Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) hands-on impressions

A year ago, Laptop Editor-in-Chief Sherri Smith referred to the original Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 as “an excellent desktop replacement” and declared that its combination of high-end Intel and Nvidia components “laid waste to the competition.” 

Well, based on the time I’ve spent with it the last few days, the 2024 version is going to need a whole new set of superlatives.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) design

Not a lot has changed—but not a lot needed to. Asus had already nailed the exterior design, a shrewd sci-fi theme with a lot of sharp angles and smartly placed lighting; the keyboard, with square, delightfully clicky keys that deliver typing about as pleasurable as you can get without going full mechanical; and the highly polished internal software. So why screw with what works? 

Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) display

Most dynamically, there’s a new display that uses Mini LED technology and supports HDR to the tune of more than 1,100 nits of brightness.

That screen is what struck me first, as it makes everything from games to streaming video to something as simple as Asus’s flashy, purple-drenched Windows wallpaper look richer and more exciting. Because the 2,560 x 1,600 screen uses 2,048 dimming zones, both bright and dark areas of any image can be precisely contained, ensuring a brighter, crisper, and more natural look. It delivered strong color gamut volume results on our display color tests, and I saw HDR brightness in the 1,100-1,200-nit range. The screen never gave me a thing to complain about.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) performance

Sticking to things that work, that extends to the graphics card, too: The 2024 Scar 18 uses the same Nvidia RTX 4090 Laptop GPU as last year’s version, and as you still can’t do better, it’s tough to argue with the choice.

The few differences between the earlier model and this one are subtle but impactful. The CPU has been predictably upgraded to Intel’s new top-of-the-line model, the 24-core, 32-thread Core i9-14900HX. The system also uses faster, 5,600MHz RAM. 

Performance, whether tied to the CPU or the GPU, was similarly stellar, with high Geekbench 6.2 scores (upwards of 17,000 on the multicore test), low HandBrake transcoding times (less than 3 minutes), and even a shockingly speedy boot process (with hardly a detectable delay between when I hit the Power button and when I saw the Asus splash screen).

What really matters, of course, is the gaming performance, and that in no way disappointed. I saw predictably astounding frame rates on each of the 12 games I tried, from older favorites (Grand Theft Auto V) to newer releases (Assassin’s Creed Mirage) alike. The “lowest” result I saw was on our most demanding test, Red Dead Redemption 2: just barely over 40fps. But did I mention that was at the highest resolution, with every single setting maxed? No matter what you want to play, you will not need to worry about it with this laptop.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) heat

Will you have to worry about anything? Maybe heat. Under duress during a gaming heat test, the bottom of the laptop got up to 131 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning you may want to keep it on a desk rather than your lap. 

Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) battery life

Then there’s battery life: On our Web-surfing rundown test, it lasted just 4 hours and 23 minutes, which is almost identical to the 2023 version. This is a common issue with gaming laptops, so I was hardly surprised, but you’ll still want to stick close to a power outlet while using the Scar 18.

Outlook

The big negative is price: The configuration I got comes in at $3,999.99, which is a lot to pay for sheer gaming power by any reckoning. If you don’t absolutely need or want that much PC horsepower, you might be better off knocking down the components a bit and saving a few hundred dollars.

But if you’ve got the money, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 has got the goods. This is one of the most satisfying systems I’ve tried in ages, and if this is any indication of what we’re going to see in the next 12 months, 2024 is going to be a heck of a year for gaming laptops.

Stay tuned for Laptop’s full review of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18.