We have been testing the 2023 G634 model of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16. Priced at £3,400 in the UK and practically the same model for $2,750 in the US, there is an expectation of zero compromise for gaming laptops with Intel and Nvidia's latest mobile offerings. Not just in terms of gaming prowess, but in terms of the overall user experience. And while the RTX 4080 and Core i9 13980HX provide a great core configuration for today's gaming laptops, there are a few things holding this powerful machine back.

Before we get into the numbers, the Scar 16 gets off to a good start with its aesthetic. There is an industrial flair to the design, but not so much that it appears "too edgy." A subtle translucent plastic strip around the edges and front of the chassis reminds us that the retro console trend is back.

It may not have the understated charm of the clear-glacier Game Boy Advance, but at least the subtle RGB strips along the front and back edges do not detract from the aesthetic. Light gradates gently through the thickness of the notebook, giving the surrounding desk a gentle glow. The default iridescent ROG logo on the back is a bit much for me, but can easily be corrected with the Aura software.

It's fascinating to see laptop makers packing this generation of powerful components into a 16-inch gaming laptop. How will they fit it all in?" I wondered. The answer is this: it's all about the girth.

The Scar16 is thick and heavy enough to make one question the term "laptop," but nowhere near the desktop PC replacements of yesteryear (see the Gigabyte Aorus 17X YD (open in new tab), which weighs 8 pounds). Still, the scar is thick enough that one would have thought there was a mechanical keyboard under the lid.

Unfortunately, no such luck, but the chiclet board has a pleasant tactile bounce and, as expected, n-key rollover for gaming. While not the most satisfying for typing, it does an adequate job when it comes to gaming.

Along the thick edge are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports on one side and two USB Type-C ports on the other, along with an HDMI 2.1 port and a 2.5G Ethernet port. In other words, some may be disappointed by the lack of DisplayPort other than USB Type-C, but high-spec connectivity will not be a problem.

Since the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 is powered by a 175W RTX 4080 GPU, some of the other current-generation laptops we tested had gaming performance numbers that came close, even those with a 150W RTX 4090. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077, the Scar 16 averaged 57 fps at 1080p, compared to 60 fps on the Asus Zephyrus M16, even in Ultra Ray Tracing mode.

When compared to the same 150W GPU at 1080p in the Hitman 3 Dubai benchmark, the Scar 16 outperforms the RTX 4090's 240fps average by a whopping 26fps, albeit at a lower minimum frame rate. This suggests many possibilities, albeit slightly inconsistent. [The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i panel is natively 1600p, but was actually tested at 1440p. In other words, the Scar 16 was tested at native 1600p, although in some benchmarks the Scar appears to lag behind cheaper machines and its 150W RTX 4080.

Talking about screens, a 16:10 Nebula screen is a nice ratio when switching things up for work sessions, but gaming movies and cutscenes tend to be designed with the standard 16:9 ratio in mind, so you might get caught between black bars

Still, the black bars are not always the best choice for the game.

Still, it adds to the retro feel of playing games on a CRT TV, and the technology behind Nebula is not vaguely comparable to such old, flickering beasts.

This Mini-LED panel supports HDR well, but this is generally not the case with desktop monitors, and the small size of laptop panels means smaller dimming zones, which results in the usual problems with visibility. This panel looked velvety smooth and rich and did not require calibration. It is truly the cherry on top of a great gaming laptop. And with so much power on board, the impressive refresh rate of 240 Hz hardly puts a foot wrong in some games, even at the Ultra setting with a native resolution of 1660p.

If you don't have the best gaming headset (open in new tab), you could do worse than the Scar 16's speakers. Crammed into this tight enclosure, the speakers are a bit muddy, but generally rich and bass-friendly; the 720p webcam is low-light and well positioned, but produces a lobster-reddish flash.

The real star of the show is the Intel Core i9 13980HX. With such a CPU, the Strix Scar 16 can compete with the $4,000 laptops of this generation. Of course, the GPU is certainly underpowered, but the Scar doesn't hold back when it comes to handling all the physics simulations in destructible environments that we see in today's games.

When it comes to video encoding, it puts even the $4,000 Zephyrus M16 i9 13900H to shame. Multi-core performance is inferior to the $5,300 MSI Titan i9 13950HX in rendering benchmarks, but for gaming, single-core is the name of the game. There, Strix Scar is the best. While you might think that a slight multithreading miss would work badly in Blender, the minimum number of CPU samples per minute in Blender's Junkyard benchmark shows that Strix Scar has a lot to offer game artists as well. [However, the Strix Scar 16's 1 hour and 20 minute battery life, while in the middle of the pack when compared to other gaming laptops in its class, is not quite at the level I would expect from a portable device. It also runs a little hot for my taste: the CPU and GPU hit 105°C and 83°C under load, respectively, which is hotter than other products we tested.

When I start up a game, I can hear serious coil whine coming from under the hood. It is drowned out by the laptop's fan, but it is quite disturbing if you are not used to this type of general hardware noise.

For general use, we ran into some issues with the Nvidia Optimus technology. While it may have contributed to slightly better battery life, this data routing intermediary is a bottleneck when it comes to gaming, making program switching less seamless; Scar was also generally a bit unresponsive when opening some programs, and PCMark 10, and has crashed just trying to open it. And even if the Scar positions itself well as a 3D rendering and video encoding machine, it may still struggle against the latest use cases because of its 16GB of dual-channel DDR5-4800 RAM.

Strix Scar's SSD also lags behind the competition, with a disappointingly lower 3DMark Storage Index score than the less expensive Legion Pro 7i. 103ns vs. Legion's speedy 58ns, FFXIV Endwalker's load time of 11.236 seconds is better than 9 seconds.

Sadly, even though the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 really packs a punch with its core specs, the surrounding components ruin it: at £3,300 / $2,900, the $150 cheaper Lenovo Legion Pro 7i ( Open in new tab) is worth considering as an alternative. That way, you get an equally powerful gaming laptop, but with better overall balance and up to 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory compared to the Scar 16's 16GB. It's £600 cheaper in the UK and the battery life is a little less, but at this point it's like giving up on keeping your gaming laptop plugged in.