It can be difficult to give advice on gaming laptops. Most have cooling systems that are probably worse than desktop equivalents and will never leave the house. But there are occasions when having mobile hardware options is a must. Other advantages of a gaming laptop include reduced cables, smaller size to carry, and the ability to have a much nicer look, as in the case of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE. Many gaming laptop manufacturers often focus on the aesthetics of the laptop without providing much substance or utility. This is only partly true in the case of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE. First, most limited edition computers strive to make the original “sexier.” The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE is a rugged, black and silver laptop with different textures on its surfaces.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review: Design
As soon as you open the box of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review, you know immediately that this is a wild ride. The look and feel is that of a great gaming laptop. Although we don’t particularly like the way ASUS often designs its laptops, the Scar 17 SE is gorgeous. There are lots of little touches, including secret lid images that the included UV light can reveal. On the lid itself, the ROG logo lights up as expected. Since RGB lighting is so easily disabled, it’s good that ASUS used it sparingly. In addition, every key on the keyboard is illuminated and a thin LED strip surrounds the bottom of the notebook. When lit in a gaming environment, it looks professional. The touchpad is huge and has more than enough space for general use. In any case, a mouse is most likely to be plugged into one of the available USB ports for serious gaming. ASUS has made part of the keyboard translucent, revealing part of the interior. Although the keyboard is a pleasure to type on and there is a full Numpad layout for those who like to play EVE Online, it does not use mechanical switches. The stunning 17-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560×1440 is located at the top of the laptop. Although the Full HD version of the panel is available with a refresh rate of 360Hz if you choose a smoother game than pictures, our model has a refresh rate of 240Hz. It is a success either way. It is amazing. The webcam, on the other hand, will not win any awards. or lack of. You will need an additional webcam if you like to make phone calls to family and friends or if you want to broadcast occasionally. The lack of a webcam on a laptop introduced in 2022 seems strange to me. I/O is next, and there is a lot to do. A USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port (DP, G-Sync) and a Thunderbolt 4 port are on the back of the device, while two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 connectors and a 3.5 mm combo audio jack are on the left side.Speakers on a gaming laptop are never going to be great, but ASUS has managed to achieve very good quality audio. It won’t blow you away, especially with heavy bass or explosions in gaming, but it’s decent enough if you don’t own a pair of headphones. The laptop is relatively thin but heavy because of all the internal components.
Keyboard and touchpad
During keystrokes, the keyboard of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE felt responsive, but after each keystroke we could feel that the switches were soft. However, when we reached the end of our time with the machine, we got used to this aspect and it stopped distracting us. In the 10-finger fast typing test, we achieved a speed of 60 words per minute and an accuracy rate of 98.03%, which is roughly in line with the results we often get with gaming keyboards. The 5.1 x 3.1-inch touchpad provides a good user experience. The edges are well defined and the surface is excellent. We did not experience any problems when clicking or using different Windows 11 gestures. You can see our article on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review.
Display
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE features a 17.3-inch WQHD display in 16:9 aspect ratio with a 240 Hz refresh rate. According to Asus, the display supports Dolby Vision HDR, a reaction time of 3 ms, and 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut. Although the display of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE is not as bright as that of the Asus ROG Flow X16, it is still one of the best displays for 17-inch gaming laptops we have ever seen. The ROG Strix Scar 17 SE’s display is flawless, from the color accuracy to the brightness level. The ROG Strix Scar 17’s display is suitable for gaming, content creation and consumption. Most recent games can be played on this device at a higher frame rate due to the hardware capabilities, taking advantage of the higher refresh rate screen (more information in the gaming performance section).
Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review: Audio
One of the strengths of the Scar is the auditory experience. It has a full sound that you hardly hear in computers, it is loud and absolutely clear, and it reproduces music with depth and bass. We wished we had one when we were in college because of the RGB light show and strong bass performance. While listening to Chris Brown’s “Iffy,” the pounding bass was intensely reproduced and made our chair dance like we were trying to get a dance scholarship. When Brown starts dancing with the transformer in his video, we jumped out of our gaming chair and the Scar’s speaker system. Then we moved on to a Queen classic, the oft-quoted “Under Pressure,” with Freddie Mercury’s falsetto combined with David Bowie’s heavier, sometimes vibrant voice that always makes us happy. Using a variety of musical instruments-including piano, guitars, drums and finger snaps-Queen does what they do best, creating a timeless work of sonic art. Finally, Bruno Mars and Soul Sonic’s “Smokin Out the Window,” which often sounds like a realistic representation of our love lives, concluded our extraordinary listening experience. Bruno and Anderson Paak reveal our love story to the world as snare drums play in the background. In the bedroom or living room, the Scar reproduces basslines, string melodies and vocals with exquisite clarity and richness. With the Scar, Asus got the audio right.
Graphic and gaming
An Intel Core i9-12950HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080Ti graphics card have 16 GB of GDDR6 memory in our ROG Strix Scar 17 SE configuration. The GPU has a maximum graphics power of 170 W and a boost clock of 1,590 MHz. These features ensure an excellent frame rate of 1080p at the native resolution of 2560 x 1440. Without DLSS enabled, Control ran at a smooth 70 frames per second (fps) at the native 1440p resolution when we played with the quality preset and Ray Tracing set to high. The laptop’s frame rate jumped to 87 fps once activated. The ROG Strix Scar 17 SE achieved 144 frames per second at 1080p and 91 frames per second at the native resolution of 1440 when we ran the Grand Theft Auto V benchmark at very high settings. Although competitive laptops use the same RTX 3080 Ti graphics card as the Strix Scar 17, the latter produced the most stunning results. The MSI Titan GT77 achieved 142 frames per second at 1080p, compared to 139 for the GE76 Raider and 129 for the Alienware x17 R2. The ROG Strix Scar 17 SE achieved 125 frames per second (fps) at 1080p and 113 fps at 1440p while playing Far Cry New Dawn at “extreme” settings. The GE76 Raider took second place with 113 frames per second, followed by the Titan GT77 and the Alienware x17 R2 with 87 frames per second. The ROG Strix Scar 17 SE produced 61 fps at 1440p and 85 fps at 1080p in the Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark (average settings). The Titan GT77 and the Strix Scar once again tied, with the GE76 Raider lagging just a few frames behind. At 78 frames per second, the Alienware x17 R2 once again took fourth place.
Performance
The 16-core, 65-W i9-12950HX processor makes the Strix Scar 17 SE highly performant. In addition, Asus incorporates a very fast 2 TB NVMe M.2 SSD and 16 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, making the RTX 3080 Ti the fastest laptop GPU, according to our test results. The Scar scored 13,822 in the 3DMark TimeSpy test, 29,616 in the FireStrike test and 8329 in the Port Royal ray-tracing test. A whopping 20,977 was demolished by the i9 in Cinebench R5, embarrassing many of the larger gaming PCs. In CrystalDiskMark, the SSD achieved an outstanding read speed of 6990 MB. This speed extended to games as well, as the Strix Scar easily reached 100 frames per second even in ray-traced games such as Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at high settings. Only eSport games, such as Valorant or CS:GO, come close to the panels’ 360Hz refresh rate, but most other AAA games easily achieve frame rates above 100 at ultra settings. Killing demons in Doom Eternal at nearly 200 frames per second on a laptop simply makes us laugh. The Scar is incredibly quiet even under load and is significantly quieter than most other laptops we reviewed. During extended gaming sessions, temperatures averaged 80 degrees, and the keyboard surface remained absolutely cool to the touch. Battery life is not extraordinary, as you might expect with such high power: about 3 hours of light work and web browsing. You won’t get optimal performance if you play video games for less than an hour. This beast is made to spend most of its time attached to its power source.
Battery life
We evaluated an Intel Core i9-12950HX, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, 32 GB of RAM, a 2 TB SSD, and a QHD (2560 x 1440) screen with 240 Hz refresh rate in the $3,499.99 Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (G733CX-XS98) configuration. Oddly enough, this laptop is available at the same price with a different configuration on the Asus website (model G733CX-XS97; opens in a new tab). Decide on the model with twice the RAM if the prices are indeed the same, if you can find them both in stock. In our test group, the Acer Predator Triton (4:42) placed second for web browsing and 1:49 for gaming. The X17 came next, taking 4:31 for online browsing and 1:19 for games, while the M17 came in last, taking only 2:05 for web browsing. Keep in mind that gaming laptops generally have a short battery life because of their power-hungry specifications, if you plan to use one as a workstation. However, if you only use it for work, the battery life is six hours; if you play games, it is best to plug it in.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review: Heat
During the Metro Exodus stress test, we observed how hot the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE gets to the touch. The laptop reached 31.9 degrees Celsius between the G and H keys in the middle of the keyboard (89.42 degrees Fahrenheit). The adjacent floor, however, was significantly cooler. At 26.5 degrees Celsius, the touchpad remained cool (79.7 degrees Fahrenheit). At 57.8 degrees Celsius (136.04 degrees Fahrenheit), the bottom of the laptop was the hottest spot during the test, and HWInfo noted some thermal throttling of the CPU.
Configuration options
With an Intel Core i9-12900H processor, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD drive, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and a 17.3-inch 2560 x 1440-pixel display with 240 Hz refresh rate, our review model costs $2,499. The Intel Core i7-12700H processor, 8GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD drive, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, and a 17.3-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) anti-glare display with 360Hz refresh rate are all included in the $1,999 base model.
Conclusion
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE is one of the most powerful notebooks for gaming. However, it does not have a webcam or any kind of biometric authentication. The speakers and battery life are not particularly good, nor is the mobility of the device. However, it has most of the elements that make up a solid, performance-oriented device. The gamer aesthetic and other aspects make it one of the most attractive laptops one can buy. One aspect that must be carefully considered is whether you want to play games, and that is the price of our review unit. There are other very good devices that may not be as processor heavy, but they make up for it in other areas. If your goal, however, is the fastest machine money can buy, then the Strix Scar 17 SE is the notebook to beat. you can check our article on ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE review.
