A funny thing happened this year with gaming laptops. Most gaming laptop makers bumped the common 15.6-inch size up slightly to 16-inch models, and the old hulking 17-inch systems were ratcheted up a bit more, too, in the form of beefy 18-inchers like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18. Now, we have the new Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (starts at $2,899.99), a more mainstream selection that provides nearly everything we love about the company's 18-inch Scar beast. It has a similar design and the same powerful Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, but it comes scaled down a bit with a smaller display and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 laptop GPU. The end result is a little less expensive, but still a ferocious gaming machine—if not quite affordable enough to challenge the Editors' Choice-award-holding Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 Configurations
Our review is focused on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16, model number G634JZ-XS96, which comes equipped with an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 laptop GPU. It's paired with 32GB of memory and a 1TB SSD for storage, while the GPU is outfitted with 12GB of video RAM. Our review unit sells for $2,899.99 through various retailers.
Asus presently sells two versions of the ROG Strix Scar 16 G634, with our review unit, and then a step-up model (model number G634JY-NM040X) that features more-powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics, selling for $3,699.99. According to the product page posted by Asus, both models can be configured with as much as 64GB of RAM, and up to 4TB of storage with dual 2TB SSDs.
Modern Hardware, With a Dash of '90s Cool
The ROG Strix Scar 16 has one of the most distinctive designs I've seen in a while. Measuring 13.9 inches wide by 10.4 inches deep, it has the sort of sizable footprint you'd expect from a 16-inch laptop, and it measures 1.2 inches at its thickest point, tapering to 0.89 inch at the front edge. The weight is another concern, tipping the scales at 5.7 pounds, with an extra 2.5-pound power brick to lug along if you ever want to take it somewhere. If you want portability, look at something slimmer, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. This beefy machine isn't made for on-the-go use—it's made for performance.
Though it has plastic construction and the dimensions aren't much different from any other gaming laptop, the look is distinct, with a semi-transparent chassis that lets you see the internals. Maybe it's my inner '90s kid being nostalgic for the old polycarbonate Game Boy, but the tinted transparent plastic scratches an itch that most black-clad and RGB-festooned gaming laptop designs don't.
That's not to say this laptop lacks colorful lights for those who want them. The keyboard includes customizable RGB lighting for every individual key, as well as a glowing light bar along the front edge of the chassis, another along the rear vents, and a big, impossible-to-miss glowing ROG logo on the lid.
The plastic construction does feel a little cheap compared with the CNC-milled aluminum you might receive on the most premium gaming machines for this kind of money, but Asus has managed to build a surprisingly sturdy laptop nonetheless. The easy moldability of plastic means that Asus was also able to go a bit wild with the cosmetic features, ranging from a few stray lines across the lid and keyboard deck, as well as a two-tone underside, which disguises some of the copious ventilation grilles on the laptop body. Two key elements on the laptop are not plastic: Its display hinges, which are used to hold the lid and display securely, are metal.
Looking Good: Display, Webcam, and Keyboard
Asus has used a 16-inch mini LED-backlight panel here, with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 2,560-by-1,600-pixel (QHD) resolution. Made for gaming without compromise, the screen supports Nvidia G-Sync to eliminate screen tearing, as well as a 240Hz refresh rate that will keep pace with the fastest-moving games.
Above the display is a 720p webcam, which isn't much to write home about, but it works. The color quality is decent, but not fantastic (my skin tones always looked redder than in reality), and it struggles with varying light levels. However, its biggest issue is the resolution, which will make you the most pixelated kid on the Zoom call. It's a shame that this Strix couldn't receive the same 1080p webcam sold on competing models like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8.
The keyboard is full size, with all chiclet keys, a full complement of function keys, and a row of media controls—plus, it doesn't try to fit a number pad into the design. Instead, the laptop has a button integrated into the touchpad that illuminates a touch-based grid of numbers right on the touchpad.
Ports and Connectivity
Along the sides of the chassis, you'll find ample connectivity, with two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10Gbps) ports on the right, as well as dual USB-C ports (which I'll explain momentarily), an HDMI output, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack on the left.
Those USB-C ports may look alike, but they aren't twins, with one being a Thunderbolt 4 connection, and the other just USB 3.2 Gen 2 (20Gbps). Regardless, both provide DisplayPort output and G-Sync capability for external monitors, so it's really just an issue for specific bandwidth-heavy applications.
With the combined output of both USB-C and a full-size HDMI port paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 inside, the ROG Strix Scar 16 can support up to three external 4K monitors at 60Hz simultaneously, making it perfectly suited to multi-monitor setups (so long as you don't need a higher refresh rate).
Wireless options abound in this Strix machine, with both Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 for connecting to networks and peripherals.
Testing the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16: A Marked Generational Leap in High-End Power
With its Core i9-13980HX CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU, the ROG Scar Strix 16 combines some of the most potent gaming hardware on the 2023 market. As a result, our comparisons focused on similarly powerful gaming laptops, like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8, the MSI Titan GT77 (2023), and the larger Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (G834JY).
We also wanted to see how well it measured up to last year's top models, so we compared it with the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (2022) and the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7, which leveraged top-tier Intel 12th Generation Core and Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 Series chips.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage. (See more about how we test laptops.)
Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro by Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our final productivity test is PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters. This test was not able to run on this system, however, so we've omitted those results below.
Armed with an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, we expected impressive performance from the Scar 16, and it didn't disappoint. It was right in line with the 16-inch Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 in almost every test, which used a slightly lower-end 13th Gen Intel CPU. Naturally, all of the 13th Gen systems, including the ROG Strix Scar 16, jumped ahead of 12th Gen systems, like the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE and the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7. This is clear in tests like HandBrake, where 13th Gen systems were more than a minute faster, and Cinebench, where scores were nearly doubled.
However, it's also important to note that the Intel Core i9-13980HX inside the Strix Scar 16 came in third behind the Strix Scar 18 and Titan GT77 in many tests. This is highly likely due to the thermal (and therefore power) constraints of a 16-inch laptop versus a 17- or 18-inch laptop using the same CPU.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows PC graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics), and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
To further measure GPU performance, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
Our final tests involve real games—specifically, the built-in 1080p benchmarks from an AAA title (Assassin's Creed Valhalla), a fast-paced esports shooter (Rainbow Six Siege), and a sports racing sim (F1 2021). We run each benchmark twice, using different image quality presets for Valhalla and Rainbow and trying F1 with and without Nvidia's DLSS anti-aliasing technology. Unfortunately, Valhalla would not run on the Strix Scar 16, so we've omitted those results here.
In our basic graphics tests, we saw promising 3DMark and GFXBench results from the ROG Strix Scar 16, joining other 13th Gen systems in the leading batch of scores, but a similar lag behind the larger RTX 40 Series laptops. For example, in the GFXBench Aztec Ruins subtest, systems like the MSI Titan GT77 (2023) and the larger Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 scored 500-plus points, while the 16-inch ROG Strix Scar scored just 419, falling behind even the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8. Despite this, the leap forward from the 2022 12th Gen models is still dramatic, with those systems scoring fewer than 300 points in the same test.
Actual gaming, where the full might of the Nvidia GeForce 4080 comes into play, showed a similar score distribution, with respectable scores that fall a half-step behind the top-scoring systems with more powerful RTX 4090 GPUs, but still showing a large improvement over last year's 30 Series chips, in some cases doubling the scores we saw in 2022. This is then heightened by the addition of DLSS 3, which is Nvidia's secret sauce for improving performance from the latest generation of mobile GPUs.
It's even better at higher resolutions, which is where the new 40 Series GPUs really shine. In F1 2021, with resolution dialed up to the laptop's native 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, the frame rates dropped a little, but stayed in the triple digits, averaging 111fps on Ultra High, and climbing to 133fps with DLSS turned on.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptop battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To evaluate a laptop's display, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Powerful gaming laptops aren't generally renowned for their longevity when unplugged, so it didn't surprise us when the ROG Strix Scar 16 lasted barely more than seven hours in our battery rundown test. While you can see systems that lasted longer—the Acer Predator Triton managed to hit 10 hours—a seven-hour stretch is actually quite decent for a laptop running this level of hardware. It edges out the MSI Titan GT77 (2022) by 20 minutes, provides an hour more than the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8, and lasts a whopping four hours more than the three hours we got from last year's Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 7. It's not going to let you game all day without the power brick, but you can stray further from a wall outlet than most gaming rigs will let you.
The Strix's display quality is also impressive. With a mini LED backlight providing excellent contrast and lighting control, the addition of 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 color is a welcome sight, and it's on par with the best gaming laptop screens out there. But the brightness is the real winner, with the mini LED backlight providing up to 772 nits of peak brightness, along with HDR support and contrast control that approaches OLED in terms of deep blacks and popping color.
Verdict: A Close Second, With Points for Style
It's clear that the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 delivers pretty much everything we love about the 18-inch model but in a scaled-down package. Unfortunately, while that does mean it can keep up with the pack leaders in most respects, it lags at the back of that pack. This Strix produces better performance than any Intel 12th Gen/Nvidia RTX 30 Series gaming machine we tested, but it cannot quite match the absolute most powerful 2023 gaming laptops on the market.
Whether that's bad news is entirely up to you, since the Scar 16's capable (if not category-leading) performance also comes in at a slightly more reasonable price than the performance leaders, and still gives you plenty of power to enjoy the latest games. As a result, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 8 remains our favorite 16-inch gaming laptop, thanks to better performance and price for similar hardware, but it's a close race. If you prefer the style of the Scar 16's semi-transparent chassis and longer battery life, the gaming potential is close enough that you certainly won't regret buying it.
