Brash and bold has been the signature trait of Asus’ ROG line-up of gaming laptops for years. With the ROG Strix Scar 18, Asus took that formula, gave it the bleeding edge silicon treatment and added a dash of upgradability, without compromising a bit on the gamer aesthetics.
There’s still plenty of RGB fun here, and the cool AniMe Vision LED matrix on the display is here to stay. You can’t mistake this 8-inch behemoth for any other laptop out there. Of course, performance is why you’re splurging on this laptop, and you get just that by the oodles. But there are more reasons to get this machine than meets the eye.
Hello, ease of upgrades!
One of the biggest advantages of investing in a gaming laptop, especially a big and bulky one, is the upgrade flexibility. Yet, it’s not always convenient. And definitely not without its own set of risks. I learnt that lesson the hard way.
About four years ago, I tried to upgrade my Asus ROG Zephyrus GA502, one of the slimmest and lightest gaming laptops back then. I ended up breaking the latches and few other plastic bits flew, while the screws could never fully go back in place. In retrospect, I should’ve read the manual, but at the same time, removing the back panel shouldn’t have been an exercise in fragility.
The latest iteration of the ROG Strix SCAR 18 solves that dilemma for anyone who is interested in DIY upgrades but lacks the nimble hands of a seasoned electronics repair guy. The hefty gaming laptop from Asus goes for a tool-less design, which lets you replace the storage and RAM modules in a few seconds.
Thanks to the next-gen Q-Latch engineering, which is a mainstay on Asus’ desktop motherboards, users can easily access the RAM, SSD, and fans without requiring screen drivers. “A specially designed frame covers the rest of the mainboard to protect the other components, but can easily be removed with a few screws for users who want to tinker further,” says Asus.
Also, both the SSD slots can take PCIe Gen 5 modules, so it’s pretty future-proof, as well. We love to see the focus on designs that ease repair and replacement, and it’s great to see Asus following in the footsteps of Framework, even if these are baby steps.
Dazzling, in the right ways
This one is an unabashedly gaming brute, which means it matches all the braws with the most outlandish gamer-pleasing aesthetics you will find on a gaming laptop. In addition to the per-key RGB lighting flexibility for your keyboard, you get an RGB strip that surrounds the entirety of the base.
Think of those flashy JDM rides that light up the motorway. But if you look closely at the lid, it’s not just the backlit logo that stands out. Asus has equipped the ROG Strix Scar 18 with a secondary dot-screen that is made up of 810 LEDs bleeding light through over nine thousand tiny holes.
Asus calls it the Anime Vision display, and in the true spirit of gaming customizability, this secondary screen can dance to your creative tunes. Flash your name across it, put up a fun GIF, or animate any other image of your choice. Just make it fun, will ya?
Talking about display, the 18-inch QHD+ (2560 x 1600) panel is nothing short of a visual treat on this one. It’s a mini-LED panel, the same tech that you will come across on the MacBook Pro. In a nutshell, it’s gorgeous, thanks to deep contrast, wide viewing angles, and stunning color reproduction.
It offers nearly double the sustained SDR brightness compared to its Apple counterpart, and also beats it at contrast levels, based on lab tests. Overall, if you’re eyeing creative work where color accuracy matters, the ROG warrior fares better than the MacBook Pro in our sRGB, AdobeRGB, and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage tests.
Oh, this vibrant panel is pretty fast too, thanks to the 240Hz refresh rate. “For gamers, it promises outstanding high dynamic range (HDR) performance along with a super fast refresh rate that supports Nvidia G-Sync for tear-free gaming,” says Digital Trends’ review of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18. Another underrated perk? There’s also an IR camera atop the display for Windows Hello facial recognition.
You want performance? Cool!
Digital Trends’ reviews expert, Mark Coppock, labeled the ROG Strix Scar 18 as “very large, and very awesome, gaming laptop.” This machine certainly has the substance to go with its flashy looks. Lots of it, actually.
Asus will let you max this one out with Nvidia’s top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, though you can pick up configurations with the RT 5070 Ti and the RTX 5080 graphics cards. Running the processing duties is Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX, a beastly 24-core Arrow Lake chip and a peak clock speed of 5.4 GHz.
On synthetic tests, it fared better than AMD’s Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 silicon, and expectedly outpaced its Core-i9 predecessor. On the PugetBench Premiere Pro benchmark, it even raced past Apple’s mighty M4 Max processor.
Of course, you’re buying this beast to play games, so let’s get into it. The Blackwell 5000-series GPU in this machine is loaded to the neck with upscaling and frame generation tech, and coupled with the DLSS4 goodness, you are assured of immersive visuals in games.
Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra presets and ray-tracing enabled, this machine provides an average 70fps output, while Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1600p resolution and Ultra graphics settings maintains a respectable 87fps output. Playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 1440p resolution and Ultra High settings managed a cool 122fps.
This machine also maintains its cool under stress. Asus has fitted an end-to-end vapor chamber, assisted by liquid cooling (on both the CPU and GPU), triple cooling fans, and plenty of vents on the ROG Strix Scar 18. Thankfully, the fans won’t hurt your ear canals to the point of shutting down the lid and escaping the desk.
