Someone once said that “bigger is better”. That person would probably be very happy with the resurgence of 18-inch gaming laptops. The Asus ROG ROG Strix Scar 18 ($3,899.99 at the time of testing) is one of several titanic laptops set to arrive this year, and it’s the one that made its way into our test lab.
With room for an Intel Core i9-13980HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, the Strix Scar 18 promises top-notch performance. And with a design fully infused with RGB lighting, there’s no doubt that this laptop is made for gaming. (It might be one of the best gaming laptops for some people).
The Strix Scar 18 is absolutely aimed at replacing your desktop computer. It’s powerful, it has a nice big display and solid speakers, and it doesn’t last long without a power adapter. Is this power enough to please gaming enthusiasts? We’ll see how it performs in our tests, but at least you’ll be able to carry it from room to room.
The Asus Strix Scar 18 deserves the distinct honor of being the first laptop in my career that I couldn’t fit into a backpack. It epitomizes the term “desktop replacement” in 2023, though it will be far from alone on that front.
To be fair, the Strix Scar 18 weighs in at 6.83 pounds and measures 15.71 x 11.57 x 1.21 inches. You can already tell by looking at this enormous thing that it’s not meant to be carried further than the next room on a regular basis.
There are no major design changes here from previous Scars models. The lid is dark gray with the ROG logo and an angry RGB eye that is frankly ugly. That eye is repeated as a stripe across the diagonal of the lid. But you really get a sense of scale when you lift the lid, revealing the 18-inch screen in all its glory. The bottom bezel is a bit thick and the webcam housing protrudes outward, but it all adds up to an impressive look for the device.
To be clear, while the 18-inch display is shocking at first, the truth is that it’s not much different from the 17-inch panels on the market. These 18-inch displays change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 16:10, which means they are slightly taller but not wider than the 17-inch displays.
Asus has used soft-touch plastic on the keyboard panel, which gradually turns from solid black to a very smoky translucent color as you get closer to the hinge, revealing some of the internals. Honestly, the company should have gone the way of the ’90s and made the laptop case completely translucent or transparent.
Too bad we still don’t have last year’s Strix on hand to test its 3080 Ti and Core i9-12950X with current drivers and see if it’s actually faster than the 4090 systems we’re testing in Far Cry 6. But it seems likely that the CPU is at least somewhat degrading GPU performance at low resolutions. We’ve seen similar issues when testing the more powerful desktop RTX 4090 in Far Cry.
It’s easy to place the blame on Intel for potentially limiting the performance of Nvidia’s top-of-the-line mobile GPU. But don’t forget that we’re seeing this issue in a single game. And we wouldn’t expect AMD’s top processor to perform significantly better, given what we know from testing its desktop chips. If anything, this result makes it clear that the mobile RTX 4090 is best suited for a high-resolution 4K screen (which the MSI Titan has, but the Strix Scar lacks).
Red Dead Redemption is still a heavy game. On medium settings, the Strix Scar 18 showed 123 fps at 1080p and 86 fps at 1600p in the game. MSI’s latest Titan showed 128 fps at 1080p and 48 fps in native 4K.
In the “cool” Borderlands 3 game mode, the Strix 18 averaged 165fps at 1080p and 112fps at 2560 x 1600 resolution. The new MSI Titan averaged 177fps at 1080p and 71fps on a 4K screen.
For the Scar stress test, we ran Metro Exodus on the RTX preset at 1080p for 15 runs, which takes about half an hour. The system ran the game at an average of 102.97 frames per second, which was nearly unchanged after the faster first run. The Core i9-13900HX performance core ran at an average of 3.84GHz, while the efficient core ran at 3.37GHz. The processor’s case temperature averaged 81.2 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, the RTX 4090 ran at 2,121.62MHz and had a temperature of 70.34 degrees Celsius.
The results of our benchmark tests were impressive. In the Shadow of the Tomb Raider game (highest settings), the Strix Scar 18 showed 181 fps at 1080p resolution and 124 fps at native resolution of 2560 x 1600. The new MSI GT77 HX Titan with the same GPU and Core i9-13950HX lagged by one frame at 1080p, while the game ran at 70fps on the laptop’s 4K resolution screen.
In Grand Theft Auto V (very high settings), the Strix Scar performed 152 frames per second at 1080p and 132 frames per second at 2560 x 1600 resolution. The Titan ran the game at 176 frames per second at 1080p and 50 frames per second at 4K.
Performance in Far Cry 6 (ultra settings) was a bit confusing, with the Strix showing 107 frames per second at FHD and 94 frames per second at 1600p. That FHD figure is lower than the top-of-the-line Strix we tested last year. It’s not entirely clear if there are driver issues, a CPU bottleneck, or component compatibility issues at play. But the MSI Titan Titan GT77 HX with RTX 4090 and a 13th-gen Intel Core i9 HX showed 102 fps in 1080p, which isn’t that far off, and 71 fps in 4K.
There are some odd layout options. The right shift key is short, apparently to accommodate the arrow keys sandwiched between the QWERTY keyboard and the number pad. The up arrow is next to the shift key and the right arrow is in the numeric keypad area.
The touchpad measures 5.1 x 3.4 inches and is spacious. There’s definitely room for it. It’s also nice and smooth, and I had no problems with Windows 11’s most complex gestures. When you’re gaming, the touchpad can be disabled with the Fn + F10 keyboard shortcut.
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 Gaming Laptop Intel Core i9 from Aliexpress
