[Pc Games] Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 (G733) Review

[Wassim MH]

 

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 (G733) sees a much refined refresh largely thanks to internals getting more power efficient and requiring less headroom to fit in. There are some noteworthy differences from the previous generation. Primarily the one that will get the most attention is to inclusion of AMD's Ryzen 5900HX CPU. It's also packed to the brim with Nvidia's RTX 3080 GPU. Combine that with a 300hz panel with 3ms response time, this is a competitive gamer's fever dream. All of this does cost a pretty penny at more than AED 10,000 but keep in mind this is your quickest route to get a 30 series gpu quickly if you can't build your own desktop.

The ROG Strix Scar in my opinion is a perfect reason to upgrade especially if you've been holding out from getting a 20 series laptop.

 

 

The G733 screams gamer but Asus have done a little bit of restructuring to keep it a bit cleaner this time around. They're sticking to the dot matrix design language and fingerprint resistant coating on the body panels but it will attract some level of dust in some extreme situations. It has extra armour caps that you can customize your body with and in fact you can 3D print your own customizable one if you so fancy.

The laptop is smaller than the previous generation and there's backlighting on the ROG logo and the bottom panels of the laptop giving it a halo effect, it looks pretty cool at night which is what they were going for. It certainly will grab the attention at LAN parties. The LED lights on the keyboard are also customizable with per key lighting and it can be done with their proprietary Armoury Crate software which makes things easier. The trackpad is also smooth, though I suspect that most gamers will just stick to a regular mouse

It weighs at two and a half kilos which is surprisingly cool all things considered because I expected it to be heavier.

 You can see some of the internals within the body. The keyboard will take some getting used to. Most competitive gamers who use mechanical keyboards, however, will feel right at home with the Opto-mechanical switches. It has per key lighting for customization and additional controls as standard with most Asus gaming laptops. I actually played a bit of overwatch and it was quite comfortable and a bit of a relief to get a full press trigger.

The trackpad is alright and I even tried it for gaming but you're going to be using a mouse which, again, Asus does supply as well. I wonder if Asus will do something bold next time and remove the trackpad entirely to give more real estate to the keyboard in future designs for gaming notebooks.

Display and Sound
 There are different versions you can get with the G733, you can opt for a 1,920 x 1,080 FHD 17.3-inch IPS LCD panel with a 300Hz refresh rate and 3ms time, which is what I got fore review or a 2K 165hz variant which I would naturally lean to, personally. Asus has done some engineering marvels here with the display being an absolutely gorgeous panel. It's got a screen to body ratio of 85% and performs well in outdoor lighting conditions.

Its colour accuracy also serves well for designers and content creators who are looking to make videos and the speakers are Dolby Atmos certified and sounds crisp but I suspect most gamers will be using their headphones and mice for their experiences.

You'll find with that amazing display however ,the obvious lack of omission of a webcam. Streamers already have their own camera setups and rarely rely on laptop's internal web cameras so it's fairly justified but Asus do package an external camera with the laptop bundle.

Ports
 As expected, Asus have outfitted the scar 17 with ports and I appreciate that they've put majority of the ports on the back panel as well. There's a 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, a HDMI 2.0b, three, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C support DisplayPort / power delivery / G-SYNC port and finally a RJ45 LAN port. The right side features no ports except a Keystone 2.0 slot which I didn't actually test but I didn't think much of it but you can personalize settings, game folders and secure folders if you get this NFC enabled key.

 It is also a wifi-6 enabled device which is pretty great if you're gaming in a wifi-space, then again, I'm not sure how gaming on public wi-fi would fare unless it's a really solid connection.

 Performance
 I ran Premiere Pro, Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Hitman 3 and my settings for all of these was put on Turbo to get the full performance from the G733. There is an AMD Ryzen 5900HX processor clocked at 3.3GHz alongside an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU. Quite honestly, this laptop will take a huge load of punishment without batting an eye.

While Cyberpunk 2077 will need some optimization, the game ran perfectly and it was my first time seeing RTX Ultra run so beautiful like that getting a steady 85-90 FPS on the Full HD panel. In terms of memory, it's outfitted with 32GB of DDR4 memory clocked at 3,200MHz expandable to 64GB. It also has a 1TB + 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD storage configuration that's RAID 0 compatible.

This laptop will be great for editors especially editing out to 4K, a five minute clip that I used to render out took approximately 5 minutes 30 seconds.

 The one thing that Asus attributes their design build is the inclusion of smaller but high calibre bladed fans. These have 84 blades and coupled with Asus' liquid metal cooling, the heat dissipation happens at the top so you can put your palms on without feeling the heat too much. It's all incredibly comfortable.

Fans run loud on Turbo mode but they can be optimized if you're not running intense games so you can enjoy some good old stardew valley in relative peace.

And finally the battery, the 90Wh battery will give you 4 hours of battery life but it goes shorter the more you tax the GPU which you'll need to keep it connected to get the most out of anyway. You can also switch between iGPU which it does automatically if you're on battery but you can adjust that accordingly. This allows you to stretch this battery to an additional 3 hours depending on what you're doing. Asus supplies two chargers, the standard brick and a 100W USB-C charging port for travel.

Verdict
 At a base price of AED 10,999, the ROG Strix Scar 17 is an investment but ultimately it's a good long term one. Giving you unmatched performance across the board, the laptop will see you playing games that put it past regular desktops. There's not much to say in terms of its battery life or portability but as a gaming machine this is par excellence.

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