Asus’ ROG brand has never been one to skimp out on external lighting, but these latest laptops are getting closer to creating a full-on light show on their lids. The company’s latest Strix lineup, specifically the ROG Strix Scar, has crammed in more LED “AniMe” lights on its cover than the back of the recent ROG Phone 9. If the only thing you demand from gaming gear is excessive lighting, then the new ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 would be on the top of the pile.
However, if you don’t care about lighting, there’s still a lot to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 house an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop version with a 175W max TGP and 24GB of VRAM. As for its display, OLED hopefuls will need to settle for a 2560 by 1440 mini-LED screen with a 240 Hz refresh rate. At least Asus promises this screen will be extra bright and support Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.
The AniMe backlighting array slashes across the bottom right corner, and you can set it to play a number of preset images or animations. At a briefing, I saw firsthand how the pre-installed system allows you to add your own GIFs to the backlights and adjust the RGB light bar surrounding the chassis.
These are hefty laptops, clocking in at 6.28 pounds at the light end, but these desktop replacement devices can support up to 64 GB of DDR5 RAM and 2 TB of SSD storage. Even better, Asus has made it far easier to disassemble and replace these parts. The battery and RAM sticks are held in with latches that take a few seconds to remove rather than requiring a specialized screwdriver.
ROG is also debuting its newly redesigned Flow Z13, a Windows-based gaming tablet with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU. This chip should offer solid gaming performance from its large 2.5K (2560 by 1440) 180Hz tablet screen. Asus said it includes a vapor chamber and Arc Flow fans to keep the tablet cool with a hefty laptop chip inside. And, of course, it comes with the foldout keyboard and stands typical of your average iPad.
I’m still not sold on gamer-specific tablets or phones for anyone other than the most hardcore Genshin Impact players. There are more options for pint-sized gaming, especially with all the excellent handhelds on offer, like Asus’ ROG Ally X.
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