Imagine walking into your neighbourhood hipster café, ordering a flat white, heading to your preferred table and then turning on your laptop. Sounds nothing out of the ordinary? Except for the attention you’re likely to get if the laptop in question is the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17. For the uninitiated, ROG stands for Republic of Gamers, ASUS’ dedicated line for folks who take their gaming seriously.

CES Sighting

Early this year, ASUS unveiled its lineup for 2022, and there were a couple of products that caught our attention. One was the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, that can be anything that you want it to be – a tablet, a laptop with a fully functional keyboard, or a book. Think of it as a large desktop-style OLED display with vivid colours that you can fold down to a 12.5-inch size and slip into your man bag. And then there was the update to the ASUS ROG Strix Scar – a high-performance laptop that is aimed at serious gamers. Is this the gaming laptop to beat?

Blinding Lights

Now back to that hipster café. Turn on the ASUS ROG Strix Scar and it’s a light show. RGB effects take over at the front and sides, plus a strip under the screen adds to the psychedelic experience. That’s not all; the ROG logo and the keyboard get the same treatment. You can tweak the lighting effects with the companion app or choose to turn it off completely but that would be sacrilege. Rugged meets elegant in the design of the chassis, it’s a blend of metal and high quality plastic. ASUS calls them Armour Caps; you’ll find the ROG logo embossed at the left corner. These are swappable (ASUS bundles additional options in the box) and add an additional pop of colour to your chassis. The Armour cap can also be 3D printed if you want to add one more distinctive touch to display your style. The Strix Scar looks futuristic and will make heads turn.

Game On

Webcams have become a big part of the sales pitch for most laptops in a post-pandemic world. Virtual meetings are here to stay. While there’s no embedded cam, the top-end version that we checked out ships with a ROG Eye Clip web cam that you can add on when you switch to WFH mode. You won’t worry about that once you’re on binge watch or gaming mode. The 17.3-inch display (16:9 QHD / 2560 x 1440 pixels) is the standout feature of this laptop. Add the 240Hz refresh rate and Dolby Atmos-tuned quad speakers and you have a formidable gaming powerhouse. I noticed the high frame rates played out well while checking out Asphalt 9. ASUS also has included four dedicated fan outlets with its Intelligent Cooling design and low noise levels (just 40db in ‘Performance’ mode).

The Twain Finally Meet

The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 is powered by an Intel CoreTM i9-12900H CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTXTM 3080 Ti Laptop GPU with MUX Switch and an all-new blazing fast DDR5 RAM. It’s enough firepower for gaming, and throw any productivity task at this laptop, and it will handle it. Battery life – you should manage about 6-7 hours in most scenarios – is quite impressive for a laptop with a screen this large. Not too long ago, gaming laptops were the preserve of geeks and compulsive gamers. Now they have made their way into the boardroom. WFH warriors need their share of downtime and the ROG Strix 17 is the perfect meeting point of gaming and productivity.  

The top-end 17-inch version of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 that we checked out costs Rs 2,59,990.