Asus ROG Strix GL504 Scar II review: The Scar II has a great screen, but an ugly paint job
With a slim-bezel, 144Hz display and Nvidia 1070 GPU, this is a feature-packed 15-inch laptop, even if it's not a looker.
To mangle a quote from Justice Potter Stewart, I may not always be able to define what makes a good laptop keyboard, but I know it when I see it. The chunky, clicky keyboard is a highlight of this 15-inch gaming laptop, which mixes a handful of premium features with an otherwise pedestrian design.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
If you go shopping for this particular model, pay close attention and make sure you're looking for the proper name. This has the unwieldy moniker Asus ROG Strix GL504 Scar II.
Asus offers a dizzying array of gaming laptops with different combinations of names: ROG (Republic of Gamers), Strix, Zephyrus, Scar, Hero, FX and so on. Most are available in numerous configurations. It usually takes some digging into specs to figure out exactly how one differs from another. The Scar II falls solidly in the middle of the pack, adding some high-end features, but inside a bulky, generic body.
The screen doesn't get past 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, and is missing extras like Nvidia G-Sync support, but it's a 144Hz display, meaning it has a higher refresh rate than most laptop screens. That could be important to competitive esports gamers, who need low latency and fast refresh rates. Just as interesting, the bezel around the display is pleasingly thin -- a rare accomplishment for a gaming laptop.
Aside from that, the boxy chassis is a bit of a yawn. There's a subtle camouflage pattern that doesn't really pop enough. At first glance, some people told me the laptop just looked dirty. The customizable keyboard backlighting (which also includes a light-up logo on the back of the lid and a small light bar right in front of the touchpad) gets the job done, but it only has four keyboard lighting zones, rather than per-key lighting. The all-important WASD keys, often used in PC gaming, are transparent plastic. It's a little visual pop I liked, even if it's rather gamer-y.
The Intel Core i7-8750H, Nvidia GeForce 1070 version tested here is $1,999, while dropping the GPU to the Nvidia 1060 gets you down to $1,699. Asus prices and configurations vary widely around the world, but comparable models run around £1,499 or AU$2,999.
Asus ROG Strix Scar II
Price as reviewed | $1,999 |
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Display size/resolution | 15.6-inch 1,920x1,080 pixels |
CPU | 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H |
Memory | 32GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,660MHz |
Graphics | 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 |
Storage | 512GB SSD |
Networking | 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.TK |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) |
Made for gaming
Despite not being knocked out by the overall design of the Scar II, using it to play games was an excellent experience. The system matched or beat out several other laptops with Nvidia 1070 or 1070 Max-Q GPUs in some tests, and handily beat a couple of examples with Nvidia 1060 GPUs. Moving up to a full 1080 GPU was the only way to show up the Scar II.
In anecdotal gaming, running recent games from Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire to Vampyr, the system ran smoothly at full 1080p resolution and high-to-ultra detail settings. Still, the system fans did kick in during gaming, and they get pretty loud. Asus says the cooling system includes "antidust tunnels" which blow dust away using faster fans.
Does anyone really leave their gaming laptop unplugged for too long? I know I usually don't. In this case, that's a good thing, as the Scar II ran for only 3 hours, 7 minutes in our streaming-video battery-drain test. A handful of gaming laptops can top 5 or 6 hours on this test (see the chart below), but doing any kind of unplugged gaming will drop battery life significantly.
Plenty to unpack
There's a lot going on with the Scar II. It has an excellent CPU-GPU combo and strong performance. The slim screen bezels and 144Hz refresh rate make for superb display specs. A handful of design touches, like the transparent WASD keys, add some visual interest. But the rest of the design is boxy and generic, with the needle tipping too far into "gamer" territory, especially its silly camo paint job.
For $2,000, it's fair to expect more zing. If you're specifically looking for an Nvidia 1070 gaming laptop, those can found for a few hundred dollars less. Or you might like something especially sharp-looking, like the new 15-inch Razer Blade, which can be had for a little less (for the Nvidia 1060 version) or a bit more (for the 1070 version). Keep in mind, however, those include just a 256GB SSD, not the 256GB SSD-1TB hybrid HDD combo included here.
System configurations
Asus ROG Strix Scar II | Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H; 32GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,660MHz; 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070; 512GB SSD |
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Razer Blade (2018) | Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,660MHz; 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 with Max-Q Design; 512GB SSD |
Asus ROG Zephyrus M GM501 (2018) | Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit); 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H; 32GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,660MHz; 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070; 512GB SSD |
Alienware 15 R3 (2017) | Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit); 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,666MHz; 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070; 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD |
Dell Inspiron 15 7577 Gaming (late 2017) | Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit); 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-7300HQ; 8GB DDR4 SDRAM 2,400MHz; 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design; 256GB SSD |
Origin PC Eon17X | Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64-bit); (OC) 4.7GHz Intel Core i7-8700K; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2800MHz; 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080; (2) 250GB SSD RAID 0 |
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