Asus STRIX SCAR 15 Review – SCAR 15 vs STRIX G15?
This is the Asus STRIX SCAR 15, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s actually the STRIX G15. These two machines are incredibly similar but there are a few key differences so let me run you through them, plus we’ll take a good look at the SCAR and see if it’s higher price tag is worth splashing out for.
The SCAR 15 is basically a fancier version of the G15, it offers up to an RTX 3080 instead a 3070 in the G15, it has clicky optical mechanic key switches, and comes with up to 2TB of NVME SSD storage in RAID0, plus all listed models have 32GB of RAM which run 1x8R instead of the 16GB of 1x16R I had in my G15 sample. All of that comes at a price though, the only model I can find here in the UK is listed for a whopping £2800, and that doesn’t even have the beautiful 1440p 165Hz panel option.
Aesthetically there are a few things that are unique to the SCAR, like the ‘armor caps’ on the back that can slide on and off and come with a few options so you can customise the machine including 3D printing your own, the transparent section on the keyboard plate on the right hand side, and the Keystone. That’s a little NFC key that magnetically clips into the holder on the right side, which gives you a couple of options. You can have it lock the machine when you take it out, quick launch games or programs when you plug it in, or even ‘reveal a hidden Shadow Drive’ as Asus says. Personally I’m not sure I’d end up making use of this as you only get one in the box and doesn’t offer all that many features, but it’s there if you want it.
Spec wise, my model has the top end unlocked Ryzen 9 5900HX, offering 8 cores and 16 threads. It’s got 32GB of RAM, an RTX 3080 Laptop with a 115W TDP and up to 130W with Dynamic Boost plus 16GB of VRAM, 2TB of RAID0 SSD space and the 1440p 165Hz 3ms IPS level panel. Both RAM modules are upgradable, so if you want to max this out with the 64GB it’s capable of supporting you can, plus both SKHynix SSDs are replaceable, although since they are in RAID0 you’ll need to make a complete backup before touching either as any change to one drive and the array will fail all your data will be gone.
So that’s the spec, but how does it perform? Well in CPU specific tasks it’s pretty much identical to the Zephyrus G15 with it’s technically lower end 5900HS. It can have a slight edge over the 5800H in the STRIX G15, but only in certain programs. In Cinebench R20 and single threaded both in performance and turbo modes it’s within margin of the it and the 5900HS, with the 5800H running slightly slower but only by a few points. It matches the 5900HX that was in the Zephyrus Duo, and thoroughly trounces Intel’s 11370H and 10750H by almost 100 points.
In multi threaded the 5800H in the STRIX G15 is actually a touch faster, if only by a percent or two. Only the Zephyrus Duo’s 5900HX tops the rest of the 8 core 5th gen Ryzen field, but there’s a good reason for that. It’s insanely hot in the UK right now, with the ambient temperature in my house of 33-34°c. Compared to when I was testing the STRIX G15 it’s currently a good 5 or 6°c hotter, plus if you look at the cooling solution of both you’ll see they are identical so both boost very similarly.
That trend continues in Blender where it’s pretty close between the 8 core Ryzen’s, with only marginal differences in the BMW scene. In Gooseberry the gaps are a little bigger but the trends stay the same. Pretty much no matter which 8 core 5000 series Ryzen chip you get, you’ll have a good time.
And lastly in the Puget Bench suite for the Adobe CC apps the 5900HX is able to stay on top of the pile across the board, albeit with slim margins to the other Ryzen options.
So that’s the CPU specific tests, but what about gaming? Well if you get the 1440p model like I have, running at ultra settings you should have a pretty good time. In performance mode you get a hair under 200FPS in CSGO, 45FPS in Cyberpunk, 51FPS in Watchdogs, 88FPS in Fortnite and 32FPS in Microsoft Flight. Enabling the turbo mode gives more power to the CPU at the cost of less to the GPU which is only a benefit in Watchdogs and Fortnite with the other games all taking a slight hit – personally I’d leave turbo off unless you are doing CPU specific tasks where you’ll see a legitimate benefit and justify the higher fan noise.
For the sake of comparison and so you’ll know how it’d perform if you got the 1080p 300Hz panel option instead, here’s how it stacks up at 1080p. In CSGO it tops the field, although I don’t have too many results to show you for this one yet, and it’s not ahead by all that much. Interestingly turbo mode does offer a bigger benefit in CSGO at 1080p thanks to it being more of a CPU bottlenecked scenario than at 1440p.
In Cyberpunk it offered the same performance as the STRIX G15 with it’s 3070 rather than the 3080 in the SCAR 15 – I suspect temperature is a factor here, although even the Zephyrus G15 with it’s 3080 ran at the same rate, although that’s the 80W TDP version unlike this 115W TDP one in the SCAR.
Watchdogs puts it more sensibly ahead of both G15’s, only behind the Zephyrus Duo and Flow X13 and XG Mobile. Fortnite has it in the same place with nearly 140FPS in turbo mode on epic settings – and that’s without DLSS which can help boost that even further. Finally in Microsoft Flight the SCAR 15 runs around 30FPS which would be impressive, if the Helios 300 with it’s slower 10750H CPU and RTX 3060 didn’t also get the same. This is a strange result I’ll be honest, like many of the runs from this game I’ve had so take this with a pinch of salt.
So it’s pretty fast, although not much faster than the STRIX G15 despite it’s, on paper, faster unlocked CPU and 3080. This echoes the point I’ve made in almost every laptop review I’ve done in the last 6 months, the specs don’t really matter and I can’t say I’d be willing to pay this much extra for one or two FPS more in games.
Another similarity in these models is the display – both offer either a 1440p 165Hz IPS level panel, the one I have here, or a 1080p 300Hz option that I had on the G15. As far as I’m aware they are the same panels, and I think might even be the same as you get on the Zephyrus G15, which explains why it’s such a stunning panel. Seriously, it’s vibrant, bright, insanely crisp and fast. It covers 100% of the DCI P3 spectrum, runs at up to 400 nits of brightness, and in my testing lives up to the 3ms response time quoted on the sticker – good job Asus. Ghosting isn’t a problem as it’s maybe a frame at most, meaning for gaming this is excellent.
Even the input lag results are good averaging just 30ms of total system or click to photon latency, running 3ms faster than the Zephyrus G15 which is an already impressive result. Gaming on this felt pretty good, it was fast and responsive and very smooth. I can’t say the 1440p resolution is a must have at this size, but it does have a slight bit of crispness over a standard display so I’m not complaining. I felt pretty confident playing on it, and got used to it quicker than usual.
Something I can’t say I was a big fan of is the key switches. They are optical mechanical which I normally love, but they’ve made these clicky… Have a listen.
The click isn’t annoyingly loud, but it’s definitely obvious. The click can also make the key stick sometimes, so while gaming or typing I’d occasionally miss keys which is frustrating. It’s also remarkably mushy after the click, which again made the experience less than ideal. The optical trigger is design, and if this was linear with a stiffer spring I’d be in love but as it stands it’s more of a turn off for me.
Something I didn’t mention on the STRIX G15 is the lack of I/O. On a £1500 laptop I can forgive that as it’s decent enough, but on a £2800 laptop… Three USB A ports, one type C (which as this is an AMD CPU means it isn’t a Thunderbolt port), HDMI, ethernet, DC in and a single 4 pole headphone jack just doesn’t seem like enough. No SD card reader for creators who want to use all that CPU and RAM to edit videos, no split headphone and microphone jacks and a nice AMP/DAC built in, and a single display output unless you break out the type C port, again just seems a bit limited.
The rest of the usage experience is fine, the speakers are good enough, the track pad is a good size, battery life is on the limited side with the same 90WHr pack inside as the STRIX and the same TDPs for each chip meaning you get the usual couple of hours of web browsing or under and hour on limited performance gaming.
On the whole, I’m personally struggling to see a genuine benefit of getting the SCAR over the G15. They are the same chassis, the same size and weight, but one costs almost 50% less (or almost 100% more if you look at it the other way). They offer very similar performance both in games and in productivity and the few extra gimmicks you get with the SCAR like the see through keyboard plate that doesn’t show anything but more plastic don’t do much to justify the price tag for me. Even if you cared about the extra storage space and RAM, I’d still rather buy the G15 plus an SSD and some RAM and still have a good thousand pounds still in my pocket.
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TechteamGB Score
