I’ve been loving ROG products over the last 12 months, with many of them pushing the boundaries in design and having a real premium feel but with a few little tricks that elevate the entire experience, and that’s the same with the ROG Strix Scar 18 (2025).
The design of the laptop is fairly understated for the most part with a black design that is super minimal, but there’s loads of little elements that give it that bit of pop. The main one is the Anime Vision display that sits on the outside of the case. Just like on the ROG Phone, it’s made up of 810 LEDs and you can upload an image or a gif, or it can show system information such as battery life or time. It’s just a cool little touch that really sets it apart from any other gaming laptop on the market.
Similarly, there’s a full RGB strip that goes all along the bottom of the case and projects nicely onto the surface that it’s sitting on to give the impression that the laptop is floating. If you’re not an RGB person, there’s an easy to turn on stealth mode that turns everything off, for those moments where you might be using the laptop in an office or in a dark space.
In terms of IO, you’ve got 3 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, a 2.5g ethernet port, a dedicated power port, 2 x Thunderbolt 5 USB-C port (that can also be used to charge), HDMI 2.1 and an audio jack, so you’re literally covered. The size of the touchpad has been increased on last year’s model and the keyboard is a genuine joy to use. When it comes to Wi-Fi, you can access Wi-Fi 7 if you have a router that suits.
BUY IT FROM: THE ASUS STORE
The 2025 Strix SCAR 18 has been re-designed and unlike most laptops, you can access the SSD and ram to replace or upgrade them in just a few seconds, and there’s also easy access to all of the fans to clean them out or replace them if they need it as well. For me, this is a must-have when you’re purchasing a laptop of this price and the ability to upgrade it over time is a big one.
This is a hefty laptop at over 3KG and whilst it isn’t as beastly as gaming laptops of old, it’s definitely not one you’ll be throwing in your backpack whenever you leave the house. It has a 90Wh battery inside which means you’ll get about 4-5 hours whilst regularly browsing, and when gaming on battery you’ll get about an hour of use.
@shannongrixti The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 gaming laptop is a beast of a laptop with an NVIDIA RTX 5090, an incredible AnimeVision on the case with over 800 LEDs and it’s available now! @rog_anz #ROG #ROGANZ #ASUSROGStrixScar18 #ROGStrixScar18 #RTX5090 #Tech #Gaming #GamingLaptop ᐧ
The Nebula HDR display is absolutely phenomenal using Mini LED technology with over 2,000 dimming zones which results in 1,200 nits of peak brightness and extremely vibrant colours. It’s obviously not going to be the best HDR experience when compared to the likes of a TV, but it’s still better than most laptops that I’ve used. It has a new layer which is said to reduce reflections and I definitely noticed that at work.
The display is 2.5k and has a refresh rate of 240hz and full G-Sync support, and to match the performance of the laptop, this feels like the sweet spot which most games getting close to this, especially those that utilise Multi Frame Generation.
This is without doubt the most powerful laptop that I’ve used with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor 275HX with 24 cores and a TDP of 80w and paired with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU with a 175W TDP. Every game that I threw at the ROG Strix Scar 18 absolutely blitzed it in performance with everything cranked up.
Playing through Horbidden West with Frame Gen turned on, I was able to get 160 FPS with the game looking absolutely sensational on the Nebula HDR display, Oblivion Remastered was a similar experience running at 160 FPS and Spider-Man 2 was also able to clear 110 FPS which made swinging through New York look fantastic.
When I turned Multi Frame Gen on, that’s where the laptop really went to another level. I was able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with ray-tracing overdrive turned on and everything maxed and still able to get 155 FPS and Marvel Rivals was a similar experience pushing past 300 FPS.
Obviously a laptop of this calibre needs the best cooling possible and that’s exactly what’s at play with a Vapor Chamber cooling system paired with Tri-Fan technology and a sandwiched heat design. This results in a fairly cool system that is obviously quite noisy especially when gaming, so you’ll need a nice pair of headphones or to turn the volume up, but the cooling system was obviously doing a great job because I never noticed any slowdown or throttling.
In terms of the software on the laptop, you’ll use Armory Crate to manager all of the performance and RGB specs. I did notice a few bugs when trying to change some of the settings, but this laptop did just release, so I’d expect those to be ironed out in the very near future.
Overall, if you’re wanting a future proof laptop that is extremely powerful with all of the bells and whistles, I don’t know that you’ll find one on the market that is better than the ROG Strix Scar 18.
