Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 (2023) review: the grand duke of desktop replacements

New graphics card generations are a typical driving force behind gaming laptop refreshes, but CPUs can floor that pedal with just as heavy a boot. The result is often something like this latest Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, which wields not just a top-spec Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 but also one of AMD’s newest and most number-crunchy processors, the Ryzen 9 7945HX.

That’s a lot of newness, and even more of a specs list: 32 threads from the Ryzen, 16GB of VRAM, DLSS 3 support and so on. And yet, what’s most impressive about the Strix Scar 17 is not simply its immense power, but how balanced – sensible, even – the whole laptop feels like in use. A quality that seems almost impossible at first, given its clear status as a brashly high-end gaming notebook with all the RGB bells and aggressive styling whistles.

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