There are all sizes of gaming notebooks: from the compact and transportable 14 "up to the larger and bulky 17" or even 21 ", going a little to frustrate the sense of portability for which a laptop is designed . The latter, however, are aimed at that public who, for work needs, always need a performing machine with them; it is in fact also the devices with the hardware pushed to the extreme. Today we are here with a laptop with amazing features, as well as dimensions. We are talking about Asus ROG Strix Scar III, or the third incarnation of one of the best gaming notebooks from ASUS.
The sample we own is the G732L from 17”, Equipped with a video card nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super, Intel i7 10850H 8 Core and 16 Thread CPU, 16 GB of DDR4 memory and a 1TB NVME SSD. There are also 15 ”versions with equivalent or lower hardware, able to fit all budgets. ASUS built the notebook with a predominantly in gunmetal colored plastic, to which it includes different textures and finishes, all in ROG sauce. The plastic is extremely robust, which gives our review unit a premium feel. The base is very sturdy and allows you to open the lid of Scar 3 with one hand, and this aspect is always very pleasant.
The lid is very minimal, and we find the iconic silver-colored eye that hides RGB lighting under it.
The keyboard with island keys is embedded in the body of the base. Each key will have RGB LED lighting compatible with aura sync. Here we also find the numeric keypad and hot keys for volume control, to disable the microphone, to increase or decrease the rotation speed of the fans and a practical key for the quick start of armory crate, which is a program pre-installed with which we are going to manage every aspect of the notebook. The plastic of the base where the keyboard is set is slightly rubberized unlike the rest of the notebook, in order to improve its comfort during long sessions of use.
The trackpad is small in size but it turns out to be precise enough for daily operations, thanks also to the support of the manage.
The Asus ROG Strix Scar III monitor is a 17 inches with full hd resolution, 300 hz refresh rate - yes, you read that right, this is not a typo - e 3ms of input lag, able to make our gaming experience as smooth as possible. The display also offers a 100% srgb color range and therefore more intense and vivid colors despite being a 8-bit panel. Unfortunately it is completely no support for any type of HDR. The bezels of the monitor are reduced to a minimum in order to reduce the overall footprint of the laptop. This choice, however, led to the removal of the web cam.
On the left side of Asus ROG Strix Scar III we find three USB 3.1 Type A ports and one 3,5mm 4-pole audio jack, able to manage both headphones and microphone with the help of a single cable.
On the right side, in addition to the ventilation grid, we find the entrance for the Keystone, or an NFC key where all the changes made through the armory crate will be saved, from the management of the fans to the frequency of the CPU, GPU and so on. These changes will be valid only when the Keystone is inserted, when we go to remove it, everything will return to the way it was in the beginning.
On the back, finally, we find a type C port with display Port function, an HDMI 2.0 port, a 1 gb / s ethernet port and the input for the external power supply.
Finally, the profile of Asus ROG Strix Scar III is surrounded by an RGB Led strip, very beautiful and captivating to see.
In terms of connectivity, the Asus notebook does not miss anything: in addition to the 1 Gb / s ethernet port we also have full support for the new Wi-Fi 6 802.11 AX and Bluetooth 5.0 standards. The battery, on the other hand, is as always a sore point in products of this type: autonomy during daily use (such as surfing the internet or watching some videos on YouTube or Netflix) is around an hour and a half, maximum two, depending on the brightness level set and the energy management profile set.
Now we come to the part that all of you are waiting for, that is the performance in the game: with such hardware, obviously the results can not be anything but amazing.
On Control, or the latest Remedy title, Asus ROG Strix Scar III has achieved almost 64 fps on average, with a minimum of 59 and a maximum of 70. Obviously the RTX effects were all active and we had set the diss to the highest quality.
On Call of Duty: Modern Warfare we tried the single player, multiplayer and battle royale modes, this is because depending on the selected mode we will have very different performances. On the single player we totaled 81 fps average, 61 minimums and 136 maximums. In multiplayer instead we almost achieved 91 fps average, 72 lows and 117 highs. In War Zone, or the Battle Royal, we managed to get to one average of 106 fps, with minimums of 88 and maximums of 127, obviously all with active ray tracing.
On the much controversial Mass Effect Andromeda, Asus ROG Strix Scar III 3 managed to score one averages 119 fps, with lows of 86 and highs hovering close to 137 fps.
Horizon Zero Dawn has been widely criticized for a poorly performing PC port; despite this the Asus notebook managed to run with one average of 71 fps.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is another title known for its heaviness: with the graphics settings on balanced, the laptop managed to get one average of 75 fps with lows of 53 and highs of 91.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey it is perhaps the only game that has put this concentration of power in difficulty. Ubisoft's title has indeed reached a average of 56 fps, with minimums of 41 and maximums of 82. Nothing to worry about anyway: just decrease a few parameters to be able to stay safely above 60 fps.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, thanks to the use of unreal Engine 4, it adapts well to any machine. With the settings on epic we scored one average of 78 fps.
Despite the witcher's latest effort now having 5 years on his shoulders, he still lends himself well as a benchmark. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is managed to shoot with a average of 85 fps.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider In itself it is not too heavy a game, but since the addition of ray tracing effects for shadows, the situation has been reversed. In fact, thanks also to the implementation of the diss we were able to get close to almost 59 fps average.
The last title we tried is Death Stranding: by setting the diss on quality we were able to total one average of 104 fps, with lows of 82 and highs of 128.
During all these tests, Asus ROG Strix Scar III recorded temperatures that are all in all normal for a laptop. There CPU was around 95 degrees while the GPU on the 86, all with a little too much noise. The two fans, in fact, generated a noise of about 60 dB, forcing us to wear headphones to be able to enjoy multimedia content to the fullest.
That said, Asus ROG Strix Scar III proved to be a really good product, characterized by a powerful hardware, a perfect display for gaming thanks to the refresh rate of 300 hz and one truly flawless construction. If we were to find defects, they would almost certainly fall on the portability of the notebook: it is not easy to carry around a laptop of almost 3kg and of this size, considering then that we will be forced to always carry the charger with us, and not even the latter is small , nor light. Another flaw, moreover, is certainly found in the noise during the game phases.
If you are looking for a generously sized laptop with powerful hardware that can devour any game wherever you are, the Asus ROG Strix Scar III could be the notebook for you. You can find the test configuration on the Asus store at a price of around € 2200.
