Asus’ ROG brand has never skimped on exterior lighting, but these latest laptops are getting closer to creating a full light show on the lid. The company’s latest Strix lineup, specifically the ROG Strix Scar, packs more LED “AniMe” lights into its cover than the back of the recent ROG Phone 9. If the only thing you need from your gaming rig is excessive lighting, then the ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 are among the new offerings that should be at the top of your list.
But if you’re not into lighting, there’s still a lot to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 feature laptop versions up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 with Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and up to 175W TGP and 24GB VRAM. As for the display, OLED hopefuls will have to settle for a 2560 x 1440 Mini LED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate. At least Asus promises that this screen will be brighter and support Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.
The AniMe backlight array is visible in the bottom right corner and can be set to play multiple preset images or animations. At the briefing, we got to see first-hand how the pre-installed system lets you add your own GIFs to the backlight and adjust the RGB light bar around the chassis.
Although this is a heavy laptop, weighing in at 6.28 pounds, this desktop replacement can support up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. Moreover, Asus has made it much easier to disassemble and replace these parts. The battery and RAM stick are held in place by latches that require no special screwdriver and take seconds to remove.
ROG also introduced the newly redesigned Flow Z13, a Windows-based gaming tablet powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU. This chip should deliver solid gaming performance on large 2.5K (2560 x 1440) 180Hz tablet screens. Asus says it includes a vapor chamber and Arc Flow fans to keep the tablet cool with the heavy laptop chips inside. Of course, it also comes with a foldable keyboard, just like a regular iPad.
I still don’t sell gamer-specific tablets or phones for anyone other than the most hardcore Genshin Impact players. Especially with all the good handhelds on offer, like Asus’ ROG Ally X, there are many more options for pint-sized gaming.
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