Asus F570
By The Asus F570 is a rather unique gaming laptop in that it’s easily one of the most affordable ones out there in the market. It uses an all-plastic construction but doesn’t feel visibly too flimsy or delicate. The body sports a neat, brushed metallic finish that’s easy on the eyes. The keyboard is easily one of the best Asus has ever made outside of its ROG lineup; the keys are soft and precise and include the long-lost context menu key.
There’s an AMD Ryzen 5 processor on the inside that runs cool most of the time. Accompanying the AMD Vega 8 internal GPU is a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU with 4GB of video RAM. The RAM is a healthy 8GB but the hard drive is a sluggish 1-terabyte unit. How does all of this sum for a gaming machine that’s aimed at students and first-time gamers?
Build and Design
The Asus F570 is only made of plastic on the outside but feels strong enough for everyday use. The top cover feels like it can take scratches and minor bumps but not big drops. The top cover and the area around the keyboard have a brushed metallic finish, which lends the laptop an attractive look. While the body itself is in black, some of the borders and the Asus logo are neatly accented in teal.
The display can be opened with the push of a single finger but takes some effort, and it will only go a maximum angle of 120 degrees. But be careful not to wrestle the lid open because it’s quite slim and flimsy. We hope you don’t mind bezels because the ones around the F570’s display are thick. The build and design of the Asus F570 seems commensurate with its reasonable price of Rs 52,990.
Display, Audio, and IO
The display on the Asus F570 is a 15.6-inch Full HD unit with an aspect ratio of 16:9. At 60Hz, the refresh rate is less than half of that offered by the Asus TUF series displays, but given the laptop’s price, that’s forgivable. But what’s not forgivable is the display’s worrisomely low contrast. The white from the backlight bleeds through the colours badly, to a point where one begins to wonder if Asus has forgotten to add colours to the display altogether. According to our display test, the Asus F570’s display covers only 58 percent of the colours in the sRGB colour scale and 43 percent of the colours in the Adobe RGB colour scale.
Audio on the Asus F570 comes through Asus SonicMaster speakers co-developed by the Asus Golden Ear team. The speakers are neither too loud nor too feeble. At max volume, you can listen to instrumental music quite clearly when the cubicles around you in the office are empty. If there’s a noisy gathering around you, you’ll have trouble. These speakers are best reserved for vocals and music that’s not too heavy on bass, because you’ll hear or feel none of it. In summary, they’re a slightly better than the usual concealed, downward-firing speakers you’d find on most affordable laptops.
The Asus F570 isn’t shy to offer ports for connectivity. On the left side, we see two USB 2.0 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm jack for headsets, along with a lock slot. On right side, we see the power port, a LAN port, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, an HDMI port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, and a microSD card slot. What’s not on offer is a fingerprint scanner. Your quickest sign-in method on Windows 10 is a four-digit PIN.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Despite a few oddities, this keyboard is one of the best you’ll ever see from Asus. The keys on it are large and soft to press. Even though they seem a bit too soft for accurate feedback sometimes, I find myself having little trouble registering a keypress. The backlighting is single-zone and there are no borders around the WASD keys. This may make some gamers grumble but I’m quite happy with the simplicity of it. What’s a bit peculiar is that Asus has chosen to make what’s usually an Enter key on that super-slim numpad, a Delete key and the right Ctrl key extra long. No, seriously, that Ctrl key is half the width of the space bar.
On the bright side, the context key makes a return on the Asus F570. Hurray!
