ASUS ROG Strix Scar II

Gaming requires the best hardware if you want to stay on the forefront of performance and frame-rates. In comes the latest and greatest from Asus. It’s called the ASUS ROG STRIX SCAR II. And like the name, the laptop is quite a lot to handle.

Design & Build

The ASUS ROG Strix Scar II is quite a looker. The moment I removed this laptop from its box I was in love. The brushed aluminium body with the sharp lines well placed all over, along with the scattered LEDs and camouflaged styling and carbon fibre looking textured interior. It all just worked. The build quality is just on point.

The laptop is quite thin, but it all seems packed in tightly because it isn’t the lightest thing out there. It’s a big deceptive, but who cares when it looks this amazing!

While the LEDs all around adds for a lot of fun, the bar at the front of the laptop is a bit of an eye sore. I tried to use the laptop with it on, but if you are in a dimly lit space this becomes a major distraction and I just had to turn it off. Which is easier said than done, but more on that later. I did however really like the ASUS logo on the back of the display that lights up consistently throughout the logo and looks stunning.

For the rest of laptop, the attention to detail is just amazing and I loved all of it. The body of the laptop is rigid and while the size is 15” the actual footprint of the laptop is small enough considering how this it is, to be very portable.

Some users may not like the keyboard layout but that’s something one should get used to when moving to any new laptop. The mouse pad is in the right place and really well built.

Performance

One of the first laptops to come with the latest Nvidia Graphics card from their the beasty RTX series. While the SCAR II does have an option to come with the RTX 2080, the model we got was the RTX 2070. Sure it’s the slower one out of the two, but its still an RTX series GPU and who can complain with that. Paired with the 8th Gen Intel i7, this is one heck of a contender.

The specific specs of the unit we had was:

Intel Core i7-8750H – 2.2 Ghz Hexa-Core
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 (with 6GB GDDR5 RAM)
16GB DDR4 RAM at 2,666 Mhz
256G SSD (M.2 NVMe) along with a 1TB 5,400 RPM SSHD

On paper the specs are a bit of a mixed bag. You have a great CPU and GPU, piled with a small SSD and limited RAM. Sure these can be upgraded, but it still seems a bit strange to me, until you hear the price. Coming in at 8,999 AED, this actually a great priced laptop that you can upgrade on your own, over time.

The laptop performed really well when playing games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Call of Duty Black Ops 4. At the highest settings you get north of 110 FPS on SotTR (Average is was about 85) and you get consistent and fun FPS of over 100 on BlackOps.

The laptop is quite a noisy machine, almost like a V8 engine constantly gurgling, ready to go full throttle at a moments notice. If you are gaming, then there is almost no solution to this, however for normal usage you can put the laptop into Silent mode, which actually quiets the entire thing down to a mild purr.

Here are a few of the benchmarks we ran on the ASUS ROG Strix Scar II:

3DMark
CineBench
CPUZ

While ASUS has fitted the HyperCool Pro system into the ROG Strix Scar II. This is a combination of their unique heatpipe design, 2 big fans and some interesting designs for ventilation. While the laptop runs relatively cool to touch, it still makes quite a bit of noise. In a thin and light gaming computer, Thermal throttling is always a concern, but I think ASUS has done a decent job here and it is quite commendable. Still a ways to go though.

Ports and What’s in the box

The ports on the Asus ROG Strix Scar II are sufficient for everyone. This includes 4 USB Ports (1 USB 3.1 Gen2 and 3 USB 3.1 Gen1) and 1 USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port. It also comes with a Gigabit ethernet port, HDMI out, mini-Display Port (1.4) and the 3.5mm Audio jack (combined mic and headphone jack). What came as a surprise was the SD Card reader.

The laptop comes with a bunch of extras in the box. All these add value to whole package.

The included mouse is the ROG Gladius II and is beautifully made. It’s high precision and even has this lovely led in the base that just wows anyone who uses it. There are a bunch of gamer focused buttons as well, totalling up to 4 buttons, the scroll wheel and the right and left clicks. While the trackpad is great to use for normal tasks, this mouse is a perfect addition for gaming.

The mouse has a detachable USB cable, which is great when travelling and is also

You also get a over the ear pair of modular headphones. The reason I day modular is because it comes with a detachable dedicated mic. This headphone is also packed with features. It has an in line mic (yes that means two mics), audio jack extensions and even a headphone and mic splitter. It’s a lot of extras.

Screen & Battery

The ASUS ROG Strix Scar II had a lovely 144 Hz monitor with the 1920 x 1080 resolution. While this might upset some people, I personally think it is an acceptable monitor for gaming on. You look for the frame rates and not the resolution. At this price point you look at the higher refresh rate and not the number of pixels.

The bezels on the screen are almost non-existent. Such a good screen with the this minimal bezels looks gorgeous.

The battery on the ASUS ROG Strix Scar II was surprisingly decent. I was able to use the laptop in silent mode for almost 5 hours, which is quite commendable and makes this a proper all rounder laptop. When gaming on high loads you can get a respectable 2.5-3 hours which I thought was more than enough for a portable gaming experience.

Keyboard and Mouse

The Keyboard on the Asus ROG Strix Scar II was a bit of a mixed bag for me personally. The typing experience was good enough to work on and to enjoy a game with. However the keys do feel a bit mushy and don’t have the travel distance you would like. Having said that, in a think laptop like this, it’s a trade-off I would be happy to make.

The WASD keys are highlighted in white (or rather as see through). The LED on those keys are far more pronounced because of this and I think it’s a good attention to detail.

The LEDs on the keyboard are quite good, with each key being individually lit. The only sad part about it is that you can’t natively control each key’s light individually. Or at least I couldn’t figure out a way in the short time I had with this laptop. I eventually gave up and left it on one of the pre-sets of the laptop. The lights do sinc up nicely with the rest of the laptop and even the external mouse. Overall a good job.

The trackpad on the laptop is pretty good. The tracking is brilliant, multitouch works as expected and the buttons are very clicky. For daily usage this trackpage is perfect.

Speakers and Webcam

The speakers on the Asus ROG Strix Scar II are located on the sides of the laptop and seem to be facing away and slightly down. The sound of the speakers are pretty decent with decent lows, but the highs are not that great. Overall the sound is rather average with mediocre sound isolation. The speakers get pretty loud and are good enough for a small room for gaming purposes, however you would be better off using the included headphones or a pair of external speakers to give you the best experience.

The thin bezels on the screen means that ASUS has to find a solution for the webcam. They have unfortunately chosen to position the webcam on the bottom right of the screen. This is very unfortunate as it means that on most circumstances you will end up taking pics of your hands or the view will be a rather unflattering angle. The Webcam itself is a 1080 webcam and is just about what you would expect. It suffices for a video call, but if you plan on doing live streaming you should get a better camera.

Other Points

A point that I have mentioned earlier in this review is that the LED controls in the software are very poor. This is more of a point about the software rather than the hardware itself, since the ROG Strix Scar II can support individually controlled lights and some pretty advanced settings. But in the provided software there isn’t many options. An additional point is that there is no clear way to disable the other lights scattered around the laptop. Sometimes they worked sometimes they didn’t. Hopefully all this will get sorted out with future software updates.

Here are some of the pics of the software that you get with the Asus ROG Strix Scar II:

The dedicated buttons on the Strix Scar II are volume controls and a performance switcher. These buttons were perfect in my opinion and the switcher was especially handy.