Dell G5 15 SE 5505 vs Asus TUF A15: Detail Comparison

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The Dell G5 15 SE 5505 and Asus TUF A15 are compared here. Both the laptops have some similar features and both are mid-range gaming laptops. Let’s see which one is better in overall performance and gaming.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Dell G5 15 5505 SE	Asus TUF A15
PROS	PROS
Performance for the price. Great battery life. Vibrant and quick display.	Efficient and powerful CPU performance than the previous gen. Good design and build. Value for money.
CONS	CONS
The plastic build feels flimsy. Mediocre speakers. Gets pretty hot under high-performance.	Loud fans. Low-quality hinge and lid.

SPECIFICATIONS

INTRODUCTION:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

This is a well-performing gaming laptop with features of AMD Ryzen processor and AMD Radeon RX graphics. The thermal control and fan noise are under control in this laptop. For the price range of this laptop, the performance and everything is more than enough.

Asus TUF A15

This is the Asus TUF A15, a very popular product in the budget-friendly gaming laptop market. The cooling system on this laptop is not as expected as this is a popular one in budget gaming laptops.

DESIGN:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

To be honest, the design is rather dated and it is rather cheap looking. It has an all-plastic build and its lid has a silver metallic look to it with the reflective Dell logo in the center. It’s a subdued look and will fit into most settings, however.

The keyboard deck is black plastic and it does show a few smudges. The large precision trackpad was very good. If you don’t have the RGB keyboard, the keycaps will be red and of course, all models have a separate number pad. The key spacing is decent.

Asus TUF A15

In terms of design, the A15 has some substantial changes. For example, it looks like Asus puts in one whole metal plate for the A panel. The machine now looks more premium, not too plasticky like previous models. When you go further in, everything is still organized in the familiar edgy style of the TUF line. The keyboard has a sturdy frame, sufficient layout, and good travel. There is RGB LED on the whole keyboard. The touchpad also has a good size and a nice tracking feel.

DISPLAY:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

Unlike many of the displays on these Ryzen laptops, the display on the G5 is pretty decent. now according to the test of the panel, the BOE panel has a grey to grey response time of 9 milliseconds which is a refreshing change from the 40 milliseconds or so we see on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 or the TUF A15. For gaming, it is good. It also has a decent color gamut covering 95% sRGB, 70% of Adobe RGB, and 70% of the DCI-P3 color space.

Now, the only thing letting it down was its below-average brightness of 260 nits at 100% and 65 nits at 50%. Now, even though, it has an anti-glare coating, it isn’t suitable under direct lighting conditions. Perhaps, its worst issue is the amount of PWM flicker the display has even at 100 brightness. Now, some people may find that this leads to eye strain. As for backlight bleed, it wasn’t too bad, there’s just a little bit at the bottom right-hand corner.

Asus TUF A15

The TUF A15 brings more than enough. Not only it has powerful specs, but it’s also the only machine in the price range with a 144Hz screen with integrated AdaptiveSync. Although in terms of color gamut, this display is only average, similar to other products in the same price range. But 144Hz screen for under $1000 is already super attractive for gamers.

FEATURES:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

This is the Dell G5 special edition with the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H 8-core CPU and Radeon RX 5600M graphics, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 3200 megahertz RAM running in dual channel, one terabyte of NVMe storage, and a 144hz display that costs $1300. The base model starts at 880 and gets you the six core 4600H CPU and that one runs cooler than the 8 core. Now, if you don’t mind paying the extra $30 for a four-zone RGB keyboard, you will have a red light keyboard.

On the left, there is a power connector right at the back and you have three ports, a mini Displayport, an HDMI, and a USB-C with Displayport. So, in theory, you can connect to three different monitors which would be handy for those playing simulator games or live streaming. Now, you cannot charge the laptop via USB-C port. You have a total of three USB type-A ports and for content creators, it’s good to see a full SD card slot.

I found the down-firing speakers to be slightly above average in terms of volume and even bass was okay. My main issue was that in some games, I would often get audio that sounded very muffled. For anyone wanting to do zoom meetings or even streaming, the webcam is located at the top of the screen and it is quite serviceable. So, we’ve got a 720p webcam and it seems okay. The microphone is fairly clear as well and I think it does a good job of cutting out the periphery sounds like if you’ve got the air conditioner going on in the background.

Internally, the problem is there is no SATA connector to even attach the hard drive, not even hidden underneath the occupied M.2 slot. It’s good to see a second M.2 slot though and also the Killer 1650x Wi-Fi card which ran great for me. It is also good to see that even with the base configuration, you will get dual-channel RAM. There are two share t-pipes and one extra one for the GPU and the fans are fairly large but due to the central hinge design, the rear heatsinks are very short. I find that the chassis did get quite warm but not so much on the keyboard but underneath, it certainly did and even at idle it would feel particularly hot.

Looking at the air exhaust, there’s actually not much hot air coming out and this is with the max fan going. I think this is why the system runs hot, it’s just not pushing out hot air well enough. Using the Alienware Control Center software, you can either let the fan run automatically or you can apply an offset percentage or you can create your own fan curve but unfortunately, this is totally meaningless if the max fan cannot cool the system.

Asus TUF A15

The laptop that I am comparing is under $1000, 6-core AMD, GTX 1650Ti with a 144Hz screen. A spec sheet that’s almost too good to be true which really surprised me. The version that I have here is equipped with the Ryzen 5 4600H CPU, GTX 1650Ti graphics card, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. The higher-spec option with Ryzen 7 4800H with 16GB of RAM and GTX 1660Ti is available on Amazon for only 999 US dollars. Very impressive prices for the specs, on paper, but actually using experience honestly disappoints me a little.

The ports in this laptop provide almost everything we need: one USB-A 3.2 gen 1, one USB-A 2.0, and one Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 with DisplayPort, HDMI, RJ-45, and the 3.5 audio jack combo. for the speakers, some of you might mistake it for the air vents up here, but it’s actually on the back that looks like an SD card slot. Sound quality is at an okay level, the sound range is adjustable via the dedicated app for different use cases. The machine has 2 NVMe SSD slots, 2 RAM slots supporting up to 32GB of RAM plus a 2.5 HDD slot. This level of upgradability is very good for this price range.

PERFORMANCE:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

Now, competing laptops with the same 4800H CPU would boost to at least 4000 megahertz whilst the G5 will adjust its power and clock rate to give more oomph to the 5600M graphics card. Now, I found if the clock rate dropped below its base clock of 2900 megahertz, it would generally run cool. So, you may already be aware that you can tweak the registry in the Ryzen laptops to disable the Turbo-Boost. I tested the performance of this laptop through star wars in Balanced mode, High performance/Turbo disabled, Balance/Turbo disabled mode in ultra settings. The CPU capped at 2900 megahertz, it certainly was cooler even though it was still in the low 90s. I did find that I was getting an improved frame rate balance mode increased from 96 fps to 100 and high performance from 100 to 108 fps. So, this looks like a great solution.

In benchmarks, on average it was about four percent behind but I do feel that as the drivers and smart shift matures this gap will close and perhaps even surpass them because AMD is adamant that the 5600M should be on par with the full-powered RTX 2060. To see how it handled video editing I tried it on Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Magix. Now, the only one it seemed to struggle with is the DaVinci Resolve in the timeline where playback was rather choppy. As far as rendering times are concerned, it actually split the TUF A15 and the Asus G14 and if you choose to use the 5600M to accelerate it, you expect to do it 50% faster.

As for general CPU performance, it was near the top of the pack in most things. Generally getting beat by the Asus TUF A15 which has the same CPU but on the whole, I was pleased with the CPU performance. I did like the CPU performance, it is fast and is much better than the i9-9888 and probably faster than most i7-10875 CPUs from intel.

Asus TUF A15

We compared this with the Asus ROG Strix G531 by benchmarking with Cinebench R15. Intel’s single-core point turns out similar to Ryzen 5 4600H. In terms of multi-core, AMD is clearly stronger with the 2 bigger cores, but that’s only benchmarking. The most important thing is actually user experience.

I tried rendering a 4K video with Premiere Pro 2020 and compare it to the Strix G531, also I did it with CUDA, not Intel QuickSync. The 6-core CPU, GTX 1650Ti, 5% more powerful than 1650 which is in ROG Strix G531, yet, the TUF A15 still loses in rendering times. I tried a few more times, putting in more color corrections so it puts more strain on the card, but every time the G531 still ends up with a faster rendering time and by a considerable margin. One very interesting thing is that while rendering, both CPU uses up similar amounts of power, over 40W, but the G531 is cooler by over 10 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, the A15 doesn’t have the best design in this aspect. So perhaps if you’re working with tasks that can really take advantage of the multi-core performance, the 4600H will have an edge, but with Adobe programs like Premiere Pro, After Effect, or just multimedia tasks in general, the Intel option is still better optimized.

About gaming, perhaps this is the one aspect where you care about the most. The A15 is equipped with the GTX 1650Ti, so it has about 5% improvement compared to the GTX 1650 on the G531. Because the G531 is so cool, the FPS stays very consistent. It’s also consistent on the A15, still a great gaming experience, but sometimes the CPU jumps to over 90 degrees Celsius. If you put it in Turbo mode, sometimes the CPU gets up to over 95 degrees Celsius and this leads to the GPU also heating up and the overall FPS drops. It’s honestly quite rare that this happens, but still, I think this would disappoint a lot of users, considering how popular this laptop is.

The A15 could have stayed cooler if the design of the cooling fans at the bottom was more open. Instead of putting open vents at the area of the two fans, Asus closed it up and moved the openings to the RAM and mainboard area. They say that this is so the keyboard and palm rest can stay cool. The WASD Keys area is indeed very cool, the hardest part in the middle is only at 50 degrees Celsius which is very comfortable for gaming. But I personally think that Asus tried a bit too hard to outsmart others here. Cooling vents when put in their regular areas at the two fans still allow other machines to run very smoothly. RAMs and mainboards still stay very cool. I would prefer more gaps at the area of the two fans so that more cool air can be sucked in and cool down the whole internal. Cooling might not be up to expectations, but it’s still entirely acceptable.

BATTERY:

Dell G5 15 SE 5505

Currently, the only battery option is a 51-watt hour which got about 4.5 hours watching youtube at 40 brightness. Maybe later, they will release a 68 watt-hour. I suspect the larger battery model is 68 watt-hour battery which should last you over five and a half hours.

Asus TUF A15

The 49Wh battery allows you to use the machine for 3.5 to 4 hours with office tasks and maximum brightness, acceptable for a gaming laptop.

WHICH TO BUY?

The Dell G5 SE is great in performance but the thermal cooling is not the best one but it controls as possible. Overall, the Asus TUF A15 indeed has many interesting points. Just by looking at the specs, it’s clear that it’s targeting users who are looking for a reasonably-priced, yet powerful gaming machine. It has a good graphics card and CPU, and the only 144Hz screen in the price range, very attractive design, and good build quality. Everything almost sounds too good to be true, but in terms of performance and cooling it’s a little underwhelming, not as good as expected.

In my opinion, both laptops are great to buy for mid-range gaming. If you want to decide one of the best between these, both the laptops have thermal control problems but G5 SE is better in this matter comparatively. Also performance-wise, the G5 SE is a better one to choose.

Expert reviews of Dell G5 15 SE 5505:

By Tom’sguide
The Dell G5 15 SE is an excellent budget gaming laptop, offering strong performance and long battery life for an affordable price.

By Pcmag
A capable and affordable gaming laptop, the Dell G5 15 SE checks plenty of the right boxes. But some questionable design and feature choices keep it from standing out.

By Digitaltrends
The Dell G5 SE is the first gaming laptop to feature the latest AMD graphics cards and processors. Does AMD’s SmartShift tech elevate this budget gaming laptop?

Expert reviews of Asus TUF A15:

By Trustedreviews
The Asus TUF Gaming A15 is a great gaming laptop for those on a budget. It has an excellent Full HD performance, decent display and ample storage for a very generous price. It is a rather ugly laptop though, while its loud fans can be annoying, but such flaws can be overlooked if you’re unwilling to pay a few hundred quid more for classier alternatives.

By Expertreviews
A powerful, superbly priced laptop thanks to AMD’s new Ryzen 4000, but the Asus TUF Gaming A15’s screen isn’t up to much.

By Techadvisor
The Asus TUF Gaming A15 looks bold, and it’s got solid Nvidia and AMD hardware alongside decent ergonomics, but potential component issues hinder it – and it suffers thanks to a poor screen and mediocre connectivity. It’s not bad, but there is plenty of strong competition.

Arya

Hello! I'm Surendar Arya, a passionate tech writer from Uttar Pradesh, India. I'm a freelance contributor to the tech blog - The World's Best And Worst. My enthusiasm for technology drives me to explore the latest trends and innovations in the field. I take immense pleasure in guiding individuals on how to leverage technology for their benefit, making their lives easier and more efficient.