Customer Ratings & Reviews

This computer has yet to lose to any game I have thrown at it. Really the end all be all of gaming laptops at this price, with a processing system that makes every game play top notch. A little problem with memory allocation, but it has the slots for extra memory, so its easily upgradeable if thats a problem you face.

This laptop is amazing! The speed is incredible and the picture is unmatched.

Works great. Very fast loading times. Can push any game out there with ease.

The overall performance is great. No display bleed, No wired noise. Everything good.

Pros- Beautiful, fast 18" qhd 240hz panel. I measured 488 nits max brightness, 99.9% SRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 86% AdobeRGB. Full 240hz is great, and I can't see any noticeable ghosting. Amazing performance and excellent price/performance. The maxed out i9 13980HX is outstanding for all manner of productivity and with thermal velocity boost (TVB) single core performance is also really good! The 4080 is really close to the 4090 in the Scar (the scar has 10-15% more frames in games on average) while costing way less. The conductonaut extreme liquid metal does a great job keeping all core thermal loads in check - 120w all core in blender and cinebench have temps barely at 80c. Fan noise is actually better than my other previous gaming laptops. The keyboard feels nice, and the touchpad is excellent. The armory crate software is bloated, but is overall useful. The plastic build doesn't feel cheap, and the weight savings is much appreciated. This machine can travel without feeling like a desktop replacement in weight. There's an adequate amount of ports, and the 2.5g ethernet is a great addition. Charging through usb-c is also great when away from my desk where this machine sits 90% of the time. Cons- After reading the first bit, why only 2 stars? Memory support. The website only goes as far as to say that 32GB is supported. That's accurate. But I went through 5, yes, -FIVE- 32GB kits until I got the machine to boot with one. G.Skill, Kingston, Team Group, Corsair, and finally Crucial. This machine apparently does NOT support dual rank ram or dual sided ram. It also will not support 4800mt/s at any faster than CL40. In fact, the only timings I could get to boot was a Crucial kit that is 40-39-39. The CL34 4800 kit wouldn't boot. The dual rank 2Rx8 kits wouldn't take. It shouldn't have been this difficult to find a kit to upgrade to 32GB! The i9 also is supposed to support 5600 mt/s ram, but this machine does not for some reason. The i9 cpu in this machine is supposed to be unlocked (all of the HX chips are supposed to be unlocked) and this means that the chip is able to be overclocked or undervolted (and NO, the -30mv in BIOS isn't good enough). ASUS somehow thinks this should be disabled. Please add this ASUS - this is an enthusiast's machine and your competition allows both undervolting and overclocking (msi, razer, alienware, etc) of the cpu. Coil Whine - I believe every unit will have the small electronic mice making noises constantly when utilizing the GPU. That means doing anything hardware accelerated or playing games you will hear this constant and sometimes loud noise. This isn't as noticeable when the fans ramp up in speed. This isn't normal, and other brands do not suffer from this - but I will admit that the other brands are more expensive also. You get what you pay for? Primary SSD runs HOT. Constantly hitting 70c when just simply copying some photos and videos (about 50gb). It would have been nice to get a displayport output to not have to buy an adapter to connect to my high refresh external display (which doesn't have hdmi 2.1). Even a mini displayport would have been acceptable. Battery life? Really I didn't expect much when actually using the machine and it is about what I expected. About 3-4 hours actually using it. It could have been a bigger 99.9 Wh battery but that honestly wouldn't have moved the needle on battery that much. Just would have been a nice to have thing. OVERALL- As awful as the cons are, I just don't see a better option with these specs and 16:10 aspect ratio at 18". Some of these things I will have to live with (coil whine, lack of ports) and some can be fixed with a firmware update (unlocked cpu, better ram support). It's up to ASUS to continue support and provide fixes for this machine, and I wouldn't advise anyone to buy this expecting anything needing firmware/BIOS patches to ever be enabled/patched (again cpu unlocked/ram support). Buy this if you can't stomach another grand to get another brand and learn to live with it's faults? That's what I plan to do...

Ive had this monster of a computer for some time now with no issues at all. It may be possible that it is because I bought and installed 64GB of RAM which was overkill njt i didn't think that 16 GB was enough. I also threw in an extra 2TB 980 pro for good measure and I've not had any issues with the screen as other reviewers mention but i did get the protection plan included so time will tell

Great laptop!!! Big screen, fast and powerful. I recommend.

[Employee of bestbuy] One of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I’m a student who loves to game, I go back and forth from my parents house to other places so mobility is important to me. The battery obviously isn’t anything to write home about, you’re gonna want to keep in plugged in for sure if you intend on using it for multiple hours.

Zero problems with my unit, backlight bleed was very minor and well within expected ranges with an IPS panel. Really wish Asus wouldn’t be so stingy with the RAM, but it’s a very easy upgrade. All in all a very good buy especially compared to a scar 18 or Alienware M18

So far it has exceeded my expectations. It can handle any game on high settings no problem. The display is beautiful and is amazing to watch. All applications open and run extremely fast. I absolutely love this laptop and have zero complaints.

ASUS truly outdid themselves with this offering. The processor is a 13th generation top of the line with speeds up to 5.60 GHz in turbo mode. Some of the best that Intel has to offer at the moment. The graphics card is amongst the best in this generation from Nvidia and the LED lights, both on the border of the laptop, and the keyboard itself, is a sight to behold. The price-to-performance ratio is amongst the best (these same specs from a different manufacturer like Alienware, could easily end up costing US$500.oo more) and the gorgeous 18" display with 2560 x 1600 resolution running at 240 Hz ensures a crisp and sharp experience. It is not without its issues, but for the price, and for the overall high-quality, they can easily be worked through. My specs: Name: ASUS ROG Strix G18. Processor: Intel Core i9-13980HX (up to 5.60 GHz). RAM: 16GB DDR5. Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB GDDR6. Storage: 1TB SSD. Display: 18.0", WQXGA (2560 x 1600), 240 Hz, IPS + G-Sync. Color: Eclipse Gray.

Very happy with this laptop, mine has no lightbleed, no cool whine, great temps. Runs every game I’ve thrown at it at least 60fps with all settings maxed. Just be aware this is a big laptop, desktop replacement really, but oh so powerful. Great buy at the msrp, even better whenever it goes on sale.

Good laptop. Great screen size and speed...runs everything at max. Only issue is my video card exploded 2 months after purchase requiring a 3 week repair by geek squad.. drops a few stars.

Bought this laptop and it had screen bleed out of the box. Was able to fix because the bezels weren’t clicked in all the way. I also have coil whine when on battery at idle. Then a day or two after the return period I find out the Asus will not extend Asus Premium Care on any product from Best Buy. Since this was clearly never stated I lost my chance to extend this warranty. I have lost all respect for Asus as a company. No wonder JaysTwoCents banished them! They are not the Rebulic of Gamers they are the Republic of Scammers. What kind of company won’t extend a warranty on their own device. Apple doesn’t even do this come on now. Honestly lost all respect for Asus and will probably never own another one of their products. Just go with a Legion, I know I wish I did. Lenovo will actually allow you to extend the warranty even if purchased from Best Buy.

It’s really worth itttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

Possible hardware issue caused random freezing, but can't be absolutely sure it was hardware. Definitely has the high pitched noise at some points, but not sure that's actually abnormal as some people have said.

I got this PC on Black Friday for $2000. I want to start off by saying that the upgraded screen is completely worth it. It puts all other monitors to shame. The screen is very large at 18". This is great and terrible. Great because gaming on it is so easy. Watching movies or playing a game on this is what I prefer but its almost too large for situations that you may want to travel with it. I dont think I could comfortably play this on an airplane for instance even though that would be cool. The computer itself is an absolute power hungry beast. The games play so smooth, look amazing, isnt too loud when running max performance although not quiet either, LEDS are a great touch. There is a ton of customization and this PC will inspire you to keep wanting to stay on it whether its to game or learning how to code. You will just stay drawn to this device because it just has that much potential.

I have a desktop with but i wanted a good laptop and i bought an Alienware at first with a 4070 and i dont know but the battery life was horrendous so i returned it and bought this one and it was a day night different i highly recommended this laptop

those comments about the screen are true, but to be honest it's not noticeable at all during normal use. I found out about mine by turning off all the room lights and closely examining the screen to see those, so don't worry about it. Good price, superior performance.

Let me preface this review with the fact I bought an "Open box - Excellent condition" unit. It was missing all the "new experience" things like plastic on the unit and clearly looked like it had been handled by end users/techs. Using it for less than an hour initially I can see why it was a return. When I started it up, it was locking up and stuttering and would not allow even app installations or driver updates. I ended up giving it a clean install of Windows 11 and most of the problems went away. Kudos to Asus for having all their drivers available for download. Armory Crate is as large and bloated as always but it is required not only to control your lighting but it does extend other functionality for GPU overclocking (if you so choose) and SOME CPU control but not enough to tame the outlandish 100c thermals of this monster. On paper this thing is an absolute beast. You get a full power 4080 pulling 175w. You get the top dog Intel 13980HX chip. You get a monster 18" display that is bright and gorgeous at 2560x1600. Temps out of the box are fantastic even under sustained load for multicore. The 13980HX chip is giving you out of the box performance same as a 12900k or 13700k which is crazy powerful. The mobile 4080 is clocking in at DESKTOP 3080 level performance and is a truly worthy upgrade over last gen 3000 series GPUs even the mobile 3080ti. Even under load the fans aren't super loud which was a pleasant surprise. Audible? Most definitely, but I've heard much worse on much less powerful laptops. It isn't even that heavy for all the power you're getting. Asus clearly did their homework taking care of the cooling and offering some serious power at a great price point. I spent several weeks with it not only benchmarking it but playing a lot of World of Warcraft Dragonflight and Fallout 76. WoW is very GPU intensive now especially at higher resolutions so I found many spots (especially in Valdrakken) that really pushed the FPS down at Ultra 10 settings into the 60s and 70s. It ran Fallout 76 pretty well keeping a rough average around 100fps which is nice. I absolutely adore the keyboard. It is large and well spaced and felt well when typing on it. But all that good is wiped away from several cons for the Asus G18. Two of these are deal breakers. For starters, the display. The ghosting and bleed is ridiculously bad. The entire bottom of my display is lit up along with the sides and top corners. Any dark display and the bleed is just not acceptable. It seems to be a problem of the panel itself and the display bezel is attached extremely tight further increasing the bleed. I tried for weeks to get over this issue but it was eventually one of two issues that is making this a return. Second is the lack of memory options. This laptop is not only stuck on 4800 rated DDR5 but it balks at most dual rank modules or faster timings. If you want to run 5600+ memory, most dual rank modules or faster timings on 4800 modules the system either won't train/boot or fails memory diagnostic tests in Windows. I was lucky to have access to many makes/models of DDR5 modules from 4800 to 5600 speed to test while trying to find the fastest pair and the limitations in rank, timings and speed were disappointing. This was tested with the G306 BIOS update. I did not get a chance to test the 307 BIOS with various kits of memory as I no longer have them in my possession. Third, is coil whine. Don't let companies tell you it is, "normal." It is not. I've owned plenty of laptops and desktops and I will not settle for a card rife with coil whine. I will return it and try another till I find one greatly minimized or not at all. If it was normal, they would all whine. The fact you sometimes get whine and other times do not just doesn't fly with me. Fourth, the PSU adapter plug is awkward and for the size and heft I feel it puts a lot of pressure on the power port. Having seen too many laptop power ports fail after time due to stress, I am not a fan of the design nor placement on the left side. I would have preferred it on the rear of the unit. Lastly, temps. When gaming where fewer cores are in play, this unit will consistently push to 5.1-5.5ghz and temps will peg to 100c with fans going full. I waited and installed the G307 BIOS update and while that allowed a full -0.080 under volt, the unit still would peg right back to 100c when gaming. The GPU also hit thermal max every time which is 87c. This all adds up to a hot and bothered unit and heat and noise. There is no way to adjust core frequencies down per core. Even turning off e-cores doesn't help. Yep, right back to 100c. There are several other laptops on the market powered by the 13900hx-13980hx range of CPUs that do not hit even in the 90s under load. For a laptop that only comes with a 1 year warranty, this was the second major issue that is causing a return. As powerful as this unit is with a large, expansive display the negatives outweigh positives. Even with BIOS updates, nothing will negate the deal breaking bleed/ghosting of the display, CPU and GPU temps or coil whine. I will give Alienware or MSI a try next.