Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2025)

The most powerful gaming laptop around - a fact that's amply reflected in its bulk and that whopping price

- JASON ENGLAND

PRICE £3,917 (£4,700 inc VAT) from asus.​com

If you thought the ROG Strix Scar 16 was a beast, you'll baulk at this huge gaming laptop. It has an 18in display that looks more like a desktop monitor than a laptop screen, and it weighs a hefty 3.3kg.

While the ROG Strix Scar 18 isn't the most portable gaming system around, it is one of the best. That's thanks to a combination of top-tier components and a screen that's not only huge but gorgeous.

When I say top-tier components, I mean the aspirational combination of an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU. It's a power pairing made in gaming heaven, enabling the latest AAA titles to run smoothly with incredible visuals. In fact, Asus squeezes notably more performance out of the duo than other laptops in this class: in the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, the Strix Scar 18 proved around 14% faster than the HP Omen Max 16, even though both machines have the same CPU and GPU combination.

That's before we talk about Nvidia's DLSS 4 technology, which uses AI to boost frame rates with little impact on the overall experience. Turning it on, I saw frame rates in Cyberpunk 2077 leap to an insane average of 232fps at the maximum quality settings and 1080p.