Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAwesome laptop
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2018
I just received my new laptop and wanted to post some initial thoughts on it as this is my second ASUS gaming laptop. I already own a 2 year old ROG one running the 7th gen Intel I7 with the GTX 1050ti card (4gb). That laptop has pretty much run everything my kids play on it like Fortnite, Fallout 4, modded minecraft and lots of Steam games running near max resolutions. I was needing a new laptop for myself but figured I would get another gaming one so my two kids aren’t fighting over the other laptop. I immediately looked at ASUS since my first one has been solid. The current lineup of ROG options seemed to only have the 1050ti option unless I went to a 17” screen and spent way too much money on it. Then I found this TUF gaming edition. Running the 8th gen I7 and a 6gb 1060….hard to pass up at this price. So I took a chance.
Botting up the first time and waling through the painful Cortana setup, I was finally up and running. The laptop seems to come with minimal bloatware. It has some but the screen isn’t covered with useless apps like my old Dell. I began downloading the various games and then let me younger son have at it for a while. He mostly stayed with Fortnite and it ran perfectly with whatever default settings it chose. The screen is beautiful. Probably one of the best laptop displays I have seen. It makes the 2 year old ROG one look terrible even though that screen is very nice. The sound coming out of the laptop speakers was also very nice. Was shocked at how well they worked as I find laptop speakers to be horrible. Normally my kids play with headphones but this was more of a testing period.
My older ROG is loud when being used. Lots of fans to keep it cool. You get used to it but it is loud. The TUF, while not quiet, is much better. You can hear the fans kick on and off but it is nowhere near as bad. I haven’t done much testing on heat yet but can post that later. I know the ROG gets hot. Even the power supply on the cord gets really hot when it use.
I couldn’t really tell why the TUF edition costs so much less than the ROG. But after getting it I do see that it is not as “fancy” as the ROG. The cover still lights up on top with ASUS but it lacks the fancier light up flame things. The keyboard only lights up in red vs multi for the ROG. It is apparently missing some ports that come on the new ROG but is in line with my older ROG. At the end of the day, what matters are the components. Seeing the TUF has the 1060 with more RAM and the same processor, I would think it is just as good, if not better. I have no regrets for getting this.
Will post up any new findings if I have any.
