When it comes to gaming, particularly with displays, bigger is always better.
That's why Asus is supersizing its Scar line of notebooks to 17.3 inches with the ROG Strix Scar II (17-inch). Starting at $1,699, the Scar II will be available during the first half of September. We first heard of the 15.6-inch Scar II back at Computex and were impressed with both its design and specs and the 17-inch version looks like it's going to follow suit.
On the outside, the Scar II sports the same attention-grabbing two-tone CNC aluminum lid as the Zephyrus. However, unlike Asus' flagship gaming laptop, the large glossy emblem glows in hypnotizing RGB color when the laptop's on. My favorite thing about the Scar II is the badass interior design. Half-black, half-camouflage, the kevlar-coated laptop gave me the urge to jump on Battlefield or Call of Duty and frag until I couldn't frag any more.
Measuring 6.4 pounds, 15.7 x 10.8 x 0.98~1-inches, the Scar II is on a par with the Aorus X9 (8.1 inches, 16.9 x 12.4 x 1.2 inches) and HP Envy 17 (6.4 pounds, 16.4 11.1 x 0.9 inches).
Display
Who says skinny bezels are only for thin-and-light systems? The Scar II's side bezels are only 0.28-inches thick, allowing Asus to squeeze a 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 panel into a 15.7-inch chassis. That means even more real estate to enjoy all the wanton destruction you'll be dishing out. And in order to make sure that your games are running buttery smooth, the panel has a refresh rate of 144 Hertz with a 3-millisecond lag.
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Keyboard
The Scar II stands out for its keyboard, particularly the WASD keys, which are clear so FPS players can quickly get down to the business of strafing and outmaneuvering their foes. Asus claims that the keys have 1.8 millimeters of travel, which should make for a comfortable typing experience. The RGB keyboard has four lighting zones and offers dedicated hot zones for on-the-fly macro switches.
Specs
Starting at $1,699, the 17-inch Scar II offers an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H processor with 16GB of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. Storage options for SSDs range between 128 - 512GB with a 1TB 7,200-rpm hard drive.
Bottom Line
The 17-inch ROG Scar II takes what's great about the 15-inch and supersizes it. I'm already of a fan of the design, but I'm reserving my final judgment until we get both versions of the Scar II.
