ASUS - ROG Strix SCAR 16 16" 2.5K 240Hz Gaming Laptop - Intel Core Ultra 9 HX - 32GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 - 2TB SSD - Off Black

The laptop works great. Runs hot and CPU can get throttled at times. The battery lasts maybe two hours with light use. The screen is VERY bright. Mini-LED does show some blooming, but it is much better than standard LED on HDR content. Thunderbolt 5 is great to use with an eGPU if wanting to do so. The quick-release for the bottom cover to upgrade SSDs and RAM is a nice touch. The only one thing is that it is all plastic, and the palm rest does get very oily looking very fast and is kind of a pain to keep clean. So, I got a sticker cover for it, and IMHO it looks much better.

The laptop is very unique. When it comes to gaming? It’s already got great graphics. The LED lights are so fun and customizable. The Ani-vision on the back is so cool too. It runs programs Like Aoto-Cad- if you know what that is( it’s a program to make blueprints. The charger must stay with it at all times though. The battery can not last more than a hour and a half I think, understandable when it’s running off very high GPU. But it’s very nice

This laptop has been my daily driver from a month. Monitor is 240hz with a 3ms response time. A magnet of finger stains. While I would have loved an AMD variant, this is by no means a hinder. Minecraft with shaders runs at the limited 240 fps. Cyberpunk at highest, no problem. Performance goes beyond my desktop 3070 can perform. That is impressive. Now, the build is some smooth plastic. Not the cheap plastic kind but it's not your razer unibody-aluminum build. The AniMe vision gimmick certainly is an eye turner, it's nice you can customize the pixels to show any image as long as it's properly scaled. I have no rgb turn on due to preference. Battery life have last me about 5 hours-ish browsing the internet. I have not done a proper test for the battery but having the option of charging just with the usb C option, is a life savior. I love this laptop and recommend it for the current laptop landscape.

Great purchase, really amazing, totally worth it, really loved it.

Build quality: 5/5 The chassis and keyboard deck are a more premium plastic. I do wish it were metal, but I understand the weight considerations involved. Keyboard is excellent and has full sized arrow keys! Trackpad appears to be glass topped and is very smooth. Trackpad also has a numpad feature; not ideal for those doing data entry. The power button is mushy, I wish they kept the flush power button from the Zephyrus line here. Upgradability: 5/5 The bottom panel can be removed in under 30 seconds as it's a simple latch design. No screws involved for ram and ssd access. No screwdriver needed! This makes cleaning fans and dust a breeze. The SSDs are tool less. The WiFi card would need further disassembly, but being WiFi 7, may only need to be replaced if the radio fails. I already upgraded the ram to 64GB and added an extra SSD. Display: 5/5 The 2560x1600 mini LED panel with 2000 dimming zones is beautiful. HDR is awesome on this screen. The screen is matt coated and is great for bright rooms, NO mirror reflections like the glossy OLEDS!. Color accuracy is excellent, and the refresh rate is up to 240hz. I love OLEDS, but the glossy panels on many laptops is a absolute dealbreaker, especially when they can only reach 500ish nits. This mini LED display gets incredibly bright. It won't get OLED inky blacks, but it's very close. My panel has no imperfections. Hardware: 5/5 The hardware is great. The 275HX CPU is an excellent performer and has very good performance for power draw. Great CPU for those doing CAD, sims, and virtual machines. I imagine other CPU focus rendering would also do very well. Gaming is great with my suite of games such as Stellaris, Space Marine 2, Helldivers 2, and Baldur's Gate 3. The 5080 GPU is about equivalent in raster to a desktop 4070 super or RTX 5070 but with 16GB of VRAM. Not much more can be squeezed into a package this size at 150W with 25W dynamic boost (175W total GPU power). Gaming performance is awesome and no driver issues after about 2 weeks. AI performance is very good, but if that is your main focus or you need more VRAM for the rendering applications, get a 5090 laptop. The 5090 laptop seems to have about the 10-15% more raster but gets you 24GB VRAM. Storage: 4/5 the storage is a gen4 2TB NVME SSD. It would be nice to be a gen5 since the slots support gen5. Possibly a cost saving measure and would result in little improvement to most applications. I populated the empty slot with a gen4 4TB 990pro from Samsung. Battery: 3/5 The battery life is actually decent. 6.5 hours in eco mode with lowest brightness watching YouTube videos. Milage will vary here depending on applications used. Coming from a M16 2023 with a 13900h and 4070, it doesn't get anywhere near that battery life but is acceptable. The performance matters more than the battery life in this case. Software: 3/5 Armory Crate is meh. I don't know what happened between 2023 Armory crate and 2025, but now it's just sluggish and bloated. It works, but the SW team went in the wrong direction. I just uninstalled it and installed gHelper from Git. It makes a world of difference. Speakers: 4/5 Speakers are actually good. There are 4 speakers and sound quality is good. Nothing like the Zephyrus line with their 6 speakers, but still good. Webcam and microphone: 4/5 Good. 1080p, works for video calls and Teams calls. Nothing to write home about but isn't absolute potato level quality. Windows hello works really well. Ports: 5/5 The laptop has 3 USB A gen3.2 ports, 2 Thunderbolt 5 (80Gbps) ports, HDMI, 2.5G LAN, and audio/mic combo jack. The thunderbolt ports are type C and can accept 100W of charging. I have traveled around with the heavier 330W charger in my check bag and use a 100W phone charger to use with the laptop in my backpack.