Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 – powerful hardware at a premium

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 laptop has been priced at ₹2,89,990 and is available from Amazon, Flipkart, Asus online store and authorised retailers across the country.

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 weighs 2.65 kg, which is on the heavier side. It comes with a plastic back with a matte black finish with the company’s RGB logo. It comes with two large RGB light strips – one at the front and one at the back and these lights come with Aura Sync support, allowing you to customise them based on your preferences. It comes with ample ports, so you don’t have to worry about this.

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 comes with an RGB-backlit keyboard, with a travel distance of 2.0mm. The laptop also comes with five programmable macro keys. While the keyboard feels a little cluttered initially, it is easy to use once you get the hang of it. The touchpad comes with the number pad integrated in it, which can be enabled by pressing a button. We found this feature useful when we needed to enter a lot of numbers.

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 features a ROG Nebula HDR Display. It is equipped with a 16-inch Quad HD+ Mini LED display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, a 240Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time with Dolby Vision HDR support. The display offers vibrant colours, is bright even in direct sunlight and we found the Quad HD+ resolution and 240Hz refresh rate great for gaming, especially while playing fast paced games.

The laptop is equipped with the Intel Core i9 14900HX processor with 24 cores and 32 threads. This is coupled with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 16GB GDDR6 graphics, 32GB DDR5 5600MHz RAM and a 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD. We tried games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Horizon 5 and Control on the laptop at maximum settings without any issues. We did not notice any stuttering or frame drops while gaming.

The laptop is equipped with a 90Whr battery, the battery life is not one of the strongest points of the ROG Strix Scar 16. While gaming, we were able to get around 2 and a half hours of battery life out of the device. While it is fine if you plan on using it while plugged in, you won’t be able to game a lot while on the go.

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 is a premium laptop and is on the heavier side with an average battery life, which makes portability a concern. If you are looking for something more portable, you can consider the ROG Flow Z13, the Dell XPS 17 9730 or the MSI Stealth 16.