ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 laptop review – A Scar is born

When you think about it, a laptop equipped with an 18-inch screen can be a bit of a monster to lug around. I should know, because back when I did E3 trips with a modest 16-inch unit in my backpack, I could feel my vertebrae slowly fusing together from the sheer weight of the gear I was lugging around. ASUS’s new offering this year in its high-tech gaming laptop range – the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 – is its largest to date, and while carrying it around can be a modest workout, it’s still an attractive piece of kit that’ll look great on your desk, won’t clutter the space up, and has the flexibility to join you on a roadtrip.

More importantly, the ROG Strix Scar 18 is a powerhouse of new technologies inside a sleek design, and if you’ve been looking for a replacement to the traditional PC gaming rig, there’s a lot to love here. If you’ve got the cash to flash, that is.

Over the last couple of years, ASUS has started dialing back the more ostentatious elements of its gaming laptops, creating devices that have a more technologically sophisticated look to them. There are pockets of flair on the Scar 18, with RGB lighting snaking through the frame and translucent plastic sides surrounding an aluminum lid with a surprisingly soft finish. The end result is a laptop that looks classy but still knows when to party with this durable design. It looks and feels great, although the inner plastic cradling the keyboard and touchpad can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet. You might want to break some typing gloves out for this one.

At the same time, I feel like I endured some Dragon Ball Z levels of training as I put this laptop into my biggest theft-proof backpack and hiked around my block, carrying all 3.1kg of it with me for an evening stroll. The Scar 18 isn’t the heaviest thing I’ve ever carried on my back–hello Destiny 2 PvP fireteam during a recent Trials of Osiris match–but you’re probably going to want this sitting on your desk and looking pretty if you’re planning to upgrade.

As for the rest of the device, it’s a case of all-round beauty. The 240Hz mini-LED HDR display is sharp and vibrant, and there are various ports around the side, although the placement of them could be a little bit better. Throw in a satisfyingly tactile keyboard and four loud speakers, and you’re ready to rock.

Now to dive inside this behemoth! The 1600p display has a 240Hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time, as well as a number of visual certifications like Nvidia G-Sync and Pantone color validation. This is a beastly screen with fantastic HDR, so whether you’re playing Tekken 8 or running a template in Adobe Photoshop, your eyes are in for a treat. On the audio side, the laptop is especially impressive as the speakers are loud enough for a house party and the Dolby Atmos support really ratchets up the immersion with its well-tuned sound. It’s as loud as you want it to be without it sounding distorted, as the Scar 18 easily belched out crisp and clear notes when pushed to the limit.

Squeezed inside of the frame is an Nvidia RTX 49090 laptop GPU–roughly equivalent to a desktop 4070–32GB of DDR5 RAM, an Intel Core i9-14900HX, and a 2TB SSD for some lightning-fast storage capacity. A lot of attention has also been focused on the fans of this year’s Scar 18, as the cooling units cover the CPU and GPU so that they can be constantly cooled while avoiding moving heat to other parts of the laptop. At the same time, though, those fans can get pretty loud, so you might want to slip on your favourite headset if you don’t want your gaming session to sound like it’s being held inside a 747 mid-flight.

Lastly, there a 720p webcam, which feels like an afterthought when compared to the rest of the superb hardware on offer here. It’s there if you need to use it for an impromptu meeting, but at this stage in life, I’d rather just put my phone on a tripod and use that selfie-camera for my next Zoom session.

All right, the parts are lined up on the grid, the games are installed, and we are ready to go! Unsurprisingly, the Scar 18 excels at being a gaming powerhouse. I have a number of games that I use for these tests, like Rise and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Gears 5, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and on average, I was seeing an average of 120-170fps  at a resolution of 1440p. That’s the sweet spot right there, amplified by Nvidia’s DLSS technology to help you get the most pixel bang for your pixel buck, and it had my desktop PC – with its RTX 3070 GPU – sweating bullets.

Considering that this laptop can easily run demanding games almost effortlessly, this puts it in the same bracket as a desktop gaming PC when it comes to performance. The other game I enjoy using as benchmark is Cyberpunk 2077, as after the Phantom Liberty expansion was introduced, its visuals and hardware demands increased dramatically. While I did have to do some tinkering in the system menu, seeing the game run with Overdrive mode active was a feast for the eyes, and I got to gorge on some of the best ray-traced lighting available today.

While Cyberpunk 2077 was–understandably–the sole exception in my testing, as it needed compromises to run at peak performance, everything else I threw at the Scar 18 ran effortlessly on max settings. Hitman 3 and it’s slaycation fantasy? All the bells and whistles. Shadow of the Tomb Raider? A showcase of putting Lara through some of the most gorgeous hell imaginable. Marvel’s Spider-Man? With great computing power there must come great responsibility while having a fun time in New York.

The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 is this year’s powerhouse to beat. While its ports could be better arranged and its cooling can make you think you’re standing next to a generator when it’s blasting hot air out, this laptop is still a beast that confidently takes on all challengers. For anyone looking to crank out content and relax with games on a more minimalist working environment, the Scar 18 is a tempting option… if it’s within your price range. I’m just not too certain how many people have R74,000 to spend on a new laptop though.

Yes, it is expensive, but at the same time, it’s a machine that won’t leave you grappling with buyer’s remorse.