Asus unveiled a brand new fleet of ROG and TUF gaming laptops for 2023 at CES in January. The corporate launched the primary wave of high-end gaming laptops in India in March, adopted by a second wave of mid-range fashions in Might. The laptop computer we're reviewing at the moment, the ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023), is from the earlier batch. This beastly gaming laptop computer is priced beginning at Rs. 2,79,990 in India, however the variant we're reviewing has Nvidia's most present laptop computer GPU and prices Rs. 3,59,990.
Ought to the brand new Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 be in your checklist for those who're in search of a no-holds-barred gaming laptop computer and cash is not any object? Learn on to search out out.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) design and options
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is gigantic and heavy, and it's meant for use on a desk in your house reasonably than in your lap. Within the few weeks I've been testing it, I've in all probability solely moved it from its spot close to the ability outlet twice. Its design is kind of enticing and will definitely enchantment to its supposed demographic.
The laptop computer's matte black end seems clean and there's loads of RGB lighting sprinkled all through the outside. There's a backlit ROG emblem on the lid, a lightweight strip on the again simply above the exhaust vent and one other on the entrance, alongside the underside edge. The plastic on the edges across the ports is translucent and so is the higher a part of the keyboard ground. General, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 seems intimidating and futuristic, which I'm certain many avid gamers will admire.
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) is constructed effectively and appears intimidating
The laptop computer comes with a big 330W AC energy adapter that requires a 16A energy outlet. The latter is a little bit of an issue since we often don't have many 16A wall sockets at dwelling, and the few that there are are often utilized by heavy home equipment like air conditioners. This limits the variety of locations in your house the place you may cost or use this laptop computer, so you could need to contemplate putting in an extra 16A wall outlet for those who plan to get it.
Additionally within the field is an additional cowl for the hinge half that Asus calls Armor Caps. These snap onto the again of the laptop computer magnetically and you’ll even 3D print your customized caps if wanted for a customized look.
The show of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is certainly one of its highlights. It's an 18-inch QHD (2560×1600) IPS panel with a 16:10 side ratio and a 240Hz refresh fee. The show has slim borders on three of the 4 sides and just a little lip on the high for the webcam. The show additionally meets Asus' ROG Nebula specification, that means it has 500 nits of brightness, helps 100% replica of the DCI-P3 coloration gamut, is Pantone validated, helps Nvidia's G-Sync know-how , and might play Dolby Imaginative and prescient in streaming video. OTT apps. The decrease priced Scar 18 variant in India doesn’t get the ROG Nebula certification and as a substitute has a full-HD decision and a refresh fee of 165Hz.
You get RGB LED backlighting for the keys on the keyboard
Because of the laptop computer's giant measurement, you get a full-sized keyboard with numeric keypad and devoted buttons to regulate quantity, microphone and efficiency modes, plus one-touch entry to Asus Armory Crate software program. These devoted buttons could be personalized to carry out different capabilities or you may even use them to program macros. Asus claims that the ROG Strix Scar 18 has a “skilled esports-grade” keyboard whose switches are designed to final greater than 20 million presses. You additionally get RGB LED backlighting for keys with Aura Sync, which syncs your lighting patterns with different ROG equipment. The trackpad can also be fairly giant and monitoring and gestures work very effectively due to the glass coating.
All ports are situated on both facet of the laptop computer, leaving solely an enormous exhaust vent on the again. They embody two USB 3.2 (Gen2) Kind-A ports and one Kind-C port, one Thunderbolt 4 (Kind-C) port, full-size HDMI 2.1, a headphone/microphone combo jack, Gigabit LAN, and an influence outlet . There isn’t any SD card slot or safety lock slot.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) specs and software program
The flagship variant that we check comes with a cell CPU Intel Core i9-13980HX with a complete of 24 cores (eight efficiency, 16 effectivity). The HX is for Intel's high-performance cell CPUs, permitting straightforward overclocking for those who want extra efficiency. That is accompanied by 32GB (2x 16GB) of DDR5 4800MHz RAM, which occupies the 2 RAM slots within the laptop computer. There may be additionally 2TB of SSD PCIe 4.0 storage (2x SSD 1TB in RAID 0). Lastly, the center of any gaming laptop computer is the GPU, and we’ve an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 laptop computer GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM.
The bundled charger is very large and is nearly the scale of a smartphone field
The decrease priced variant of the ROG Strix Scar 18 in India comes with the identical Intel CPU and quantity of RAM, however packs an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU and 1TB of storage.
Retaining all these high-powered parts within the chilly is not any straightforward feat and Asus says it has redesigned the chassis and motherboard to suit a full-width heatsink with seven heatpipes and three followers in complete. It additionally makes use of a liquid steel compound as a substitute of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU, which ought to be extra environment friendly for warmth switch.
The laptop computer has a 720p webcam, 4 audio system with Dolby Atmos enhancement, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and a 90WHr battery. The latter may also be charged by way of a USB Kind-C cable, so long as the adapter is highly effective sufficient.
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 comes with Home windows 11 pre-installed, together with the standard trial variations of Microsoft's Workplace suite and McAfee antivirus software program. The MyAsus app gives fundamental capabilities like updating firmware and switching between battery modes, however for all the things else there's the Armory Crate app.
The translucent sides of the laptop computer look cool, however they aren’t illuminated
That is your one-stop answer for tweaking every kind of settings on the Strix Scar 18. The homescreen of the app exhibits you real-time statistics of the CPU, GPU utilization and frequencies, fan pace, and a snapshot of different system settings. The panels on the house display screen may also be rearranged so you may have essentially the most related ones entrance and middle. The tabs on the left facet of the app mean you can customise particular person settings such because the default energy mode for the GPU, hotkeys, lighting patterns, microphone mode, and so forth.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) efficiency and battery life
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is an absolute beast in terms of efficiency and you’d anticipate nothing much less from this flagship variant. There may be by no means a way of hesitation or delay, regardless of the activity being achieved. The keyboard may be very snug to kind on and the keys themselves are quiet.
You’ve loads of area to comfortably relaxation your palms and the excessive show is superb when it comes to coloration replica and brightness. I seen that the laptop computer tends to drop even in “Silent” energy mode and when working on battery. With the discrete GPU disabled and solely with Chrome, the half above the keyboard and the vents on both facet nonetheless felt heat to the contact.
This laptop computer is all about efficiency, so let's get into it. Beginning with some artificial benchmarks, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 returned a hint time of solely 27 seconds in POV-Ray. Within the Cinebench R20 CPU benchmark, the laptop computer returned 778 factors in single-core and a formidable 8,227 factors within the multi-core check. PCMark 10, which measures your entire efficiency of the system for varied actions reminiscent of video conferencing, spreadsheets, and so forth., returned an general rating of seven,803 factors.
The cooling system of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) is kind of efficient within the “Turbo” energy mode.
The 3DMark graphics benchmark produced a rating of 13,753 factors within the Time-Spy check suite and 10,438 factors within the Port Royale ray-tracing check. Because of the RAID 0 configuration of the SSDs, the learn and write speeds had been additionally spectacular. The laptop computer returned a sequential and random learn pace of greater than 12 GBps, and a sequential and random write pace of greater than 7 GBps.
Coming to the real-world checks, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 compressed a 3.24GB folder of various recordsdata in simply 47 seconds with 7-Zip. Rendering the BMW check scene in Blender took 2 minutes, 14 seconds, whereas encoding a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265 (MKV) required solely 27 seconds. These are all fairly sturdy numbers and among the lowest (a superb factor) we've seen shortly.
Sport efficiency is superb. A number of the keyboard keys get scorching throughout gaming, however switching to the “Turbo” energy mode retains the primary contact factors of the laptop computer cool, on the expense of the added fan noise. For those who use headphones then this shouldn't be an issue. Let's begin with the heavyweight title Cyberpunk 2077 which was a cakewalk for this variant of the Strix Scar 18. Utilizing the built-in benchmark of the sport, the laptop computer averaged 124fps on the QHD decision of the show and the “Ray Tracing” high quality preset: Medium”. What impressed me was that even when switched to the very best default, Ray Tracing: Overdrive, which additionally permits a preview of the sport's Path Tracing characteristic (totally ray-traced lighting), it nonetheless returned a mean of 121fps.
In Dying Stranding, the ROG Strix Scar managed to common 140fps working at native decision, with all choices maxed out and with the DLSS choices set to “High quality”. Lastly, in Doom Everlasting, the laptop computer simply managed to common 200+ fps at native decision with ray tracing enabled. Suffice it to say that with such a {hardware} setup, you must be capable to simply play virtually any fashionable recreation with ease.
The interchangeable Armor Caps mean you can add a contact of personalization to your laptop computer
Gaming laptops aren't often recognized for nice battery life and this one is definitely no exception. Utilizing the Battery Eater Professional benchmark, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 ran for 1 hour, 10 minutes utilizing solely the CPU's built-in graphics and with RGB lighting. With regular use, I used to be capable of get about 2-3 hours of runtime at greatest. I don't foresee many individuals complaining about this as most customers can have this laptop computer plugged in always.
Verdict
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 2023 is an absolute beast of a gaming laptop computer and all this energy doesn't come low cost, at Rs. 3,59,990. It's not precisely transportable. Nonetheless, you're getting the perfect cell CPU and GPU at present out there for a Home windows laptop computer, and there's little doubt that it ought to age effectively over time. The one actual draw back of this laptop computer is the truth that it runs scorching even while you don't use a lot of the battery. Along with these items, it’s a well-built pixel destruction machine that’s certain to place a smile on anybody's face.
