Asus Scar 15-The Gaming King

 What's up guys welcome to my first blog about the Asus Scar 15 comes with AMD Ryzen and RTX 3080.

It is the best laptop i have ever seen period especially dark environment where the rgb's just

really pop the implementation of the rgb strip underneath the display causing

reflections off of the keys a

light up rgb rear logo and then the

backlight on the keys themselves are

also

insanely bright this laptop is simply

gorgeous and it packs

so much performance in a five pound

chassis let's take a look at the specs

now this scar 15 comes with a ryzen 9

5900 hx when under a cpu only load it

will boost to 79.8 watts of power

consistently

and when under a dual load with the cpu

and gpu fully engaged it boosts up to 60

watts of power and when under a gpu only

load the rtx 3080 pulls 130 watts and

when under a dual load we get 114.9

watts

now the 165 hertz qhd display clocks in

at 327 nits peak brightness

over 100 percent srgb 93

adobe rgb and 90 p3 color gamut now my

unit had minor backlight bleed in the

bottom left and right corners but it was

not noticeable

under day-to-day use this display is

noticeably brighter and more vibrant

than your average gaming laptop display

but at 740 to 1 contrast ratio

it's just not as punchy as some now this

is a

fantastic overall display with probably

the best

overall package provided in a 15 inch

chassis that you can buy today

the really fast response rate is great

for esports but not quite as good as say

a 300 plus hertz display it's perfect

for casual gaming because of the high

color gamut

and it's awesome for content creators as

well because of the high resolution

and high color gamut combination now

it's

not that great for outdoor use because

it's not above 400 nits

brightness now this comes with 32 gigs

of ddr4

3200 megahertz memory with dual rank and

this dual rank

does help aid performance a bit in

titles like shadow of the tomb raider

now this has a one terabyte ssd wi-fi

six and bluetooth 5.1

all of which worked exceptionally well

out of the box

now asus weighs this laptop at 5.07

pounds now i did install an extra ssd in

this machine and when i weighed it it

weighed

slightly more now the majority of this

chassis is .89 inches thick but it does

get a little bit over one inch thick

because of the rubber feet on the bottom

arguably the feature that takes the cake

for me with this laptop

is the music activated rgb mode which

turns the laptop

into a synced light show to whatever

music you're listening to

the left side represents the bass the

middle the mids and the right side the

highs

and it really helps me get into the flow

when i'm working typing

it was just awesome sitting on the couch

with a dark environment and letting the

light show play out

while i worked on my review the real

difference maker

is the better software asus includes on

this machine

it allows you to customize each

individual

light and it actually works now using

the aura creator software included on

the laptop

i was able to create custom rgb profiles

that are accessible in armory crate the

main reason i wanted to do this is when

i'm using the laptop

at night to watch netflix the laptop is

sitting on my chest here and the rgbs

are like right there blinding you

so if you can set it so that the rgb on

the keyboard is the only rgb activated

it's a much more comfortable viewing

experience when watching netflix

i was also able to achieve a pure white

backlight

just on the keyboard so if you're going

to take this into a business meeting

you have the option of just going white

and then it looks

a lot more business casual now you can

also

set up scenario profiles which can be

assigned to different applications

for example you can have a business

scenario profile

where the keyboard backlight is set to

white and all the other rgb lights are

turned

off and then you could also set up a

gaming profile where all of the rgb

rainbow lights are turned on

once you open a game these profiles can

also be used so that in the business

setting you have it set to silent

and when you open a game it

automatically switches on to turbo mode

setting up the scenario profiles takes a

lot of time but once they're set up

you don't have to worry or think about

the rgb lighting setup anymore and it's

just done all automatically depending on

what application you're using now the

glass touch pad on this machine is

simply awesome the click is even and

smooth

you glide across the overall large

touchpad now the number pad mode is too

sensitive causing accidental touches at

the lightest

touch and normally it's not that big a

deal you just move your mouse

if you accidentally touch it but when

you have number pad mode engaged

you end up typing numbers or pressing

the enter key and that

might for example send an instant

message that's not fully ready to be

sent

so what i want to see is asus make the

number pad less sensitive around the

edges

so accidental touches aren't as frequent

now the optomechanical keyboard on this

machine is

great i love the soft clickiness of it

and it's not too loud check it out

just a little bit louder than your

normal keyboard but you get a nice

shunk nice feedback every time you press

a key it's a great balance between a

mechanical keyboard

and a chiclet laptop style keyboard

overall i really like the layout of this

keyboard as well

initially i didn't like the fact that we

had home and end page buttons on the

arrow keys

but after using it it's very easy to

find the arrow keys because of this gap

so you can just find those arrow keys by

feel

rather than having to look down at the

keyboard which makes it so you can use

home and end

really really quickly and easily now

this laptop comes with something called

the keystone which i'll

proceed to take out from behind the tape

i taped it in because

it fell out and i lost it for like two

days

it really sucked we searched the house

for like three hours couldn't find it

and so i had to shoot a bunch of b-roll

with the keystone missing which is

pretty silly the keystone allows you to

use the shadow drive which is an

encrypted drive on your machines

now pairing your keystone with your asus

account enables your shadow drive this

hidden encrypted drive

will only be visible on your laptop when

you insert the keystone or enter the

password

you can also trigger certain actions

when inserting or removing the keystone

like

activating a fan profile upon inserting

the keystone or

locking your windows account when the

keystone is removed the main use for

this

in my opinion is locking away sensitive

data like your social security number or

medical records

so that if your laptop is stolen the

data remains encrypted without the

keystone or password

now the ports on this machine are really

solid we've got a three and a half

millimeter combo audio jack

an hdmi 2.0 connected to the amd

integrated gpu

we got three usb 3.2 gen one type

a's and one usbc 3.2 and you'll probably

want to use the usbc port when hooking

up to an external monitor if you want to

maximize performance

now i did test out the power delivery

with my 100 watt usbc power adapter here

and it worked great allowing you to

charge the laptop while watching netflix

or doing light office tests but keep in

mind that if you decide to game on it

even with a

capped frame rate you're still going to

slowly drain the battery down to nothing

now i did try vr on this with my quest

2 wirelessly streamed with virtual

desktop and played half-life alex as

well as a number of other games

and it played flawlessly even on high

settings now keep in mind for vr you'll

ideally want to use the usbc port to

output video to a wired vr headset

now i simply can't include a full

performance breakdown on this laptop

without making this review like

way too long so i'll be making a

separate much longer video

talking about all of the performance and

benchmarks from this machine

so be sure to subscribe if you don't

want to miss out on that now the time

spy score is the highest i've ever

tested

now just for fun i flashed the v bios of

the scar 15 just to see what would

happen

and we managed to score 12 632.

now i'm going to make a follow-up video

talking about the flashed v-bios

performance coming up soon so if you

don't want to miss out on that

be sure to hit that subscribe button now

for time spy points per pound this is

the best performance per pound i've ever

seen in a

laptop it's a huge step up but it's also

true of the cpu as well the scar 15

scored 13

100 in my cinebench r23 run for

cinebench r20 this got 5239

again topping out my chart for laptop

cpus

and as you can see on our cinebench r20

performance per pound this is the best

you can get

better even than the bang for buck

cheaper models from last year

now when it comes to performance per

dollar this machine is not

terrible especially considering how many

premium features this machine comes with

but it's also

not great it's quite clear that if you

want better performance per dollar

you're going to want to get the rtx

3070 version of this machine simply

because

it's not a massive gap in performance

but it is

500 cheaper now i benchmarked this

laptop so many times i benchmark 1080p

1080p bypassing optimus to an external

display

qhd qhd bypassing an optimus to an

external display and then i also tested

on my 4k tv back there to see what kind

of performance we can get at 4k

and the news is fantastic now when it

comes to games this machine pushes the

boundaries of what you can expect in a

15-inch chassis that is this

thin and light we're talking about

excellent

gaming performance in every single title

i tested

now you can down sample the res from qhd

to 1080p on this display

and it looks perfectly crisp in a lot of

titles but some titles

just don't handle that down resin very

well and causes blurry artifacts

at 1080p you can play with all maximum

details fully maxed out even with dlss

on quality

now on qhd i saw excellent performance

and i tested with dlss

on balanced and when i went up to 4k i

was able to play on all ultra settings

but i did set dlss to ultra performance

to ensure

high enough frame rates overall this

machine blows my mind in terms of the

amount of performance you're getting in

such a

thin and light package i absolutely love

it

and it's not just good gaming

performance or good cpu performance but

it's an overall combination of

everything put together now i have seen

this comment on a number of my videos

no mux no bucks which admittedly

is really funny but on this laptop i

don't think that applies and here's the

reason why

we are utilizing a qhd 165 hertz display

this means our target frame rate and

resolution will make games much more gpu

bound and we're also

not looking to push past 165 frames per

second

so in my opinion the mux switch just

doesn't matter as much on a

qhd laptop overall the lack of a mux

will only cost us about

three to seven percent of our overall

performance in these

gpu bound games now we have four main

fan profiles

take a listen to my stress test this is

what it sounds like with maximum fans

this is turbo mode when it gets louder

this is turbo mode when it gets quieter

and this is the performance fan setting

this is what the silent fan profile

sounds like

now in my dual load stress test with the

heaven benchmark and the fire strike

physics test

this laptop got warmer than the 17 inch

strix

g17 the thermals were not quite as good

which is

expected in a smaller overall chassis

that said the thermals on this machine

are insane for a 15 inch laptop

there are so many heat pipes in this

little chassis for its size

it's incredibly impressive now for the

best blend of high performance and

overall quietness use the performance

mode

it provides an excellent gaming and

acoustic experience

now silent mode is really interesting

because it basically mutes the laptop

entirely like the fans completely turn

off unless it has a heavy load

and when it has a heavy load the fans

barely

come on at all so if you're like me and

you need to have the laptop just be

really quiet say in a business meeting

or on a call

silent mode is definitely the way to go

now generally speaking in

actual games we saw much better

temperatures than during my stress test

do you think the sears rog laptops are

cooling very well yeah they're cooling

extremely well because the amd cpu is

not

putting much heat into the rest of the

the heat pipes which allows for the

cpu and gpu basically to not produce

that much heat and we get enough getting

great temperatures overall i mean look

what we're getting right now 68 and 66.

i mean below 70 for both

i almost never saw the temperatures go

above 80 and typically they were well

below

75 in the vast majority of titles

despite this being a 15 inch laptop we

still have

fantastic thermals fantastic thermals

huzzah

okay i don't know why that said propping

up the back of the laptop by even

one inch increased the airflow enough to

drop the temperatures by

three degrees for the cpu and gpu in my

stress test

so if possible i recommend lifting the

back of the laptop up just a little bit

or putting a laptop stand though i

didn't do any of my thermal testing like

that

it still had good overall temps now

while using the laptop for high

performance gaming with max fans

the keyboard remained literally cool to

the touch

which is great for a 15 inch chassis now

this comes with a 90 watt hour battery

in airplane mode i was able to get eight

plus hours now browsing the web or wi-fi

video streaming i was able to get six

plus hours

and well gaming on the go with frame

rate capped at 30 fps

i was able to get about an hour and a

half now the speakers on this machine

are some of the best i've ever heard in

a 15 inch chassis we've got loud full

bass solid mids and clear highs that

said you can really feel the bass

reverberate through the chassis of the

laptop

if it's on your lap so there's a lot of

great things about this machine but why

might you want to

skip the scar 15. well depending on the

fan

profile temperatures can get a bit high

especially on the cpu in turbo fan mode

now i have one minor creak in my chassis

right here

i do think the display could be brighter

and have better contrast

now the lack of a webcam will be a deal

breaker for some

now a nice free alternative is using

your smartphone camera which i'll be

making a video about how to do that

in the near future now this did come

with a little bit of bloatware

mcafee you'll have to uninstall that

sadly this does not have a full-size sd

card slot which i would just love and

arguably the biggest downside is that

until we have more amd ryzen 5000 series

cpus

it's going to be very hard to buy any of

these ryzen 9 5900

hx machines so overall if you're looking

for a premium 15 inch laptop

this is i think the one to buy at least

right now the very

best of the best right here you've got

almost all of the premium features you

could want in a laptop except maybe

windows hello

and you get a really well-rounded

balanced performance

on the cpu and gpu at the same

time now i went ahead and put 16

terabytes of ssd space in here and i've

got 64 gigs of ram coming which i'll

also be putting in here

and this will be my laptop for the

foreseeable

future so if you want to know what

laptop i chose

it's this guy so that's my review of the

scar 15. i hope you enjoyed it

i will see you in the next one.

So Goodbye to all.