There are many words to describe the Republic of Gamers Strix Scar III and subtle is not one of them. This gaming focused laptop is a statement of intent for any user into competitive esports.
The textures on the chasis and the additional lights are perfectly placed to give the machine a future tech look and glow. It’s like when you think of the “Terminator” films, there’s really no reason for the robots eyes to glow red, but the fact that they do creates a menacing mood that sets the tone of the scene. The RGB light strips on the front and side edges and rugged design of this laptop set the tone of any competition room you are entering and the large ROG logo that lights up when you boot the machine is a brand that is quickly recognised and associated with quality.
There’s an unusual orange glow on the right panel from what ASUS are referring to as a “keystone”. The idea here is to save profiles and various other settings to this device and use it across multiple devices but the practicality isn’t there as you’d need a ROG product that supports it and it’s probably easier just saving your settings in cloud based methods instead. It does add to the overall look of the machine though.
The other feature of the Keystone is to unlock the “Shadow Drive”. Basically a password protected partition of the hard drive. So the value of the device here is much stronger, but don’t lose your “keystone”. I can’t even imagine taking it out of the slot for anything other than to show someone else you can. There is a key holder included which holds the “keystone” nicely with a large clip. So you can have it on your person at all times.
The display on the ROG Strix Scar III is as good as they come, in fact it’s probably the best screen I’ve seen on a laptop. The 240Hz refresh rate with a fast 3ms response time make this perfect for gaming and also graphic production. The colours are some of the most vibrant I’ve seen on a machine of this size.
Once again they have opted to not include a webcam on this device. It seems like a large price to pay for an ultra thin bezel, but as we’ve seen on other devices there are plenty of places to put a webcam. Still if you are streaming with this device you’ll have the choice of using your own webcam instead which can be a very personal choice.
The touchpad is well placed and has the numeric keypad built into it like we’ve seen on many other Asus models recently. I really like this feature for freeing up space on the keyboard and also making it feel more like future tech.
One thing I absolutely loved about the design of the machine is that most of the ports are actually on the back of the machine rather than all squashed down the sides. There’s the power, Ethernet, Hdmi and usb-c ports on the back while three USB 3.1 (A) ports on the left hand side next to an audio jack, the other side of course has the “keystone”. This will go a long way to diminish cable clutter.
PERFORMANCE
I tested the G531G which comes with 16 GB RAM and a massive Intel i7-9750H CPU. The GPU is an absolute pearler though, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 8GB GDDR6.
This made running through the latest STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER on maximum specs an absolute dream. I started out just testing the game on it and ended up playing through the whole thing. It was just too good to pass up. One thing I noticed while playing for extended periods was that the cooling really does it’s job, at no point did I feel like the machine was getting hot at all.
I also tested the machine for productivity. Running adobe suite on it was seamless. There was no lag in previewing video content and even in a program like Character Animator that can push any machine to it’s limits it barely skipped a beat.
The speakers where one of the surprises of the system. There was virtually no distortion at very loud setting and the bass was unbelievably powerful. In fact when first booting it up and the logo screen appears it was instantly noticeable.
The ROG STRIX SCAR III is the most visually impressive laptop in the Republic of Gamers range and it backs up it’s looks with the power of a machine that could well take away the need to have a desktop at all.
Beautiful inside and out 🙂
