Asus’ Republic of Gamers lineup of gaming laptops are among the most powerful laptops (a lot of) money can buy, and the Strix 17 ‘Scar Edition’ is no exception. It’s the only model in this year’s lineup with a top-spec AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, with Asus opting for Intel chips for the Strix Scar 16 and 18.
Combined with 16GB of expandable DDR5 memory and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU on the unit I tested, the Strix Scar 17 delivers a recipe for serious performance. Sample this – I was able to run games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest resolution (2,560 x 1,440 pixels) with butter-smooth gameplay.
Premiere Pro video editing tasks were handled with ease as well. Even when it’s running multiple games and apps at once, it breezes through multitasking duties without heating up at all, and Asus cleverly channels all the warm air venting from the internals out of the sides, leaving the bottom comfortably cool enough for laptop use.
For all its gaming prowess, this is a laptop that’s almost discreet about its gamer credentials, which allows you to game in public (or after hours at work) without a veritable disco session going off! Sure, the always-backlit ROG logo is something you’ve got to live with, but the RGB lighting on the keys and the Aura Sync RGB lightbar on the front lip and the sides can be dialed down and customized in software, and you can have a fairly normal-looking laptop for when you don’t wish to draw the extra attention.
At 395 x 282 x 28.3mm and 3kg, the laptop is well-built yet is still portable enough to be carried around in a large laptop bag, though one can’t say the same about the heavy charging adapter and thick cable. Bear in mind, the charging setup uses a Type D (16A) plug so you’ll have to carry a converter plug around as well. And carry it around you will – the 330W adapter charges the 90WHrs battery in about 2 hours, but you can at best stretch the laptop to about 3-4 hours of battery use for everyday tasks (and much less for heavy gaming).
Elsewhere, the keyboard and trackpad are good, as is the WQHD IPS panel on the massive 17.3-inch 240Hz non-touch display, but one wishes this had the mini-LED Nebula displays that Asus packed into the Strix Scar 16 and 18 laptops. That, and the minor quibble about not having more Type-C ports on a laptop this size (it has just two, with two more of the Type-A variety). As good as the Strix Scar 17 is as a gaming laptop, this is stuff to think about as you weigh it against the competition from within the family, and without.
Rating: 8/10
Price: INR 2,69,990 onwards