ASUS ROG Strix Scar Edition 17.3" Gaming Laptop, 8th-Gen 6-Core Intel Core i7-8750H Processor (Up to 3.9 GHz), GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB, 120 Hz 3 ms Display, 16 GB DDR4, 128 GB PCIe SSD + 1 TB SSHD

Pros: +The 144Hz screen is bright, sharp and fast. +The video card handles games with ease. I'm currently running The Witcher 3 on the highest settings at 60 fps and 81°C GPU temp. Fallout 4 with the high quality texture pack was running at 48 fps and 69°C GPU. +The cooing system is traditionally one of ASUS' strong points and is evident on this laptop as well. +The new 6 core processor helps with multitasking and 64-bit applications. +Light and thin considering how fast it is. Can pass as a normal laptop in public, instead of a hulking, gaming monstrosity. +Separate volume levels for headphones and speakers. It switches automatically when you plug into the audio jack. +I constantly get compliments on the keyboard LEDs. I woulf have preferred a per-key setting but I can't complain. +The keyboard is responsive and the labels are easy to read. Dedicated volume keys are nice to have. +The power brick is reasonably sized for a 230 Watt transformer.

Cons: -The number pad layout is hard to get used to. The keys are small and squished together making it easy to hit the wrong keys with fat fingers. There is enough room that they should have kept the layout from the G75 laptops with full size keys. -The F1-F12 keys are in non-standard locations. I'm not sure if it's better or worse yet, but it takes getting used to. Totally messes up the location of the delete key. -There's light bleed from the screen when it goes completely black but I don't make a habit of staring at a black screen. Not a big deal to me. -The fans do get noisy under load but not unbearably so. I always game with earbuds, so I don't hear them while playing, anyway.

Overall Review: Overall, I'm very happy with this laptop. It's a great replacement for my last ASUS that lasted over 6 years, the G75VW-DS74-3D. I've found that ASUS products last a very long time, as long as you get one that is not DOA. They do seem to have a high DOA rate. The first G75 I received in early 2012 was dead, sent back and then replaced with a good one that was just now replaced. Buy ASUS products from somewhere that has an easy return procedure so you can swap the first one out, if need be. I've been using ASUS components since the mid 90's and they've always been that way. If it's not dead out of the box, it lasts forever. Keep in mind that a laptop has to be judged on the components that you can't change out. The screen, the CPU, and GPU and the form factor. Drives and Ram are easily changed if you decide you don't like them. I have upgraded the NVMe drive to a new Samsung 970 Pro 1TB and the SSHD to the Samsung 850 Pro from my last computer. They make everything stupidly fast. The only other thing I eventually plan on doing is adding a 16GB stick of ram into the empty slot to enable the dual-channel memory performance boost. I never use the track pad, so I can't comment on that. I have been spoiled by Logitech M570 mice and add one to every computer I use. For the price, this model is the best bang for the buck! If money is no object, take a look at the GTX 1080 models. UPDATE 12/03/2018 - Less than 6 months later... The bloom is off the rose. One of the fans is making a knocking noise and is no longer recognized by the bios or other software. Of course, ASUS will only allow for the computer to be sent to them for a couple of weeks (for repair or replacement with a refurbished unit) and that's not really an option for me. The keyboard LED software is buggy and freezes often, running the most current version. The RJ45 network jack is loose and often drops the connection, at the slightest movement of the wire. I have to reduce my rating by 1 egg. If things get worse, I'll update again.

Pros: Laptop RGB lights is nice. Booting is fast, takes from 3 to 7 seconds. Speakers are loud and good.

Cons: Fan gets noisy under heavy load but can be set up in silent mode Laptop can be heavy sometimes. Unwanted programs such as mcafee. COD4 Black Ops promotion is a scam. Laptop is ineligible for the promotion when running the app that redeems a code

Overall Review: I bought this laptop at 1,700$CAD and was the best model with the best hardware for the price. 256 GB SSD and 1 TB, huge 17.3 screen & 120 hz refresh rate, nearly the same as a 144hz screen. This i7 CPU is the best in the market for laptops in this price range. The GPU can handle most games especially with the 6gb vram. I would recommend this laptop to anyone for the price I paid for. It increased lately so I would check if there's something better out there but the specs don't lie. The hardware on this machine is crazy for the price. I've been looking for models for weeks and this one has the best deal hands down. The only thing that sucked is the reviews and wasn't so sure about it. This product is good. If there are bugs, they're most likely software related and you can fix them by updating the firmware, bios and other. The promotion for COD4 does not work. Careful when buying this product. It says it is eligible but the application that comes with the laptop says otherwise. Therefore, you do NOT receive a redeem code for this product. I tried contacting support for asus promotion but they do not answer. I would put a lower rating because of this but this product needs more love and it doesn't need a bad review for something that is not hardware or software related. It's just a promotion that is bugged and needs to be fixed. The laptop itself is a beast.

Pros: Super fast and smooth. Next best thing next to the custom rig at home. Ram expansion slot is extremely easy to get to (I think they revised it from the earlier models that required you to take almost everything off)

Cons: Battery does die fast like others have said.

Overall Review: Screen is nice and vibrant. Not as noisy as people have claimed even during game play (Overwatch, CS-GO, etc)

Pros: - Build Quality - Lightweight - Good Thermal Performance

Cons: - Can get very loud - would have preferred a dual channel RAM setup out of the box - Screen back bleed - How come that the purchase is ineligible for return???

Overall Review: I have had this laptop for almost a week now and I am mostly happy with it. So far, it never crashed on me. Temperature for GPU and CPU are at about 76 degrees while playing AC Origins. Though it can get very loud under load but this is to be expected. Undervolting helps a great deal with temperature. My laptop has an insane amount of screen back bleed which can be annoying. Also, I am not sure why the laptop is ineligible for return, and why that wasn't mentioned on the product page. Customers should know those things before they pay for the purchase.

Pros: Given that it's a gaming laptop it still has a simplistic design and well built. Performance is really good. I use it for business but my son already loaded some games and it ran them flawlessly. Screen really pops, a lot better than my 22 LCD at my office. Text is sharp and colors a vivid. Track pad is OK I don't use it much but the few times I did no complaints. Keyboard is good type on and I really like the rainbow lights. Battery is battery than expected, for office work with the screen dimmed a bit I get 4-5 hrs.

Cons: Keys on the number pad are too small. My other 17" laptop had regular size keys. Zero key on the number pad needs to be double width, really cumbersome using the number pad without looking. I keep hitting the up arrow key and messes up my workflow. They should reduce the size of the right CTRL key which I never use and move over the arrow keys and enlarge the zero key.

Overall Review: Other then the number pad situation it's a really is a good laptop. I would buy again.

Pros: Overall it's an excellent laptop. I've been using it for about a week now, and it's worth every dollar I spent for it. - Firstly, I was very impressed by the overall build quality of the laptop. The screen hinges are strong, but smooth enough to open without having to hold down the base. There's very little screen flex or deck flex. The USB ports are very study to little or no flex at all. The keyboard area is made of a soft, smooth, yet durable and strong plastic. Overall, the feel of the laptop is quite solid. - The display is absolutely beautiful. 144 Hz makes a huge difference for high paced games. - The SSD and SSHD make a notable difference in load times. Games load faster and overall programs are a lot more responsive, - The keyboard is quite nice, it has a decent push distance and a somewhat tacky feel. The keys are nicely shaped to the width of a finger, so overall it's a pretty good typing experience. - Thermals are very good. From my tests, AIDA64 only showed a 2% CPU throttling while under full CPU and GPU load. The left and right sides of the keyboard stayed pretty cool, while the middle heated up a bit. For comparison on performance, I was playing DOOM on ultra settings with an average around 120fps (just by eyeballin the FPS display)

Cons: -The biggest con for this laptop is how loud it gets while under Fan Overboost mode. The noise is pretty significant, so I wouldn't recommend gaming on this without a headset or some bangin speakers. -The speakers aren't anything to die for, but they're pretty decent for laptop speakers. Again, I would recommend using a headset or external speakers. -There is also a small amount of screen back bleed. It's mostly noticeable when the screen is completely dark. But I haven't noticed it while playing darker games, or during any other day-to-day tasks. -The webcam and builtin mic are barely adequate for VTC. They're not terrible, but it's not great either.

Overall Review: -Some other users have reported constant BSODs, or thermal throttling. I haven't experienced any of that with the laptop I received. -Overall, I think this laptop has the best value over other laptops in terms of build quality + a GTX 1070. The laptop I replaced with this one was an MSI GS70 2QE Stealth Pro, and it blows it out of the water in terms of build quality. I am highly impressed with this ASUS laptop, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone on the fence on which GTX 1070 laptop to buy.

Pros: -The quality of the screen is fantastic. In my mind this display is great - the best I've seen on a laptop ever. -First thing I did was check all the installed equipment to make sure - everything was as listed in specs. as best I can tell. -The NVMe SSD is fast, I have a work laptop that boots win 10 from a SATA SSD, and although both are pretty quick - side by side the Asus is faster. -Performance is good - as expected - but I did not have time to test things as much as I'd like - agonizing wait while making the recovery USB.. wanting to play around but needing to wait... -Style - so many of the laptops out there capable of gaming look like something that a 14 year old would have - this laptop is not like that. The keyboard lighting etc can be disabled or set to a single color. The carbon fiber look on the inside is not as noticeable as it appears in the pictures. This is a laptop that an adult can use without looking like they borrowed it from their kid. -The speakers are good - they are laptop speakers so there are some inherent limitations but they are the best laptop speakers I've encountered. -the touchpad is nice - the best feel of any laptop I've used.

Cons: -Cooling fans are loud. The only (as of now) YouTube review on this included some testing which showed that the thermals are fantastic, so it is a good trade off to maintain performance, but the fans are loud. -Fingerprint magnet.

Overall Review: UPDATED: RETURNED TO NEWEGG. The HDMI port did not work. I finally got my double monitors set up and attached (one to HDMI and one through mini displayport.) HDMI output was a garbled intermittent flashing and displayport worked fine. IS it the monitor/cable? No switched them, and whichever monitor was attached to displayport worked, neither monitor worked through HDMI. I also tried to attach one monitor (then the other) to HDMI without anything plugged into displayport..same result - garbled flashing from HDMI. Then I hooked up both monitors (using same cables etc) to my work laptop (again using HDMI and mini displayport) and my work laptop pushed them both fine. At this price the laptop should work out the box. This is a fast machine with a stunning screen. Buy it- but wait until ASUS sorts out all of the problems with this first release.

Pros: - Great performance while it lasted. - Quiet enough not to be obtrusive (although I usually wear headphones). - Alleged upgradeability and component-swapping without voiding warranty.

Cons: - 1TB Hybrid drive intermittently disappearing from File Explorer for no apparent reason, can't RMA the drive itself. - Customer support basically amounts to telling me to run a Windows Error Check or go without a laptop for about 3 weeks (and hoping they can actually reproduce the problem and don't just return it to me without doing anything).

Overall Review: - Would not purchase this or any other ASUS product again with technical and customer support that amounts to rolling the dice.