If you missed out on Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals and are still on the hunt for a phenomenal gaming laptop with ‘over the top’ specifications without that outrageous price, the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 15 continues to be sold at $1,699.99 after a $300 price cut Featuring an RTX 3080 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 VRAM and running at a 130W power limit, it remains one of the best price-to-performance Windows 11-powered machines on the market.
While some might not agree that the $1,699.99 is an attractive price, let us walk you through some of its other specifications to help change your opinion. Starting with the build quality, the Scar 15 sports a blend of metal and plastic, along with solid hinges and a durable keyboard deck. The display is a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS LCD panel and supports up to a 300Hz refresh rate, making it ideal for e-sports titles, and thanks to the RTX 3080, you can enjoy other graphically-intensive games too.
Complementing the high-end GPU is AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, which features eight cores and 16 threads for impressive multi-core performance gains. Not only is the processor near-perfect for gaming, but for tackling other productivity-related tasks. Alongside the CPU and GPU, you get 16GB of DDR4 RAM plus a 1TB NVMe SSD. If you want to expand upon that storage, there is another empty M.2 PCIe NVMe slot, and you can upgrade the RAM in the future too.
The gaming laptop features a per-key RGB layout if that matters to you. ASUS states that the advanced cooling solution of the Scar 15 can bring down its temperatures by up to 16 degrees, but this will vary depending on which country you live in and the ambient temperature of your surroundings. The massive 90Wh battery allows you to keep the machine away from the wall for up to 12 hours thanks to the power efficiency of the Ryzen 9 5900HX.
If you do not have the barrel charger in your possession at the time, the Scar 15 supports Type-C USB charging, though not at full power, so be mindful of that. Other goodies include Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6, and a multitude of ports, so you never run into compatibility options. If you want something that is a little less taxing on your wallet, you can go for the MSI GP66 Leopard, which offers the same RTX 3080 GPU, but with an 8-core Intel Core-i7 11800H.
Available for $1,579.99, it might not deliver the same battery life as the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 15 due to the differences in processors, but it is still a capable machine.