Asus FX550IU (FX-9830P, Radeon RX 460) Laptop Review

There is nothing particularly special about the size or dimensions of the system. Like most budget notebooks in its class, the FX550 makes no attempt at being the thinnest or lightest and thus weighs about the same as others at around 2.5 kg. Nonetheless, the Asus FX family is noticeably thicker than many modern gaming notebook designs at about 31 mm compared to 27 mm or less on the Sabre 15, Inspiron 15 7567, or Omen 15.

Serviceability is limited to one HDD bay and one DDR4 SODIMM slot via a small hatch on the bottom of the notebook. Removing the entire bottom panel is more difficult and is not detailed in the manual. This is unfortunate because the notebook houses 2x HDD bays and only one is easily accessible.

Keyboard

The non-backlit keyboard is mostly comfortable to use due to the firm feedback of the main QWERTY keys. A major drawback is that clatter is louder than on other Ultrabooks and gaming notebooks for a noisier typing experience. The NumPad keys are smaller than the main QWERTY keys and are noticeably softer in feedback since they sit directly above the hollow would-be optical bay. Perhaps a more inflexible chassis would have led to a more even feel across all keys.

No macro keys or dedicated keyboard software are included.

Touchpad

The integrated clickpad (10.5 x 7.5 cm) is slightly smaller than the clickpads on both the XPS 15 (10.5 x 8.5 cm) and Sabre 15 (10.2 x 5.8 cm). In practice, however, we find the surface area to be sufficient for simple scrolling and multi-touch inputs. Cursor control is smooth and reliable with no jittering even at slow speeds. Unfortunately, the firm texture-less plastic surface provides poor gliding for oily or sweaty fingers and feels low budget to the touch. Expect a sheen of grease to buildup over time. 

The integrated mouse keys are shallow in travel with loud and firm feedback when pressed. Pushing down on the trackpad requires quite a bit of force unless if the finger is along the very bottom edge of the surface. Thus, we find it much less tiring (and definitely quieter) to simply tap on the surface for inputting mouse clicks.

The Asus Smart Gesture software is able to recognize up to four-finger inputs with support for Mobile Control when connected to a smartphone.

Color coverage is poor at just 35 percent and 55 percent of the AdobeRGB and sRGB standards, respectively. Colors are not as deep or saturated when compared to the IPS panels found on most modern Ultrabooks. If a wider gamut is desired, then a budget gaming notebook like the FX550 is definitely not the right place to look.

Further measurements with an X-Rite spectrophotometer reveal very inaccurate colors and an overly cool color temperature. There is an obvious blue tint commonly observed on cheap budget notebooks. Our calibration efforts improve grayscale and colors dramatically and we highly recommend applying our ICM color profile in order to get the most out of the display. The muddy blacks and grays when gaming or during video playback are unfortunately unavoidable due to the average contrast.

Outdoor visibility is poor because of the narrow TN viewing angles and dim backlight. Colors and texts appear washed out and difficult to comfortably see even when on the maximum brightness setting. The hinges allow for a wide lid angle of up to 160 degrees, but this pairs rather poorly with the aforementioned limited viewing angles.

CPU performance is comparable to the low-end Skylake Core i3-6100U and Kaby Lake Core i3-7100U found on some entry-level mainstream systems. When considering that this is the best quad-core Bristol Bridge has to offer for notebooks, overall processor performance is very poor for a budget gaming notebook. Single-core performance is especially poorer than expected as even an i5-7200U can outperform our Asus by about 30 percent according to CineBench R15. The FX-9830P is still faster than the abysmal A10-9620P and A12-9720P in all cases, but certainly not by as much as we were hoping.

CPU performance is steady as shown by our looping CineBench R15 Multi-Thread scores below. This doesn't mean that clock rates are perfectly flat, however, as our Stress Test section will detail. Clock rates fluctuate between 3.2 GHz and 3.5 GHz rapidly enough that performance can be considered smooth over time.

See our dedicated CPU page on the FX-9830P for more technical information and benchmark comparisons.

PCMark consistently ranks our AMD Asus below other gaming notebooks equipped with GTX 1050 graphics. The differences in scores only grow larger when running the newer PCMark 10 benchmark. Subjectively, navigating through the operating system is smooth and without issues, but applications (and especially games) take noticeably longer to launch due to the weaker processing power.

According to 3DMark Fire Strike, the RX 460 in our Asus laptop is 11 percent slower than our reference RX 460 desktop setup. Much of the performance discrepancy can be attributed to the slower clock speed and memory speed on our mobile RX 460 when under load. While the mobile GPU is rated for 1180 MHz to be similar to the 1200 MHz RX 460 desktop, actual clock rates will fluctuate between 866 MHz and 1045 MHz on our Asus notebook.

Raw graphics performance from our mobile RX 460 sits comfortably between the Kepler GTX 960M and GTX 965M. In other words, AMD's budget Polaris 11 offering is roughly equivalent to Nvidia's mid-range offering from the last generation. When compared to the current Pascal lineup, however, the RX 460 is significantly behind in both performance and performance-per-Watt. The increasingly common GTX 1050 outperforms the RX 460 by about 20 to 25 percent.

See our review on the desktop RX 460 for more information on the Polaris series.

We stress the notebook with unrealistic benchmark loads to test for potential stability or throttling issues. When running Prime95 to stress the CPU, the FX-9830P can be observed alternating between 3.2 GHz and 3.5 GHz in quick succession compared to the base 3.0 GHz clock rate. It's strange that clock rate is not steady at some intermediate value like 3.3 GHz or 3.4 GHz instead of jumping between 3.2 GHz and 3.5 GHz, though this could be for performance reasons. Otherwise, core temperature remains relatively cool at a steady 66 C.

GPU stress with FurMark is less stable in terms of performance. Since the cooling solution is small and shared evenly across the CPU and discrete GPU, the CPU can reach temperatures warmer than 66 C at up to 85 C and will climb back and forth between the two temperatures. Meanwhile, GPU clock rates can range from 546 MHz to 866 MHz in response to the continuous rise and fall of the CPU temperature. GPU temperature is otherwise steady throughout the test. Having GPU performance tied down by CPU temperature is definitely not an ideal condition for a gaming notebook.

Maximum stress (Prime95 + FurMark) will heavily throttle both CPU and GPU clock rates. The CPU will alternate between 1.4 GHz and 3.5 GHz while the GPU can range from as low as 326 MHz up to 866 MHz. CPU and GPU temperatures remain steady at 77 C and 74 C, respectively.

Running Witcher 3 is more representative of real-world gaming loads. When under such conditions, the CPU can be observed maintaining a steady 3.5 GHz clock rate and 75 C core temperature. In contrast, the RX 460 will fluctuate between 866 MHz and 1045 MHz instead of holding steady at 1045 MHz or higher. Our graph below shows frame rates steadily falling over time from 35 FPS to around 29 FPS because the GPU is only able to maintain high clock rates of 1097 MHz for the first few minutes or so before reaching a slower steady state. GPU temperature remains acceptably cool at 74 C.

Running on battery power will throttle CPU and GPU performances. A 3DMark Fire Strike run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 2337 and 3895 points, respectively, compared to 3234 and 5062 points when on mains.

The system fan is always active no matter the load. At its quietest, fan noise is barely audible at about 30 dB(A) and light tasks may bump this up to 33 dB(A). The fan is more likely to stabilize at 33 dB(A) if on the High Performance profile and so we recommend running on Power Saver if noise is a concern. Fortunately, fan RPM will not pulsate frequently during use.

Medium load with 3DMark06 will bump fan noise to a steady 41.6 dB(A) and gaming load will be even noisier at 43.7 dB(A). While still very load, the system is no louder than most notebooks with GTX 1050 graphics and is even quieter than the newer Asus FX553 or Sabre 15. Max-Q notebooks are both quieter and more powerful, but they currently retail for over twice the price of our FX550UI.

Surface temperature measurements reveal that the left half of the notebook will become warmer than the right half when under load conditions. This behavior is not unusual for notebooks with optical drives. Higher-end gaming notebooks tend to favor symmetrically arranged fans and heat pipes for more even temperature development. As shown by our temperature maps below, users can expect the center of the keyboard to be significantly warmer than the rest of the notebook during medium or higher loads at up to 47 C. At the very least, the palm rests and NumPad should never become uncomfortably warm.

Sound quality is not bad for a budget gaming notebook. There is an apparent lack of bass as expected from most notebooks without dedicated subwoofers and treble is overemphasized at higher volume settings. Other 15.6-inch notebooks like the XPS 15 or Legion Y520 have wider pink noise curves that extend to lower frequencies for better bass reproduction. We can otherwise observe no static or major chassis vibrations from audio playback. Headphones are still recommended when gaming due to the relatively loud fan noise.