Since we last looked at it, Asus has updated its top-of-the-line 17.3-inch gaming laptop.
The ROG Strix Scar 17 starts at $1,999 and was tested at $2,499.
It has a new design and comes with the latest Intel “Alder Lake” Core i9 processor, updated Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000-series graphics, and a high-resolution screen and quiet cooling fans.
The most obvious thing it doesn’t have is a webcam, but if you can do without that, this big screener is great in every other way.
It even did well in our test of battery life. It is our Editors’ Choice for high-end gaming laptops with a screen size of 17.3 inches.
Design That Stands Out
The ROG Strix Scar 17 is a typical gaming laptop because its body is big and sharp.
It’s not every day that you’ll want to travel with this beast, which weighs 6.4 pounds and has dimensions of 1.1 by 15.6 by 11.1 inches (HWD).
Don’t forget to add another two pounds for its 280-watt power adapter.
Still, its size isn’t always a con.
This laptop has enough room for a 17.3-inch screen, so it’s not too small. You just need to know that going in.
The ROG Strix Scar 17 is best at games with a cinematic feel.
Its 17.3-inch screen has a native 16:9 QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) resolution, which shows 50 percent more detail than FHD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel).
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This screen has a refresh rate of 240Hz and Adaptive-Sync to make fragging smooth and tear-free.
The picture quality is excellent; our Datacolor SpyderX Elite measured 99 per cent DCI-P3 colour coverage and 300-nit peak brightness.
I’ve seen brighter screens, but this one isn’t one of them.
The ROG Strix Scar 17’s four speakers won’t let you down either.
Dolby Atmos tuning makes a sound that is full and rich, which is good for both games and music.
The webcam, on the other hand, is not there.
It’s the only thing this laptop doesn’t have, and in this day and age, it makes no sense.
Plan to buy a clip-on model that goes outside. There is also no fingerprint reader.
We looked at the ROG Strix Scar 17
Model G733ZW-XS96 of the $2,499 ROG Strix Scar 17 seen and tested here has a 2.5GHz (5.0GHz Turbo) Core i9-12900H processor, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, a 1TB SSD with Windows 11 Pro, a MediaTek MT7922 card with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and a one-year warranty.
Production models only have 16GB of DDR5 memory, but ours has 32GB.
(Two 32GB So-DIMMs can be added by the user to bring this laptop’s memory up to 64GB.)
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On its website, Asus lists other configurations starting at $1,999.99, including some with AMD processors.
However, most of these aren’t available in the United States right now.
The ROG Strix Scar 17 is priced fairly, as long as you can find one in stock.
At the time of this writing, the Alienware x17 R2 cost $2,645. It had a Core i7-12700H with a lower clock speed and a 165Hz FHD screen.
The Aorus 17 XE, which costs $2,449, also has a Core i7-12700H processor and an FHD screen.
The biggest difference between the Asus and those models is the screen.
However, the Core i9-12900H has advantages over the Core i7-12700H, such as support for virtualization, that the Core i7-12700H doesn’t have.
Tests Of Graphics And Games
We do both fake and real-world gaming tests on Windows PCs. The first one has two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night Raid and Time Spy.
Night Raid is less demanding and works well on systems with integrated graphics (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
The cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to measure OpenGL performance, is also part of this group.
Next, our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege, which are simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively.
Tests For The Battery And Screen
PCMag checks the battery life of laptops by playing a locally stored 720p video file with the screen brightness at 50% and the audio volume at 100% until the system shuts down.
During the test, Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting is turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software to measure a laptop screen’s colour saturation—how much of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 colour gamuts or palettes it can show—and its brightness in nits (candelas per square metre) at the 50 per cent and maximum settings.
The ROG Strix Scar 17 has the dimmest screen, but as I said above, it’s not too dark, and it has a wider range of colours.
The fact that this big 17.3-inch laptop can run for more than seven hours on a single charge is really impressive. A lot of that is because it uses Nvidia Advanced Optimus, which automatically switches to the power-saving graphics built into the Intel CPU when you’re not playing games.
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The ROG Strix Scar 17 has a MUX switch to turn off Optimus, which will be helpful for esports players and anyone else who cares about input lag.
