Since the Asus K501UX release this laptop has brought the attention of the tech and gaming community for its hardware setup and acessible price. But is it truly a good gaming laptop?
The ASUS K501UX release took place in the second half of 2015 and was one of the first ASUS laptops to come with the latest generation of Intel processors dubbed “Skylake” promising low levels of energy consumption with an increased performance.
ASUS K501UX Hardware Specs
At the first glance, the ASUS K501UX sounds very impressive as it has an i7 skylake processor. But the processor itself is the i7-6500U which is a dual core processor, and despite being an Intel i7, it has actually an inferior benchmark of other i5 processors, as we can check here. The i5-6300HQ has a higher benchmark rate than the i7-6500u, which can be understood partially considering the fact it is a quad core.
That doesn’t mean however that the i7-6500u is a bad processor, it is in fact a powerful processor with a low energy consumption for its processing capacity.
The ASUS K501UX also comes with a NVIDIA GTX 950M videocard, 8GB ram and a 256GB SSD card, this combination of components, especially the SSD, will allow you to benefit from a very intuitive and fast daily use of this laptop, as solid state drives use a much faster technology than hard drive disks.
To summarize, the ASUS K501UX is an excellent choice if you are looking for a laptop for the average daily use, to work on your academic projects, video streaming and office work, however, if you plan to use it for extremely complex tasks, we will have to analyse the ASUS K501UX deeper to understand whether it meets the requirements you are looking for.
ASUS K501UX as a Gaming Laptop
To analyze the ASUS K501UX for gaming, I decided to point firstly the positive sides of this laptop, as the the negatives ones are always more sensitive.
It has a backlit keyboard with 3 levels of brightness, it might be a irrelevant detail for some, but for me, a full time laptop, it definitely influences in the level of comfort I have with the laptop. The 256GB SSD and the lack of a HDD will guarantee less weight, faster booting and game loading, but will have very little effect on in game performance.
To analyze how good it can run some games, I decided to check the minimum requirements for some of the best selling PC games in 2015 and match them with the ASUS K501UX specs:
Grand Theft Auto V: it recommends at least a PC with an AMD Phenom 9850 processor, which has a benchmark value of 2915, far less than the i7-6200u delivers. It also requires a minimum of 4GB ram, no problems here.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO): This game is rather light compared to most of the newest PC released, requiring just 2GB ram and a the rather obsolete Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, the K501UX should nail it with the best possible settings.
Fallout 4: Things start to get tricky here, despite the fact Fallout 4 RAM requirements are matched with the K501UX, in terms of processor, we can read here that the i7-5200u has a benchmark that sits on the edge to run Fallout 4.
ASUS K501UX veredict
After this analysis, I would definitely buy an ASUS K501UX for everyday use, some gaming and to use some graphic editor or sound production software, but if you know yourself, and you consider that the main use of your laptop is gaming, you should maybe consider spending a few more bucks to get a laptop with an i7-6700HQ processor.
But, I must add that, if you like just a specific number of games, and you know their minimum requirements, even if you are a gamer, the ASUS K501UX might be the ideal laptop for you!
Buying the ASUS K501UX
This ASUS laptop is widely available in the US, Asia and Europe, and I would like to point that the main different between the K501UX and the K501LX is the processor. Being the K501UX newer, it is also the more logical choice.
ASUS K501UX in the US – Amazon
Powerful 6th-generation Intel Core i7-6500U 2.5GHz (Turbo up to 3.1GHz). Skylake
15.6 inches Matte FHD display. 1920 by 1080 resolution. Windows 10 Operation System.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M gaming graphic card; 8GB RAM; 256GB SSD Storage. Backlit keyboard.
Gigabit Dual-Band 802.11AC ultra-fast Wi-Fi.
Feature 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI. Bluetooth 4.0.
1 year International Warranty with 1 year Accidental Damage Protection
Click here to buy your ASUS laptop from Amazon.
ASUS K501UX in the UK and Europe – Amazon.co.uk
Powerful 6th-generation Intel Core i7-6500U 2.5GHz (Turbo up to 3.1GHz). Skylake
15.6 inches Matte FHD display. 1920 by 1080 resolution. Windows 10 Operation System.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M gaming graphic card; 8GB RAM; 256GB SSD Storage. Backlit keyboard.
US QWERTY Keyboard. Gigabit Dual-Band 802.11AC ultra-fast Wi-Fi. Feature 2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x HDMI. Bluetooth 4.0.
1 year International Warranty with 1 year Accidental Damage Protection
Click here to read more and buy your ASUS laptop from Amazon.co.uk
