The latest generation of laptops are starting to appear thick and fast now and there are few thicker and faster than Asus’ flagship gaming laptop, the ROG Strix SCAR 18. Previous iterations of this have demonstrated superlative power, amazing aesthetics and a price point that, while high, represents reasonable value for a monster machine. Could this be the one laptop to rule them all?
Design and build quality
The last SCAR we saw was a 17-inch beast that was so bonkers it came with a UV torch which, when shone on the lid, revealed hidden coordinates for loot within a game. While that’s missing this time round, we’re not complaining. The monolithic, black chassis might, at first glance, only have a few glossy, stripey decals traversing it (plus the ROG logo on the lid) but, once you turn it on, it goes into full UFO mode. There’s an RGB strip at the front (which partly wraps around the sides), an RGB, latticed, exhaust port across the rear, plus the logo and keyboard light up too. It looks like a gaming laptop should.
The big, 18-inch chassis is a slight step up from previous, standard, 17-inchers to accommodate the extra screen real estate afforded by the 16:10 aspect ratio. Similar is happening in the 15-inch laptop space which, in the premium sector, is turning into the 16-inch space.
As for build quality, it’s big and solid, but there’s only so stiff and robust a thin, 18-inch lid can be, so take good care of it. Also, note that the hinges can only do so much – the screen can wobble a little when knocked.
Features
It might sound odd, but one of the first features we noticed was the webcam. It’s not an outrageous Asus concept camera, or anything – it looks like an ordinary webcam. The interesting thing is that it actually exists(!) because, even through Covid lockdowns, for some perplexing reason, webcams did not appear on many top-tier ROG laptops. This one only has an HD resolution, but it’s good in low light and its array microphones make a decent fist of noise cancellation. Streamers and web-conferencing workers can breathe a sigh of relief.
The screen itself is the first we’ve seen with Asus’ new, in-house, Nebula certification. This refers to a collection of specs designed to instantly assure buyers of its minimum capabilities, to wit: fast, bright (minimum 500-nits), colour accurate (100% of the difficult DCI-P3 colour gamut) plus TÜV Certification for low blue light and flicker reduction.
We found that the 18-inch, UHD, 2,560 x 1,600 resolution certainly provided a bright, crisp and clear Windows Desktop and high-resolution multimedia looked impressively sharp. Colour gradients could exhibit some minor colour banding, which gets worse in monochromatic transitions, but we’ve seen much worse on other gaming-designated screens. Still, colours are vibrant and cover 100% of the DCI-P3 colour space.
The screen also has a speedy 240Hz refresh rate which, combined with a fast pixel response, keeps fast-moving objects looking smooth in frantic firefights. G-Sync technology keeps the image from tearing, too. It’s a very good screen.
The speakers get loud, punchy and bassy. Meanwhile, the individually lit RGB keys are comfy and accurate to both game (and type) upon for long periods. We also like the full-size arrow keys and (slightly slimmer) number pad keys. The trackpad is big, smooth, accurate and its buttons are comfortable to operate.
Performance
Inside, there’s Intel’s flagship Core i9-13980HX processor, 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and two 1TB hard drives operating in a striped RAID 0 array to further boost performance. It properly destroyed every benchmark we threw at it, setting new top scores in everything. It’s 20% faster in the all-round-computing, PCMark 10 benchmark than the MSI Pulse 17 budget gaming laptop that we recently tested and 40% faster in the Cinebench processor-based rendering tests!
It also wields Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics chip. This, too, destroyed our gaming benchmarks and was more-than 40% faster than the Pulse 17 with its RTX 4070 GPU. In short, this is an immensely powerful beast for every consumer-based laptop task you could want.
Ports and Connections
The SCAR 18 has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 2.5Gbe network port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, HDMI 2.1 and a 3.5mm audio jack. There’s also Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity. That’s a full complement of the latest and greatest connectivity technologies.
How portable is the Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18?
We don’t expect an 18-inch gaming monster to be particularly portable, but it wasn’t all bad. It weighs just under 3.1KG and is generally built well enough to survive lugging to LANs and to-and-from work. The processor and GPU utilise a desktop-grade power draw and so we were pleased to see a relatively thin power supply that weighed (with cables) ‘only’ 820g. We’ve seen double that.
The screen flexes a bit when a twisting force is applied, but then it is a thin, 18-inch laptop screen. We recommend not throwing it around.
It has a 90Wh battery and this enabled it to run a very impressive nine hours and 40 minutes, which is more than a day out of the office. It’s fair to say that the latest Nvidia-Intel combo laptops have (finally) figured out how to maximise battery life on powerful laptops.
Overall
The Asus ROG Strix SCAR 18 costs a whopping $7,499 (when it finally lands in stores) which is far from cheap. However, it set out to be the best, most-powerful, gaming laptop and it’s more-than succeeded. It obliterates the competition and is everything we’d hoped Asus’ ROG flagship would be. Right now, it’s the ultimate gaming laptop and even some outstanding competition from forthcoming rivals will struggle to defeat it. 10/10
