 For years, the gaming laptop has been this sort of B-tier experience for people without enough space for a desktop. But the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 3 has something to say about that. Rocking a 240Hz IPS panel and some sick internals, this laptop is freakishly good for gaming. But a lot of other laptops will be getting a similar panel soon. So has ASUS done a good enough job with the all-new Strix 3 to beat out the competition? Actually, I like their chances. 🎵 When I opened up the new Scar 3, my first thought was, wait a second, is this a Zephyrus? Because the styling of the Strix lineup has undergone a huge change. And, at least partly thanks to ASUS's collaboration with BMW Designworks, I think it turned out really fine. Save for maybe the slightly over-the-top RGB along the bottom. Up close, well, it's not perfect. There are still some plasticky feeling bits here and there. But the good news is that that actually helps keep the Scar 3 from completely destroying your bank account. More on that later. Overall then, with that in mind, the feel of the build quality is solid, with a robust feeling hinge and very strong chassis rigidity. Not that you'll be staring at it for too long, because once you boot it up, the screen just sucks you right in. This 240Hz panel is not just the best-looking that I've ever seen on a laptop, it may be the best-looking 240Hz screen I've ever seen, period. The thing is, previous 240Hz gaming displays have always used TN panels, trading away their color accuracy for faster pixel response times. Now this panel is IPS, meaning that the colors are shockingly vivid and accurate given the fast refresh rate. And, although you do technically give up some responsiveness compared to TN, I can't detect any lag or excessive motion blur, and it's easily better than any 144Hz display. The only issue that we did encounter was while viewing compressed video like on YouTube. Gradients can actually shimmer and look extra ugly. This is something that we've noticed on eSports monitors before, as they tend to increase the vividness to make spotting enemies easier. So I guess what I'm saying is that this is a trade-off that I understand, but Asus, if you guys are taking notes, I think that having different profiles like you would have on a desktop monitor would be a nice addition here. Obviously though, 240Hz is meaningless if you can't push 240 frames per second in your games. Thankfully though, our unit with a Core i9-9880H and an RTX 2070, please note that is not a Max-Q model, is powerful enough to get darn close. And simply put, this is the kind of gaming experience that ruins you, because once you've had it, sitting down at another monitor, and I'm talking even like a half decent 120Hz one, is gonna feel like slushy garbage. Playing Doom on the G531? Hot damn. CSGO? Oh yes. I mean, just to put this in perspective, even moving the cursor around playing Minesweeper feels so freaking smooth. Between the speed of this machine and the screen, you're gonna be using this laptop at a pace that just isn't possible on mere mortal computers. And then there's the use cases that go beyond gaming. So our unit's 8-core processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD mean that it is crazy fast basically across the board. With that said though, Asus, like Apple as we showed recently, is still beholden to the laws of physics. So when we pushed it to the limit with an all-core load, our CPU got pretty toasty, and the fans started to scream as they tried to contain the heat of 8 cores at 3.5GHz. Then, when it looked like they were gonna lose the battle, the CPU dropped to just 2.8. In fairness to Asus though, that is still noticeably faster than the 2.3GHz base clock that this CPU is rated for. So although I was at first a bit disappointed, it still delivers the best CPU performance out of anything that we've tested, outside of desktop replacement models that are literally double its size and usually double the price. Now then, back to noise for a bit. The Scar 3 does get a bit loud, but thankfully the tone of the sound is such that no high-pitched whining is gonna make it past your headphones. And if you don't want to use headphones, the included speakers are actually shockingly full sounding, even good enough to blast some tunes while setting up for a gaming session with your friends. And the good news train just keeps rolling here, and I keep waiting for the bad stuff. Day-to-day use of the Strix G531 as just a laptop is a pretty good time too. The keyboard is awesome. It's tactile, but with a softer touch that makes it comfortable to both type and game on. And the keycaps above average stabilization brings it right up there with the new bar that Alienware set with their most recent gaming machines. Just a short aside here, by the way, I'm really glad to see how seriously companies are finally taking keyboards on gaming laptops. Because, like, newsflash everyone, even avid gamers do more than just game. Moving on to the trackpad, it uses the Windows Precision drivers, has dedicated left and right mouse keys, and generally just does the trick. My only real complaint here is that, like every other trackpad on the market, the polling rate is stuck at 125Hz, which isn't an issue with a 60Hz or even a 120Hz display, but at 240Hz the lag and judder is noticeable. So it's fine, but as always, our recommendation is to use a high quality gaming mouse at 1000Hz wherever possible. Putting another usability feather in Asus's cap is the above average I.O. It's got HDMI, several full-size USB ports, and ethernet all making appearances, although it would have been nice to have Thunderbolt 3. Now something Asus did include, it's a little weird, is what they're calling the Keystone. And it's a little NFC key that you can plug into the side of the machine that will load up your gaming and RGB profiles, as well as unlock your Shadow Drive, which reveals a hidden drive partition. And, like, I don't know, I guess this is cool? But personally, I would stick with a password-protected folder over a very loseable plastic key, which perfectly transitions us, I guess, to the mediocre stuff. The 66Wh battery in the Scar 3 is more than enough for most laptops, but once you throw an 8-core processor at it, it's not that bad, like we were able to ring out about four hours of life on a single charge, which is acceptable, but it's not an incredible number either. And what's even less incredible is the webcam. Now in light of the popularity of video chat and game streaming, we've been asking the industry to take front-facing cameras seriously for ages, and some brands finally have, with Dell creating a small bezel webcam for their XPS line, and Razer introducing facial recognition on the Blade. Meanwhile, at Asus headquarters, it's like, oh, you like webcams, eh? Cool. Why don't you go pound sand? Because, yeah, they totally removed the webcam. I mean, come on, guys. At least make an attempt. You could go back to bundling one in the box, maybe you could put a little magnetic chum on the top that clips, like, I don't know. I never thought I'd say this, but how about one of those stupid ones on the bottom bezel? Anything is better than nothing, since as it stands, if you need a webcam, you have to just buy something else. Which I guess brings us nicely to, should you buy something else? Well, with the 240Hz RTX 2070 equipped Asus Strix Scar 3 starting at two grand, it's still not cheap, but given how much laptop you're getting and how surprisingly totable it is, it's actually not too bad of a deal. Like, to put this in perspective, a similarly specced Alienware M15 is $2,600, and that's with only a 6-core Core i7 and without its optional 90-watt-hour battery. Now, the Gigabyte Aero 15 is a compelling option, but you'd be giving up the 240Hz display, meaning that the Strix Scar 3 is a lot of gaming performance for the money. So, if you've got deep enough pockets and, I don't know, maybe some 3D printing know-how for a webcam bracket, the Scar 3 gets the line of seal of buttry smooth gaming approval. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description. 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