Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 review: High-end gaming PC replacement

I’ve been a fan of gaming laptops ever since my first gaming laptop—the Alienware M11x—almost a decade ago. They are unique and powerful, but expensive. I’ve owned several gaming laptops, mostly Alienware, and spent much of my younger years building gaming PCs. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 takes me back to the days when I could stay up all night playing games. The Asus laptop is big, sleek and a powerful gaming engine. Yes, there’s also RGB lighting that screams “I’m a gamer.”

As a PC gamer for most of my life, it was nice to have a high-end gaming laptop with all the benefits a gamer would want. I’ve been using the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 for over a week and here’s my opinion on it.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Price in India

Before we talk about the laptop, let’s get the price out of the way. High-end gaming laptops are expensive, and so is the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16, which is available in India at a starting price of Rs. 2,89,990. This variant comes with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU with 12GB VRAM. There is also a version that is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU with 16 GB of VRAM, which is priced at Rs. 3,29,990.

We’re looking at the base variant with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU. The laptop comes in a single black color with a matte finish.

In the box, ROG Strix Scar 16 comes with a 330W charging adapter that weighs more than most thin and light laptops, a user manual and 1 customizable Armor cap.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Review: Design and Display

Asus has done an excellent job when it comes to the design of the ROG Strix Scar 16. The lid features an RGB-backlit ROG logo and a slash with the phrase “Republic of Gamers” written on it. The lid is made of aluminum and has a matte finish that gives it a hidden look. Collects dust and fingerprints, but wipes off easily. The laptop’s chassis is made of lightweight, durable plastic to keep the surface cool to the touch. There isn’t much flex on the keyboard or the aluminum cover. This is a solid laptop.

Open the lid and you’re greeted with a translucent keyboard design that shows the internals towards the top, but becomes opaque when you move up to the touchpad. You get a keyless keyboard with 2mm of key travel, fully customizable RGB backlighting and five macro buttons. Below the keyboard is a glass trackpad that’s 10 percent larger than last year’s model. It also comes with the touch pad feature.

A simple power button is available at the top right corner. The display hinges are large and sturdy, and I never had any problems opening or closing the lid while using the laptop. You get thin bezels on the sides and top, with the bottom a bit thicker than the rest. At the top of the display is a webcam that sits in its own frame.

For lighting, you get an RGB light strip on the front of the laptop that wraps around the edges. There is also an RGB lighting area behind the keyboard panel. All lighting on the laptop can be controlled via the Aura Sync utility available in the system. You can disable the lights through the app or the brightness switch on the keyboard.

Speaking of upgradeability, the bottom panel comes off easily and you can upgrade both RAM and storage. The bottom panel has excellent ventilation for the cooling system along with the ROG branding. The laptop looks fantastic from all angles.

Now let’s talk about the display. ROG Strix Scar 16 comes with a new 16-inch mini LED panel that now has double the dimming zones compared to last year’s display. The panel offers QHD+ resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, HDR support, 240Hz refresh rate, 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut, 2048 dimming zones, 3ms response time, 500 nits of brightness and support for Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision. The display is excellent, with rich blacks and vivid colors and it gets very bright. Watching movies and playing games is a treat for the eyes. The display is also certified by TUV Rheinland and validated by Pantone for color accuracy, making it great for video editing.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Review: Specs and Software

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 has a long list of specifications just like its name. The 2024 model comes with a 14th generation Intel Core i9 14900HX processor with a choice of Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 with 16GB DDR6 VRAM or Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 with 12GB DDR6 VRAM. The GPU supports a maximum TGP of 175 W on both variants.

You get 32GB (16GB x 2) DDR5 RAM clocked at 5600MHz, expandable up to 64GB. For storage, there’s a 2TB PCIE Gen4 SSD and you get 2 x PCIE 4.0 SSD M.2 slots that support up to 4TB of storage.

For outputs, there are plenty of options, but if you’re more of a creator than a gamer, you’ll find it difficult to transfer media, as the laptop doesn’t have a card slot. On the left side of the laptop, you get a Thunderbolt 4 port that supports DP 1.4 and G-Sync, a USB Type-C 3.2 Gen2 port that offers 100W PD support, an HDMI 2.1 port, an RJ-45 LAN port, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack and power input port.

On the right side are two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports. In terms of connectivity, you get dual-band Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support.

You also get a 720p webcam, four speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and a 90Wh 4-cell Li-ion battery on the ROG Scar Strix 16.

As for the software, the laptop comes with Windows 11 pre-installed and you get several Asus ROG features like the Armory Crate app, MyAsus and Auro Creator to control the laptop’s RGB lighting. With Armory Crate, which is essentially a command center, you can control various aspects of the laptop, such as CPU and GPU performance, lighting, and more. You get different operating modes to choose from to suit what you’re doing. Armory Crate also allows you to overclock the laptop.

The Aura Creator app lets you customize the RGB lighting even more. Finally, the MyAsus app is where you can check laptop health, warranty, system app updates, and more.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Review: Performance and Gaming

The most important aspect of a gaming laptop is its performance and how long it can sustain that performance. You can’t just jam in the latest hardware and expect things to work fine. Asus have done a great job in this aspect. ROG Strix Scar 16 offers premium performance and an excellent cooling system that keeps everything running smoothly even after a long gaming session.

I wasn’t able to spend much time with the laptop to run benchmarks, but I was able to play a AAA game for a few hours. In the few hours I played the game, I didn’t experience any lag or stuttering. I was consistently getting 60+ fps on ultra-high graphics settings at QHD+ resolution while playing Marvel’s Spider-Man. It’s best to turn ROG Strix Scar 16 on when gaming for the best performance. The fan kicks in as soon as you launch a game and start playing, and it gets really loud, but it helps keep the heat off the keyboard. The exhaust vents are on the sides, and there’s a large radiator at the back. Meanwhile, air is sucked in from everywhere.

Asus has included three fans in the laptop and used Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal thermal paste, which is claimed to offer 17 times better thermal conductivity than regular thermal paste. The large heatsink, three fans and liquid metal thermal paste keep the laptop from catching fire. They also help ensure maximum frame rates even during long gaming sessions. If you want to check out the benchmarks, you’ll be able to find them online, but trust me, you won’t be disappointed with the ROG Strix Scar 16’s performance.

Gaming on the laptop is bliss; I could probably spend hours playing. It’s truly amazing what you can pack into such a form factor these days. ROG Strix Scar 16 can play any game you throw at it, even Crysis!! Jokes aside, the laptop can run almost all AAA titles without breaking a sweat.

You can also use the laptop for video editing as the Intel Core i9 14900HX performs very well in all situations.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 review: speakers, camera, touchpad and keyboard

While the ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 is an absolute beast in terms of gaming and performance, I can’t say the same for things like speakers and webcam.

The laptop has four speakers, but it’s not very loud and lacks bass. I expected it to have powerful sound for something this big and expensive. The speakers do support Dolby Atmos, though, and you can tweak the settings a bit in the Dolby Access app, but it’s nothing to write home about. My MacBook Air M1 is louder and offers more bass than the ROG Scar Strix 16. It’s not bad, but for that much money I’d expect at least a subwoofer.

Even the webcam is bad. The 720p camera is outdated and I don’t understand why laptop manufacturers don’t just add a higher resolution webcam. Then again, why not just give away a good webcam when you’re paying so much money? Images and videos from the laptop’s built-in webcam are noisy and dull.

Next is the touchpad, which works well and supports multi-touch gestures. The num lock touchpad also works perfectly. However, most people would just connect a mouse to a gaming laptop since you can’t really play on a touchpad. The touchpad here is for when you use it for work and don’t have a mouse handy.

The keyboard on the ROG Strix Scar 16 is also good. I’m not really a big fan of laptop keyboards as they tend to be crap, but this one offers 2mm of key travel and has plenty of key spacing. I got used to the keyboard pretty quickly and even wrote the entire review on the laptop and loved it. You also get five macro keys in the upper left corner that you can customize to perform different functions using the Armory Crate app.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Review: Battery Life

This is a gaming laptop, so you shouldn’t expect great battery life. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 comes with a 90Wh battery that can last around 2 hours on regular tasks. You can still play on battery mode, but your battery will run out in about 45 minutes. And that’s totally fine, because this laptop is designed to sit on your desk, plugged in, ready to play at your command. As for charging, the supplied 330W adapter can charge the laptop up to 50 percent in just 30 minutes, but it requires outlets typically used to connect refrigerators, air conditioners, or washing machines. The laptop also supports 100W PD via the USB Type-C port on the left side.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 Review: Verdict

If you have Rs. 3,00,000 spare and you are looking for a high-end gaming machine that you can carry anywhere you want, then the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 2024 is an excellent choice. There aren’t many alternatives available with similar specs right now, but you can expect Lenovo, Alienware and MSI to release machines with similar specs. But the most important thing, apart from performance, is cooling.

The laptop is bulky at almost 2.7kg and probably won’t fit in most everyday backpacks, but if you take it with you then you’ll be able to play games anywhere in the world. But then again, Asus probably intends for you to use this as your primary computer and keep it on your desk. You can do this too. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 is so good it can replace your high-end gaming PC.