below are the configurations I tried and the results, all of which had the Discrete GPU (RTX 4070) enabled. I am basically looking for the best battery life I can get for everyday office and coding apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Chrome, Edge, VS Code, or Visual Studio) as gaming will be plugged in most times.
6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores = Less Than 4 Hours of Battery Life
4 P-Cores, 4 E-Cores = 6 Hours of Battery Life
5 P-Cores, 5 E-Cores = 5 Hours of Battery Life
6 P-Cores, 2 E-Cores = 5 Hours of Battery Life
6 P-Cores, 0 E-Cores = 10 to 11 Hours of Battery Life
The next two I tested were with the Discrete GPU disabled (ECO Mode).
6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores = Less Than 9.5 Hours of Battery Life
6 P-Cores, 0 E-Cores = 8.5 Hours of Battery Life
_____________________________________________________________________________________
This really doesn’t make any sense, but for now I think I’ll just keep the CPU running on full settings and utilize the ECO Mode to disable the discrete GPU when not plugged in and gaming. It is just easier to sacrifice the extra 1 to 1.5 hours of battery so I don’t have to reboot the machine to park the E-Cores.
The other issue, Speakers are not very loud and that’s kind of an issue, although it isn’t the worst I’ve heard and I do tend to use the laptop with headphones, it clearly does not live up to those found in the MacBook Pro that’s for sure and I have yet to find a PC with that quality anyway. Fortunately for me, when gaming this isn’t an issue as the laptop is pretty much docked and I use a pair of higher quality PreSonus monitors.
These were really the only issues I ran into with the laptop and one is a pretty easy fix through Armory Crate.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Another method I used to optimize the laptop was to create Armory Crate profiles and tie them to the various types of apps and games where I wanted the laptop to run on max or silent profiles. By doing this it will change the settings to performance for gaming and Silent energy efficient setups for Office Applications and the like. The laptop was tested with these settings, so they factored in to the optimal battery life of the unit.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
A little bit of information regarding the hardware…
LCD Panel - AU Optronics LCD Panel that is capable of roughly 93% sRGB, 144 Hz, and 300 Nits of Peak brightness (That is plenty bright enough for most use cases, some might want better but this is the bare minimum)
Discrete GPU – RTX 4070 with 8 Gigs of RAM and up to 8 Gigs of System RAM allocated for use. The laptop uses Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus with a Mux Switch for better battery management.
Ports – HDMI 2.1 (4K 120 Hz Compliant) and Thunderbolt 4 (Works for both Power Delivery and Display Out) are the most notable
The HDMI Port is fully 2.1 Compliant and capable of 4K at 120 Hz, and it has a full Thunderbolt 4 port that can be used to power the laptop as well as outputting to a display at resolutions greater than 4K.
Fan Noise Levels – Silent Mode 39 decibels, Performance Mode 46.5 decibels, and Turbo Mode (under full load) 57.5 decibels.
Wi-Fi - delivers between 400 and 500 Mbps download speeds and between 200 and 300 upload speeds on a 1 Gig fiber connection.
Primary Disk Speed – 3701.52 Mbps Read Speed and 2641.74 Mbps Write Speed
The lid is made of metal and beveled for increased durability. The bottom is a rigid plastic that also feels very good, and the keyboard has very little flexing so it’s very pleasant to type on for long periods of time, even if the 10 key does leave it slightly off centered.
The hardware is coated for resistance to antimicrobial elements and Viruses, considering the recent Pandemic, this is actually a very good idea.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
One word of caution, Asus requires the laptop be open when running graphics intensive games and applications, as doing otherwise might void the warranty.
Now regarding the Best Buy spec for the laptop… Best Buy has been rumored to work with these OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to configure the laptops that reduce cost and optimize profit, and while they’re not usually bad laptops, they tend to be slightly different specs compared to the models you’ll find in other retail outlets.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I would love to see Asus fix the CPU optimization issues and maybe upgrade the speakers in future models, but overall, I’m happy with the basic functionality of the machine because it is very good at gaming and very fast for everything else when you need it to be. Could the screen be better? Sure, it could, but I’m not disappointed with it as it is and 300 nits is fine for day-to-day work (Besides, my external display is a higher resolution OLED with a thousand nits of peak brightness).
Anyway, there are no perfect laptops, and this one will take some tweaking to get it tuned how you want it to. I don’t find the tweaking all that bad and honestly the tools seem adequate to get the job done.
In the end, if you’re not into gaming, don’t want to tweak the laptop to get the best battery life, and you’re good with money, then you’re probably somebody that would want a MacBook Pro over this. If you’re a PC Gamer, or somebody looking for a powerful midsized laptop that won’t bankrupt you, then this is a very good option for the price and I’m not so sure you’ll find anything better for under $2000.