Asus TUF A15 FA506 with AMD Renoir SoC offers great value for its price

With the TUF A15 FA506, Asus has a competitively-priced gaming laptop with fast hardware components on offer. Due to the plain plastic design, the visuals of the device are rather dull, although the manufacturer has tried to alleviate this by enhancing the case with a few visual highlights. Unfortunately, this has not changed the feel of the laptop. Despite the material choice, the device is not lacking in terms of rigidity. Meanwhile, it is also fairly lightweight at just 2.2 kg (~4.85 lbs). Compared to its competition, this does not represent an advantage however, since many other 15-inch laptops weigh about the same. It is also worth mentioning that all external ports with the exception of one can be found on the left side. This includes a Type-C port with DisplayPort support, which is a nice addition. Conversely, we are disappointed with the lack of an SD card reader. That being said, the Asus TUF A15 FA506 still offers a sufficient number of USB ports for most users. The installed IPS display is another factor which shows that Asus has created this device for gamers, since gaming at 144 Hz is significantly more enjoyable than on a traditional 60-Hz panel. However, the latter is an option as well. As a result, prospective buyers would be well-advised to carefully read the fineprint in order to avoid disappointments.

At the laptop's core, there is a brand-new AMD Ryzen 7 4800H CPU with 8 cores and 16 threads. This SoC outperforms the Intel Core i7-10875H in multi-threaded workloads. However, AMD still has some catching-up to do in order to reach the single-thread performance of its Intel counterpart. AMD has already shown that it is up to the task. The 3D performance represents an essential part of every gaming laptop. In this regard, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 is a safe choice, which our benchmarks also confirm. There are no higher-end GPU options with faster 3D performance for the TUF A15 FA506 for now. However, more price-conscious buyers may choose GeForce GTX GPUs, which offer good performance as well.

There are not really any glaring weaknesses with this laptop. Instead, we have small complaints that can be partially addressed through certain upgrade options. While 8 GB of system memory is not a huge amount to work with, it can be upgraded to up to 32 GB. In terms of mass storage, there is only a 512GB SSD. Considering some modern games can take up 150 GB or more, the drive can fill up very quickly. The storage can be upgraded as well. The laptop supports up to 3 internal mass storage drives. Furthermore, we criticize the display's poor color space coverage, although this may not be a big issue in light of the device's intended purpose and its price.