ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE review: Cyberpunk 2022

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022) - if not the most powerful, then definitely one of the most powerful laptops that can be purchased at the moment. It can fully replace a modern gaming desktop for those who need maximum performance with the possibility of regular transportation. The laptop is equipped with a high-quality 17.3-inch WQHD display with a refresh rate of 240 Hz and a pixel response time of 3 ms. Also worth noting is an efficient cooling system, a very comfortable full-size keyboard and a good set of modern connectors, which lacks only a card reader. The laptop is made of high-quality materials and looks according to its gaming character. With interesting design elements and RGB backlighting. Which can be turned off if desired. Of course, you have to pay for such power with portability: it is not very convenient to carry such a laptop with you every day. Among not critical, but not very pleasant features we can single out the absence of a web-camera and a fingerprint scanner.

• unmatched performance;
• high-quality WQHD IPS screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz;
• efficient cooling system;
• comfortable keyboard;
• many modern connectors
• spectacular appearance and quality materials.

3 reasons not to buy ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022):

• high price;
• you need a more portable laptop;
• no webcam, card reader and fingerprint scanner.

Quick jump:

1. What's in the box?
2. What about the appearance and design of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022)?
3. How convenient is the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022) to use?
4. How good is the screen?
5. What about performance and battery life?
6. In dry balance

What's in the package?

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022) is available with different bundles, and we got the maximum version for review. The laptop is packed in a large heavy black box. Inside which there is traditionally another smaller one and some accessories. In our set there is, perhaps, everything you can think of. The laptop itself, the main 330 W power supply with a power cable, an additional 100 W power supply with Type-C and a separate power cable, two additional Armor Caps, a ROG Impact mouse, an ultraviolet flashlight, a Keystone NFC tag with a keychain and a very convenient backpack for carrying. The only thing missing is an external webcam, because there is no built-in one.

What about the appearance and design of ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022)?

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022) is almost entirely made of black matte plastic. The laptop is large and quite heavy: 3 kg. Which is not surprising, given the 17-inch display and very powerful components. From decorative parts it is worth highlighting that the working surface is divided into two parts by a diagonal strip. The main part is the usual black plastic. Which, by the way, turned out to be rather marky and collects fingerprints. The second part is translucent. It is quite original, but we cannot say that it looks somehow extraordinary. There are three LED indicators in the upper part of the working surface, and two speakers on the sides on the bend.

The top cover is more interesting. This is the only metal element of the laptop. It is also divided into two parts diagonally. In the upper one there is a large backlit Republic of Gamers logo. In the lower part there is a drawing applied with special ink. It is visible only under ultraviolet light, that is why there is an ultraviolet flashlight in the package.

All ports are located on the back and left side of the laptop. On the right there is only a section of cooling system holes and a Keystone mark. This is done so that the periphery on the right does not interfere with the hand with the mouse.

On the left there are two full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1, a combined 3.5 mm audio jack and ventilation holes.

Everything else is on the back: a power supply jack, Thunderbolt 4 (compatible with DisplayPort), USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (compatible with DisplayPort and Power Delivery), HDMI 2.1 and RJ-45 (LAN). On the sides of the connectors there are ventilation holes. Taking into account the dimensions of the notebook and the fact that such models are often used for creating photo and video content, it is a little strange that there is no card reader.

There is one more decorative element on the right side: Armor Cap, of which there are only 3 in the package. They are quite easily fixed and removed. On the ASUS website you can download a template and print your own version on a 3D printer.

There are no functional elements on the front of the laptop, there is only a decorative backlight in the form of an RGB strip. Of course, it can be turned off, like any other laptop backlight.

The frame on the top and on the sides of the display is very thin, there are protective rubber inserts around the perimeter. There is no webcam. Similar solutions have already been previously in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus line. The company explains this by the fact that the built-in camera is not as convenient for streams as an external one, with which you can change the viewing angle. And such laptops are often used by streamers, which for the most part already have a separate, high-quality camera.

Below there are quite massive rubber legs, a large number of ventilation holes and two more speakers. The front of the bottom cover is removable and provides access to RAM and M.2 SSD slots. There are two of them and it is worth noting that models with SATA interface are not supported. Exclusively PCIe.

In general, the appearance of ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022) fully corresponds to the gaming positioning. Lots of RGB backlighting, additional aggressive design elements. High-quality materials are used and all parts are well fitted. But there are a couple of small comments. The brand of the working surface, as already mentioned above. And a slight deflection of the lids under pressure. Which is quite common for large laptops.

How comfortable is the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 SE (2022)?

The hinges fix the display unit in the desired position quite well. The display does not shake if you accidentally touch it with your hand. Of the little things related to the lid, you can add only a small protrusion, which helps to more conveniently pick it up with your finger when tearing it off. The keyboard in ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022) is full-size, with a separate numeric keypad. It is not separated from the main unit. In all other respects, the layout is very close to conventional keyboards. Both Shift and Enter are long. The upper functional row has a reduced height. There are five additional buttons above it. By default, they are responsible for adjusting the volume, muting the microphone, switching modes and launching the Armory Crate application. You can also configure macros on them. The arrow block also has a reduced height, but it is slightly separated from the main block, so it is convenient to use. The power button is also slightly separated and is located in the upper right corner. In general, it does not take long to get used to the keyboard, the layout is convenient.

The keys have a small depression of 0.15 mm and a full stroke of 2 mm, so it is very convenient to use them. One of the interesting features is the ROG Overstroke technology, which means that the keystroke is registered before the button is fully pressed. Simply put - the response speed is reduced, which is important in games. There is RGB backlighting that is fully customizable and can be synchronized with other ROG devices (AURA Sync).

The touchpad is large, which is not surprising given the size of the laptop. In general, it is sufficient for all tasks except games and photo processing. It has good sensitivity and a pleasant coating on which the finger slides well.

Unfortunately, there is no fingerprint scanner or infrared camera to identify the owner of the laptop. So you will have to use a classic password for authorization. Keystone NFC tag has several interesting features. With Armoury Crate you can configure various actions to connect and disconnect it. For example, changing the operating mode, launching certain programs or games, blocking Windows or minimizing all programs. Keystone also provides access to the so-called "Shadow Folder", where you can store certain personal information.

How good is the screen?

ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022) features a 17.3-inch IPS screen with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio and anti-glare coating. There are two options: FullHD (1920 x 1080) with a refresh rate of 360 Hz, or WQHD (2560 x 1440) with a refresh rate of 240 Hz. Both displays support Dolby Vision, Adaptive Sync frame rate synchronization and have a pixel response time of 3 ms. We had WQHD (2560 x 1440) on review. They promise a brightness level of 300 cd/m2, which is quite enough for indoor use. The screen is really qualitative, with maximum viewing angles and pleasant natural color reproduction. There are also no problems in games: noticeable frame breaks, artifacts or smearing of the picture. The ROG Armoury Crate app has a Game Visual section where you can choose from several picture presets and adjust the color temperature.

We measured the screen performance with a colorimeter. The maximum brightness is 287.17 cd/m2 (which is close to the declared figure), the black field brightness is 0.312 cd/m2, and the static contrast is 920:1. Color space coverage almost completely coincides with sRGB, and deviations of other indicators from the reference values are minimal:

What about performance and autonomy?

Of course, the most interesting aspect of ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022) is its performance. And we can say that this is one of the most powerful laptops at the moment. Inside is a 16-core 12th generation Alder Lake Intel Core i9 12950HX processor, it is manufactured using Intel 7 process technology. As in other current Intel processors, 2 types of cores are used: 8 powerful and 8 energy efficient. It supports up to 24 threads of computation. The base frequency is 2.3 GHz, and in Turbo Boost mode - up to 5 GHz. The size of the 3rd level cache is 30 MB, there is an integrated Intel UHD Graphics (32EU) with a frequency of up to 1.55 GHz. TDP of the processor is up to 55 W in standard mode. But in our case in manual mode it can be raised up to 65 W. 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 with support for speeds up to 2500 Mbps. As a discrete video accelerator is used NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop. Base frequency - 1230 MHz, boost - up to 1590 MHz with standard TGP up to 150 W. But ROG Boost is supported with an increase in TGP up to 175 W and frequency up to 1640 MHz. Video memory is 16 GB GDDR6. The laptop is equipped with a MUX Switch multiplexer. In most laptops, the discrete graphics card is not connected directly to the display, but through integrated graphics. MUX Switch allows you to connect the video card directly to the display. This reduces latency and increases performance (up to 10% increase). But it increases power consumption

The laptop demonstrates impressive results in performance tests. Both graphic and processor. Therefore, it will be enough for almost any heavy tasks, both games and work with graphics, CAD, Unreal Engine 5, etc.:

To cool such powerful hardware, an evaporation chamber, six heat pipes, two Arc Flow fans with 84 blades and a radiator with 218 fins are used. Thermal Grizzly liquid metal Conductonaut Extreme is used as a thermal interface on both the processor and the video card.

At minimum loads the cooling system is not audible, but at maximum it works quite loudly. That is not surprising, taking into account the notebook power. The case almost does not heat up. The area above the keyboard becomes tangibly warm. The AIDA64 stress test showed that at the maximum load the first approximately 30 seconds the internal components heat up to about 95°, i.e. a small trotting of 8%. After the CO adaptation the temperature stays at about 80° and the system works absolutely stable.

The drive is an M.2 SSD PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe, model Micron 3400 with a capacity of 1 TB. They promise up to 6600 MB/s read speed and up to 5000 MB/s write speed. The laptop has two M.2 slots for drives, they can be combined into a RAID0 array.

The actual read speed is approximately the same as the declared figures. The write speed is a little bit lower. But in general the drive is very fast:

In games the notebook demonstrates very high performance. The native WQHD resolution was used. In Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra settings with ray tracing and automatic DLSS it works with a frame rate of about 60 FPS, sometimes dropping to 55. Dying Light 2, ray tracing (high settings), DLSS (balanced mode): 70-90 FPS. Gears 5, ultra settings: from 90 to 160 FPS. God of War, maximum settings, DLSS in quality mode: 80-90 FPS. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, maximum settings, DLSS ray tracing in quality mode: 90-130 FPS. Spider-Man, high settings, ray tracing, DLSS in quality mode: approximately 80-100 FPS. The Ascent, ultra settings, ray tracing, DLSS in quality mode: 60-70 FPS.

ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022) has a 90 Wh battery. They promise up to 8.5 hours of video. Probably without a network connection, with low brightness. In reality, the laptop lasted about 4 hours in office mode: Wi-Fi connection, work with documents, Photoshop, browser, background music playback. For such a powerful notebook it is very good. From a 330 W power supply unit the notebook is charged up to 50% in half an hour. If you do not need maximum performance, you can use a Type-C power supply with 100 W.

The laptop has 4 built-in speakers. In general, they sound quite good and loud. But it is still better to use a headset during games when the performance and noise of the CO is at its maximum.

To configure the laptop, the program ROG Armoury Crate is used. In it you can select laptop modes, update the system, adjust the backlight, including AURA Sync, monitor the system status, make profiles with different settings for different programs, games, etc.

In the dry balance. Three things you need to know about ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022).

• ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 SE (2022) is one of the most powerful laptops available.
• It is equipped with a high-quality 17.3-inch 2560x1400 screen with a refresh rate of 240 Hz.
• Like all top laptops, not very portable and not very long battery life.

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