Gaming laptops usually face a trade-off between power and price. With this year's ROG Strix Scar 18, Asus went all in on the former, delivering a laptop that’s more powerful than many gaming desktops. Just be prepared to shell out for that privilege.
The ROG Strix Scar 18 starts at $3,000 for the model that comes with a Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics card and a 1-TB solid state drive. To upgrade to the model we tested with a blisteringly fast RTX 4090 and 2-TB SSD, the price jumps up to $3,900. This Windows laptop is not for the casual gamer.
A Beastly Design
Photograph: Eric RavenscraftIf that price tag doesn’t make you fall over, the size might. It’s one of the most powerful gaming laptops with one of the fastest graphic cards we’ve tested, but it felt like I was carrying my desktop—which I built to edit 4K video and create 3D animation—around in my bag.
