The Asus TUF Gaming A15 line has been one of our favorite budget gaming laptops with every release, and the Asus TUF FA506NF-ES51 doesn’t stray from the tradition – despite cutting a few corners necessary to keep it affordable. Asus has kept refining the design with every release and beefing up the internal components.
The 2024 models have received faster components, namely the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS processor. However, both models still use the previous-gen Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics card, while most gaming laptops released this year use Nvidia’s RTX 40-series cards.
We reviewed the Asus TUF Gaming A15 FA506NC-ES51 with an AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS processor, RTX 3050, 8GB RAM, and 512GB SSD and liked it for the day-long battery life and decent gaming performance for the price.
The Asus TUF Gaming A15 FA506NF-ES51 in this review shares the same processor, memory and storage but features an older Nvidia RTX 2050 graphics card – meaning it costs much less than the model we reviewed a few weeks ago. Does that impact gaming performance? Let’s find out!
About the Asus TUF FA506NF-ES51
We reviewed the Asus TUF FA506NF-ES51 with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050 graphics card and a Ryzen 5 processor, one of the Asus TUF Gaming A15’s base configurations:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS
- Memory: 8GB RAM
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Display: 15.6-inch 1080p resolution at 144Hz
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050
- Wireless: WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
- Weight: 7.74 pounds
- Dimensions: 14.13 x 0.9 x 10.08 inches
Design & Features
The Asus TUF Gaming A15 range always has this military-inspired design, and the 2024 version keeps that tradition: it has a molded lid that looks like it’s crafted to withstand all the shoves and pushes of daily use, and you’ll find edges with utilitarian air vents alongside numerous TUF logos. Some of us may find the military design immature, but it doesn’t look awful either.
Most of the TUF’s physical connectivity ports are on the left side. It comes with two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C ports with one handling DisplayPort, and the left panel also holds a full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, an HDMI output, and the audio and Ethernet jacks. That’s decent connectivity, but faster USB ports would be better. On the inside, there’s dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, alongside a basic 720p webcam. There isn’t a fingerprint or card reader, however.
With a 15.6-inch body, the FA506NF-ES51 has room for a number pad, and the keyboard has fast response and quiet buttons. They’re good enough for eSports gaming and are firmer than the Acer Nitro 5’s soft keys. That’s not to say the TUF Gaming A15’s keyboard is perfect. The buttons are wobbly and the underlying plastic is soft – for the price, we expected a sturdier feel.
The key layout also needs some work: while you get a number pad and extra audio buttons, you’ll have to do with small cursor keys and a single-height Return button. Also, while it does offer RGB LEDs, it’s got single-zone lighting without much customization.
Below the keyboard is a touchpad that’s large enough, but its buttons are soft and uneven. A USB gaming mouse would be better if you’re gaming casually on this machine.
Display
The 15.6-inch IPS display pairs its 1920 x 1080 resolution with a decent 144Hz rate – both of those figures are an upgrade over last year’s model.
The display’s peak brightness of 300 nits is good enough to provide good levels of depth and punch, while the contrast ratio offers well-saturated and accurate colors. With 72% NTSC and 3ms response time add to the laptop’s impressive features for both gaming and productivity tasks.
Those are fantastic specs for a midrange gaming machine, and they mean your games will look excellent. The TUF Gaming A15’s panel is comfortably better than the Acer Nitro 5’s screen, which suffers from poor color quality and gamut coverage.
Perhaps the only issue here is the 300 nits level of peak brightness. While that’s fine for indoor use, it’s still not high enough for outdoor use. However, for eSports fans, that’s remedied by 300Hz, which is more than what you’d need for mainstream competitions.
The speakers have a surprising number of bass and volume, but the top end is fairly tinny. They’re acceptable if you have no other choices, but a headset will be better.
Performance
As mentioned at the onset of this review, what particularly excites about the TUF FA506NF-ES51 is its choice of components for the price, which includes some capable parts from both AMD and Nvidia.
In the CPU department, the TUF Gaming A15 features the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS, a refresh of the old Ryzen 5 6600HS / 6600H with a 50 MHz higher boost clock, designed for midrange gaming laptops and integrates six of eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. It’s not quite the flagship mobile processor from AMD (that’ll be the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X), but the Gaming A15 isn’t attempting to be a flagship laptop. The much it’s attempting to be is a laptop that offers a blend of performance and value, and that justifies Asus’ choice of the 7535HS.
This is paired with an Nvidia RTX 2050 GPU. Again, this isn’t a flagship GPU, but it’s an ok 1080p performer for budget machines, making it an acceptable choice for this class of gaming laptops. It’s one of Nvidia’s more affordable GPUs, but still offers good performance, including ray tracing on supported games, and with 4GB of memory this is a smart choice for a laptop that needs to be cheaper than a flagship smartphone.
The rest of the specification is reasonable: you get 8GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory and a 512GB SSD with fine everyday read and write speeds of 3,145MB/s and 2,072MB/s.
The TUF Gaming A15’s RTX 2050 offers more shaders (2,048) than the old GeForce RTX 2060 mobile in the Acer Nitro 5 but runs on a greatly reduced memory bus (64-bit). As such, you expect the TUF A15 to deliver better gaming performance than the Nitro 5 on most titles. The same is reflected in real-world gaming, where the A15 maintains the lead in Far Cry 6, with its 1080p High average of 44 fps, while the Nitro 5 came at 37 fps in the same game.
At 1080p high settings, the Asus FA506NF-ES51 averages 54 fps on Forza Horizon 5, but it drops to 21fps in Ultra settings. It even runs Cyberpunk 2077 2.1 Phantom Liberty at 1080p with an impressive 23fps, which isn’t surprising considering this is a punishing title for even high-end GPUs.
This machine will run any single-player game at 1080p, and you’ll have to dial back the quality levels in the toughest titles if you want to hit 30fps averages. This machine comes with extra performance modes, but they’re inconsistent. Turbo mode adds a couple of frames to benchmark results while creating loads of extra noise, so it’s worth using it with a headset.
With less intensive games, like Fortnite or CS: Go, you’re going to be able to take advantage of the 144Hz screen for fast and responsive gameplay.
Battery Life
Asus delivers surprisingly good battery results with the latest A15. On typical use with brightness reduced to 120 nits, the Asus lasts nine hours and it even cracks eleven hours of video playback.
If you decide to push the hardware harder or increase screen brightness, then expect those figures to decline, but you can use this laptop for a full working day in moderation. For gaming, don’t expect anything over three hours, which is typical for most gaming laptops.
Asus TUF FA506NF-ES51 Review: Verdict
The Asus TUF FA506NF-ES51 has all the gaming and productivity performance you’d expect from a laptop at this price.
Asus’ machine performs better than similar-specced models such as the Acer Nitro 5 with the AMD Ryzen 5 chip making it more impressive for esports gamers. Whether you’re playing Valheim or working on a research project, this laptop will handle power-hungry tasks with ease. The springy keyboard and durable chassis are welcome extras. For under $700, this Asus TUF Gaming A15 is a great machine for certain gamers. However, I still feel that the RTX 2050 graphics card is beginning to get dated and difficult to fully recommend.
The Acer Nitro V (2024 model) is better value, offering an RTX 4050 GPU, a 13th generation Intel Core i5-13420H processor, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage for almost the same price. It’s not the most powerful laptop around, but it offers a better, high-refresh esports experience, and the screen is good enough for the occasional movie.