for years the gaming laptop has been this sort of b-tier experience for
people without enough space for a desktop but the ASUS rog strix scar 3
has something to say about that rocking a 240hz ips panel and some sick internals
this laptop is freakishly good for gaming but
a lot of other laptops will be getting a similar panel soon so has ASUS done a
good enough job with the all-new strix 3 to beat out the competition actually
i like their chances
when i opened up the new scar 3 my first thought was wait a second
is this a zephyrus because the styling of the strix lineup
has undergone a huge change and at least
partly thanks to ASUS's collaboration with bmw design works i think it turned
out really fine save for
maybe the slightly over the top RGB along the bottom up close well it's not
perfect there are still some plasticky feeling bits here and there but the good
news is that that actually helps keep the scar 3 from completely destroying
your bank account more on that later overall then with that in mind the feel
of the build quality is solid with a robust feeling hinge and very strong
chassis rigidity not that you'll be staring at it for too long because once
you boot it up the screen just sucks you right in
this 240hz panel is not just the best
looking that i've ever seen on a laptop it may be the best looking 240hz screen
i've ever seen period the thing is previous 240hz gaming
displays have always used tn panels
trading away their color accuracy for faster pixel response times now this
panel is ips meaning that the colors are
shockingly vivid and accurate given the fast refresh rate and although you do
technically give up some responsiveness compared to tien i can't detect any lag
or excessive motion blur and it's easily better than any 144hz display
the only issue that we did encounter was while viewing compressed video like on
youtube gradients can actually shimmer and look extra ugly this is something
that we've noticed on esports monitors before as they tend to increase the
vividness to make spotting enemies easier so i guess what i'm saying is
that this is a trade-off that i understand but ASUS if you guys are
taking notes i think that having different profiles like you would have
on a desktop monitor would be a nice addition here obviously though 240hz is
meaningless if you can't push 240 frames per second in your games
thankfully though our unit with a core i9 9880h
and an rtx 2070 please note that is not
a max-q model is powerful enough to get darn close
and simply put this is the kind of gaming experience
that ruins you because once you've had it sitting down at another monitor and
i'm talking even like a half decent 120
hertz one is gonna feel like slushy garbage
playing doom on the g531 hot damn cs go
oh yes i mean just to put this in perspective
even moving the cursor around playing minesweeper feels so freaking smooth
between the speed of this machine and the screen you're going to be using this
laptop at a pace that just isn't possible on mere mortal computers
and then there's the use cases that go beyond gaming so our unit's 8 core
processor 32 gigs of RAM and 1 terabyte
SSD mean that it is crazy fast basically
across the board with that said though ASUS like apple as
we showed recently is still beholden to the laws of physics
so when we pushed it to the limit with an all-core load our CPU got pretty
toasty and the fan started to scream as they tried to contain the heat of 8
cores at 3.5 gigahertz then when it
looked like they were going to lose the battle the CPU dropped to just 2.8
in fairness to ASUS though that is still noticeably faster than the 2.3 gigahertz
base clock that this CPU is rated for so
although i was at first a bit disappointed it still delivers the best
CPU performance out of anything that we've tested outside of desktop
replacement models that are literally double its size and usually double the
price now then back to noise for a bit the
scar 3 does get a bit loud but thankfully the tone of the sound is such
that no high-pitched whining is going to make it past your headphones and if you
don't want to use headphones the included speakers are actually
shockingly full sounding even good enough to blast some tunes while setting
up for a gaming session with your friends and the good news train just keeps
rolling here and i keep waiting for the bad stuff day-to-day use of the strix
g531 as just a laptop is a pretty good
time too the keyboard is awesome it's
tactile but with a softer touch that makes it comfortable to both type and
game on and the keycaps above average
stabilization brings it right up there with the new bar that alienware set with
their most recent gaming machines just a short aside here by the way i'm
really glad to see how seriously companies are finally taking keyboards
on gaming laptops because like news flash everyone even avid
gamers do more than just game
moving on to the track pad it uses the Windows precision drivers has dedicated
left and right mouse keys and generally just does the trick my only real
complaint here is that like every other trackpad on the market the pulling rate
is stuck at 125 hertz which isn't an
issue with a 60hz or even a 120hz display but at 240hz the leg and jutter
is noticeable so it's fine but as always
our recommendation is to use a high quality gaming mouse at a thousand hertz
wherever possible putting another usability feather in ASUS cap is the
above average i o it's got HDMI several full-size usb ports and Ethernet all
making appearances although it would have been nice to have Thunderbolt 3.
now something ASUS did include it's a little weird is what they're
calling the keystone and it's a little
nfc key that you can plug into the side of
the machine that will load up your gaming and RGB profiles as well as
unlock your shadow drive which reveals a
hidden drive partition and like i don't know i i guess this is
cool but personally i would stick with a
password protected folder over a very losable
plastic key which perfectly transitions us i guess to the mediocre stuff the 66
watt hour battery in the scar 3 is more than enough for most laptops
but once you throw an 8 core processor at it
it's not that bad like we were able to wring
out about four hours of life on a single charge which is acceptable but it's not
an incredible number either and what's even less incredible is the webcam
now in light of the popularity of video chat and game streaming we've been
asking the industry to take front-facing cameras seriously for ages and some
brands finally have with dell creating a small bezel webcam for their xps line
and razer introducing facial recognition on the blade
meanwhile at ASUS headquarters it's like oh you like webcams eh cool
why don't you go pound sand because yeah they totally removed the
webcam i mean come on guys at least make an attempt you could go
back to bundling one in the box maybe you could put a little magnetic chum on
the top that clips like i don't know i never thought i'd say this but how
about one of those stupid ones on the bottom bezel anything is better than
nothing since as it stands if you need a webcam
you have to just buy something else which i guess brings us nicely to
should you buy something else well with the
hertz rtx 2070 equipped a sue strix scar
3 starting at 2 grand it's still not cheap but given how much laptop you're
getting and how surprisingly totable it is
it's actually not too bad of a deal like to put this in perspective a similarly
spec'd alienware m15 is 2600
and that's with only a six core core i7 and without its optional 90 watt hour
battery now the Gigabyte arrow 15 is a compelling option
but you'd be giving up the 240 hertz display meaning that the strix car 3 is
a lot of gaming performance for the money
so if you've got deep enough pockets and i don't know maybe some 3d printing
know-how for a webcam bracket the scar 3 gets the line of seal of
buttery smooth gaming approval so thanks for watching guys if this
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