The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 2023 gaming laptop lineup is designed for those who need maximum desktop-like performance in a relatively portable format. The combination of the 13th Generation Intel Core i9 flagship processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop graphics card delivers truly impressive performance with plenty of room for the future. And the cooling system allows these powerful components to operate stably without overheating. The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) has a gorgeous Mini LED display with high brightness, rich pictures and a 240Hz refresh rate, and enough connectors to connect external monitors and necessary peripherals. The laptop keyboard has very comfortable and pleasant buttons, but not a very familiar layout that takes some getting used to. Minor complaints include the lack of a fingerprint scanner or an infrared camera for owner identification.
6 reasons to buy ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023):
- Impressive performance
- Gorgeous 16-inch Mini LED screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz
- Efficient cooling system
- Sufficient number of modern connectors
- Comfortable keyboard buttons and touchpad
- Bright design with RGB backlighting
2 reasons not to buy ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023):
- Slightly unusual keyboard layout
- No fingerprint scanner or IR camera
Quick Transition:
- What's in the box?
- What about the appearance and construction of ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023)?
- How comfortable is the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023)?
- How good is the screen?
- What about performance and battery life?
- Bottom line
What's in the box?
ASUS has an interesting way of packaging and bundling its flagship gaming laptops. This also applies to the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023). The whole package came in a large black box with a red ROG logo. The laptop itself is in a smaller grey box with a lot of printing and some anime drawings. In addition to the laptop itself, the box contains a 330W main power supply with power cable, an additional 100W PSU with Type-C and a separate power cable, an additional Armour Cap, a ROG Gladius III mouse, a carrying case, and documentation.
What about the appearance and construction of the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023)?
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) looks like a top gaming laptop should look: aggressive design and RGB lighting from everywhere. It is not very heavy for such a powerful 16-inch model: only 2.5 kg. Almost the entire body is made of matte black plastic with different textures. ASUS continues to experiment with translucent design elements. In this case, the top of the working surface and the side edges are translucent. Above the working surface are two of the four built-in speakers and LED indicators. Unfortunately, the lower black part of the work surface is very markable and prints remain instantly.
The lid is made of metal. It is matte and has a very high-quality oleophobic coating, so no prints remain. The lid has a decorative diagonal stripe and a large backlit ROG logo.
On the right side of the back edge is a replaceable Armor Cap that snaps on easily but securely. The company has been using Armor Cap in its gaming models for a long time. The idea is that you can download a 3D model from the website and print your own customised version on a 3D printer.
Almost the entire width of the back of the laptop is occupied by a huge cooling radiator, so all ports are located on the side. On the right are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and cooling system vents.
On the left are the power supply connector, 2.5G LAN, HDMI 2.1, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (with DisplayPort, Power Delivery, G-SYNC), Thunderbolt 4 (with DisplayPort, G-SYNC), 3.5-mm combo audio jack and vents.
The back has only vents and RGB backlighting.
The front of the laptop has another strip with RGB backlighting. So the laptop can shine like a Christmas tree. Although it can be switched off if you wish.
The bezel around the perimeter of the screen is very narrow, there are rubber inserts for additional protection of the display. There is a small ledge in the middle of the top, which is convenient for opening a laptop. There is a 720p webcam, a light and two microphones.
The bottom has many ventilation holes, massive rubber feet for a more secure position on the table and two more speakers. The bottom cover is removable, there is access to two SO-DIMM slots, and up to 64 GB of RAM is supported. In our case, there are two 16GB DDR5-4800 slots. There are also two slots for M.2 SSDs. Up to 2x2 TB PCIe4.0x4 drives are supported and can be combined into a RAID 0 array. M.2 SSD drives with SATA interface are not supported.
The laptop is quite large, which is not surprising given the powerful components and 16-inch screen. But it's quite capable of being carried around every day in a backpack: 2.5kg is not a lot. Visually, the laptop will appeal to fans of gaming models with bright backlighting. But such powerful laptops are also bought as portable workstations. In this case, you can switch off all the backlighting and the laptop looks quite calm thanks to the predominant matte black plastic.
How comfortable is the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) to use?
The hinges allow you to open the laptop about 110°, which is quite enough for a gaming model. The display unit is well fixed and does not wobble. Keyboard The keyboard of the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) has a not-so-usual layout. At first glance, it looks like a typical laptop keyboard without a separate number pad. But on the right, it ends with an additional column with media playback control buttons, a right arrow from the bottom and Delete from the top. During the first few days of use, I kept pressing the track back button instead of Enter. The arrow block is full-sized, but it is not separated from the main block. The right Shift is a little shorter than usual. So it will take some time to get used to the layout. Everything else is usual: the left Shift and Enter keys are long. The top function key is smaller. Above it is a block of five additional buttons. By default, they are responsible for adjusting the volume, mute the microphone, switching modes and launching the Armoury Crate app. You can also configure macros on them. The power button with a red LED is located in the upper right corner separately from the main unit. Unfortunately, there is neither a fingerprint scanner nor an infrared camera to identify the owner, so you will have to log in with a password every time.
The buttons themselves are very comfortable, as in all current ASUS gaming models: the full stroke is 2 mm, there is a small depression of 0.15 mm. The clicks are very pleasant and informative. There is the familiar ROG Overstroke technology, thanks to which the button is triggered before it is fully pressed. There is RGB backlighting with individual settings for each button and support for ROG AURA Sync.
The touchpad is glass, large in size with a pleasant finish and good sensitivity. It is sufficient for working with documents or surfing the web. As with many other ASUS models, it can be converted into a NumberPad touchpad.
How good is the screen?
The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) laptop has a 16-inch Mini LED display with a matte finish, which the company calls the ROG Nebula HDR Display. The screen backlight is a matrix of 1024 small LEDs with local dimming, which achieves a very high level of brightness, contrast and uniformity. The screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio and a WQXGA resolution (2560 x 1600). Colour coverage is 100% DCI-P3, refresh rate: 240 Hz, response time: 3 ms, the display is Pantone certified. It promises a maximum brightness of 500 cd/m2 and a peak brightness of 1100 cd/m2. There is support for G-Sync frame rate synchronisation. The ROG Armoury Crate app has some interesting display settings. These include overdrive, power saving (reducing the refresh rate), multi-zone backlighting (when switched off, the screen actually works like a regular IPS). In the Game Visual section, you can choose from several picture presets, adjust the colour temperature, select the colour gamut mode (DCI-P3, sRGB, etc.) and calibrate the screen, but you will need an X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator.
Based on my own impressions, I can say that this is one of the best displays (perhaps the best) in gaming laptops that I have ever seen. The picture is very bright, saturated, with maximum viewing angles. In general, the image is very similar to OLED in terms of contrast and colour reproduction. Measurements were made in DCI-P3 mode. Mmaximum brightness was 532.434 cd/m2, which is even slightly higher than stated. The colour space coverage is wider than sRGB, and the colour temperature and RGB components are very close to the reference values.
What about performance and battery life?
The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 2023 lineup has the top hardware available at the moment. Intel 13th generation Raptor Lake processors and GeForce RTX 4000-series graphics cards. In our configuration, we have the top-of-the-line Intel Core i9-13980HX processor with a base frequency of 2.2 GHz. It is manufactured using the Intel 7 process and includes 24 cores. 8 high-performance cores with a clock speed of up to 5.6 GHz and 16 energy-efficient cores with a clock speed of up to 4.0 GHz. Up to 32 threads of computing are supported, and the cache is 32 MB. The standard TDP level is 55 W, but in Manual mode it can be raised to 65 W. There is integrated Intel UHD Graphics (32EU) with a frequency of up to 1.65 GHz. RAM - 32 GB DDR5-4800 (2x16 GB), works in dual-channel mode. The laptop supports up to 64 GB. Wireless interfaces Bluetooth 5.2 and fast Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) (Dual band) 2x2. There is also a LAN port that supports speeds up to 2500 Mbps. The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop is used as a discrete video accelerator . The base frequency is 1860 MHz, the boost is up to 2280 MHz with a standard TGP of up to 150 watts. But ROG Boost is supported with a TGP increase of up to 175 W and a frequency of up to 2330 MHz. There is 12 GB of GDDR6 video memory. The laptop is equipped with a MUX Switch multiplexer to directly connect the video card to the display, bypassing the built-in graphics. This reduces latency and increases performance. A performance gain of 5-10% is promised.
The results in benchmarks are quite expected. The laptop shows impressive results in both graphics and processor tests. This is one of the most powerful laptops on sale today. So its performance will be enough for modern games, as well as for working with heavy graphics, CAD, video editing, Unreal Engine, etc.
To ensure efficient cooling, a new three-section radiator is used, with copper fins located very close to the ventilation holes at the back and sides of the laptop. The total area of the radiator fins is 174,183 mm², which is 62.59% larger than the Strix SCAR 15 2022. Instead of the usual two fans, three Frost Force fans are used, one of which blows the video chip and video memory. There are seven heatpipes, and Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal is used as a thermal interface on the CPU and GPU.
At minimum loads, the cooling system operates in passive mode. Under load, the CO noise is quite noticeable, but not annoying and far from the loudest among gaming models. Although during gaming sessions it is still best to use a headset. There are additional small holes around the WASD for cooling. However, even with prolonged use, the keyboard does not overheat. Only the area above it becomes warm. The AIDA64 stress test showed that at maximum load, the components heat up to about 92°, with a short-term 10% drop in performance. But after the cooling system adapts, the temperature stays at around 80-83°, and the laptop operates stably without trotting.
The drive is an M.2 SSD with a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe interface, Samsung PM9A1 model, with a capacity of 1TB. They promise up to 7000 MB/s read speed and up to 5100 MB/s write speed.
The actual speed of the drive is fully consistent with the stated figures. The drive is very fast. But you can install another drive and combine it into a RAID 0 array
The laptop's performance is enough to play any modern game at maximum graphics settings with high frame rates.
- Cyberpunk 2077. Maximum settings, including ray tracing. DLSS in quality mode: 78-87 FPS.
- Death Stranding. Maximum settings: 115-137 FPS
- Gears 5. Ultra settings: 118-164 FPS
- God of War. Maximum settings, without DLSS: 84-116 FPS
- Callisto Protocol. Maximum settings, tracing at maximum: 61-96 FPS
- The Ascent. Maximum settings, with ray tracing, DLSS in quality mode: about 68-83 FPS.
- Witcher 3 (updated version). Maximum settings with ray tracing: 62-69 FPS
The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) uses a 90 Wh battery. The laptop lasted a little less than 6 hours in office mode: Wi-Fi connection, working with documents, browser, minimum performance mode and low brightness. With a 330W PSU, the laptop charges fully in about 1.40 hours. If you don't need maximum performance, you can use a 100W Type-C power supply.
The laptop has 4 built-in speakers that sound very good and loud. There is even a bit of bass. So they are quite enough for watching films or videos. For undemanding users, the quality is also good enough for listening to music.
All the basic laptop settings are collected in the ROG Armoury Crate app. It allows you to select laptop performance modes, update the system, adjust the backlight, AURA Sync, monitor system status, create profiles with different settings, record macros, and more.
- Impressive performance
- Gorgeous 16-inch Mini LED screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz
- Efficient cooling system
- Sufficient number of modern connectors
- Comfortable keyboard buttons and touchpad
- Bright design with RGB backlighting
Three things you need to know about ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023).
- ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) is one of the most powerful laptops available
- It features a gorgeous 16-inch 2560x1600 Mini LED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate
- It has a not-so-familiar keyboard layout
| Specifications ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 16 (2023) | |
|---|---|
| Display | 16 inches, 2560x1600 (16:10), Mini LED ROG Nebula HDR Display, 240 Hz, 3ms, matte finish, G-Sync |
| Dimensions | 354x264x30.4 mm |
| Weight | 2.5 kg |
| Operating system | Windows 11 |
| Processor | Intel Core i9-13980HX (2.2-5.6 GHz), 24 (8+16) cores, 32 threads, (Raptor Lake, Intel 7) |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR5-4800 MHz |
| Graphics | nVidia GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop, 12 GB GDDR6, Intel UHD Graphics (32EU) |
| Storage | SSD 1 TB (M.2) |
| Communications | Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax, Bluetooth 5.2, LAN 2500 Mbps |
| Connectors | 1xHDMI 2.1, 2xUSB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1xUSB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (DisplayPort, power delivery, G-SYNC), 1xRJ-45 (LAN), 1xThunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort, G-SYNC), 3.5 mm audio |
| Optical drive | None |
| Battery | 90 Wh |
For those who want to know more:
- ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2022) review: The most powerful gaming tablet
- ASUS ExpertBook B5 review: a reliable business laptop with impressive battery life
Editor of gagadget.com since 2012, engaged in technology reviews. Specialization — smartphones, laptops, monitors, headphones, peripheral devices, games. During his work, he made more than 300 reviews. Connoisseur of quality sound, musician with 15+ years of experience. Gamer since Intel 486.
