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Asus’ ROG brand has never been one to do away with external lighting, but these latest laptops are closer to creating a complete light show on their lids. The company’s latest line of Strix, especially the ROG Strix Scar, has embedded more “AniMe” LED lights on its cover than the rear of the recent one. ROG Phone 9. If the only thing you ask from gaming equipment 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 mind the lighting, there’s still a lot to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 hosts an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and up to the laptop version Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 with a TGP 175W max and 24GB of VRAM. As for its display, the works of OLED will require a mini-LED screen 2560 by 1440 with a refresh rate of 240 Hz. At least Asus promises that this screen will be extra bright and supports Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.
The AniMe backlight array slashes in the bottom right corner, and you can set it to play a number of preset images or animations. In 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 that surrounds the chassis.
These are heavy laptops, weighing 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 much easier to disassemble and replace these parts. The battery and RAM sticks are held with locks that take a few seconds to remove rather than requiring a specialized screwdriver.
ROG also debuted its new 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 rugged laptop chip inside. And, of course, it comes with the folding keyboard and stand typical of your average iPad.
They are not even sold on tablets or phones specific to gamers for anyone other than the most hardcore Genshin Impact players. There are more options for pint-sized games, especially with all the excellent laptops on offer, such as Asus ROG Ally X.
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