The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 is one of the most ridiculous laptops I’ve ever reviewed.
Luckily for the Strix Scar 18, I mean that in a good way. At a starting price of just over $AU5,100 for the base model, it’s already an expensive machine. At a dumbfounding $AU7,699 for the high-end configuration, it almost has to be the best thing since sliced bread. That kind of pricing is, obviously, wildly out of reach for all but the very wealthy or the financially reckless. Like impulsively buying an expensive sports car, it’s far from a sound decision. But will it put a smile on your face? Yes. Well, probably.
The model ASUS loaned me for this review was the $7,700 rocket ship. So, exactly what does a laptop priced that high actually get you?
A note to preface this review: if you’ve read the site for a while, you know I don’t write the most technical of laptop reviews. I tend to keep things consumer-facing and top-line. If you’d like a review that really digs into the hardware and runs the deep benchtests, here’s TechCrunch’s very good review (which also called it ridiculous! I feel vindicated!)
Tech Specs
- Processor: Intel Core i9 Processor 14900HX 2.2 GHz (36MB Cache, up to 5.8 GHz, 24 cores, 32 Threads)
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (16GB GDDR6)
- Memory: 64GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM (2x 32GB)
- Storage: 1TB + 1TB PCIe® 4.0 NVMe™ M.2 Performance SSD
- Display: 18-inch ROG Nebula HDR Display 2.5K (2560 x 1600, WQXGA) 3ms 240Hz 16:10 G-Sync Mini LED Anti-Glare
As you can see, it’s beast (at least, on graph paper). For the money, top flight spec like this is about the bare minimum you’d accept, really. Could you put a desktop equivalent together for less? Yes, of course. It is still impressive to see a mobile 4090 crammed under the ROG Strix Scar 18’s already considerable hood? Absolutely.
What’s it like to play games on?
Really great! But again, if I’d paid $7,000 for a gaming laptop and the performance was anything less than fantastic, I’d be very upset. Just about everything I threw at this laptop ran beautifully. Forza Motorsport spat out a flawless and gorgeous benchtest on Ultra settings and full DLSS, clocking in somewhere around an 87 FPS average. Fortnite, Beam.ng and The Last of Us Part I all held up under serious scrutiny. Turning the ray tracing on for Fortnite did cause the frame rate to dip, but this is to be expected. RTX On also guzzled the battery like it was going out of style.
The only game that really tripped the ROG Strix Scar 18 was Baldur’s Gate 3, which stuttered quite a bit on initial load. Frame dips were frequent and rather erratic on the higher-end settings, but settled down a lot when the overall quality was dropped to High. Not a huge surprise — BG3 is notoriously system-intensive — but, again, its a $7,000 laptop. I did expect better.
The takeaway here is that the ROG Strix Scar 18 is a laptop that will run just about every major game available right now very well. That’s a big tick in its favour for people who want the kind of quick solutions a laptop like this offers.
Despite being a 2.5K resolution screen and not a full 4K display, the matte Nebula HDR screen is a winner. Everything looked silky smooth and even our fluorescently lit office was no match for its brightness. Though there was some muted reflection in direct light (which you can see in the TikTok I embedded in this piece), it’s in every other way the kind of monitor you wish you had attached to your desktop.
The day to day
What’s it like to live with a laptop like the ROG Strix Scar 18? Total honesty: it’s not that easy. This is a big laptop in every sense of the word. The 18-inch screen gives the whole device a huge silhouette, and packing in all that heavy artillery doesn’t exactly keep the profile thin. It also threatens to burn the hair off your legs if you actually it on your lap. The heat dissipation is great, and a step up from the previous model, but it can only do so much when the mobile 4090 could double as a space heater.
Part of the cooling solution for the ROG Strix Scar 18 involves blowing hot air out of two small-ish vents on the left and right side of the chassis. This creates a low hissing sound when the fans are really pushed to their maximum by ray-tracing and sky-high frames. Ordinarily, this would bug me. If my own liquid-cooled desktop at home makes so much as a peep, I will look at it with great concern mingled with fury. But here, the hiss was the sound of a monster stretching its legs. It was a bit like pushing on the accelerator in a powerful car and feeling the engine’s roar through the entire apparatus. It weirdly brought a smile to me face. That’s a weird rarity in a laptop review in and of itself. I think that makes the Scar 18 something a bit more special than the average bear.
Bits and bobs
It’s also giving the Razer range a run for its money on LEDs. The chassis is covered in LEDs, some subtle, others obvious. There’s LED stripping underneath the laptop body to create 2 Fast 2 Furious underbody effect. You can obviously turn it all off if it’s not your thing. However, for those who will likely have this laptop chained to a desk its whole life, you can go wild on the decorations. There’s even LED stripping across the rear hinge that sends a pulsing ROG red light from side to side. I was forcibly reminded of a Cylon. I don’t know how I felt about that particular light.
The keyboard is very comfortable and quiet, though people with larger fingers may find the keys a touch too small. I also found the generously sized touchpad was located just a little too far to the left-hand side of the chassis. This meant my hand naturally found its way to the wrong side of the pad and had me right-clicking when I wanted a left-click.
Final thoughts
This is an absurd laptop. I look at it and I use it and I shake my head. Stupid, I mutter to myself. Silly laptop. And yet, I’m stirred by it. I liked using it. I liked hearing the fans roar up, and I liked knowing that I could knock around the office with Forza Motorsport ready for a quick lash any time I fancied it. It stirred something in me, which is really all I could want from a machine like this. I want it to make me feel something that can mask the pain of the asteroid crater it left in my bank account. I want it to do what any good gaming computer worth its salt should do and put a smile on my face without me having to think too hard about it. And it does, it does.
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 is available now from any number of Australian retailers, including ASUS themselves.