Asus’ ROG brand has never skimped on external lighting, but these latest laptops are getting closer to creating a full light show on their lids. The company’s latest Strix lineup, specifically the ROG Strix Scar, packs more LED “AniMe” lights into its cover than the back of the recent ROG Phone 9. If all you’re looking for in your gaming gear is an overabundance of lighting, the new ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 are right up there.
However, even if you don’t care about lighting, there’s still plenty to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 are equipped with Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop versions with up to 175W TGP and 24GB VRAM. As for the display, those wanting OLED will have to settle for a 2560 x 1440 mini-LED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate. At least Asus promises this screen will be very bright and support Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.
The AniMe backlight array runs across the bottom right corner and can be set to play a number of preset images or animations. At the briefing, we saw first-hand how the pre-installed system allows you to add your own GIFs to the backlight and adjust the RGB light bar around the chassis.
Although these are heavy laptops at 6.28 pounds in the lightweight version, these desktop replacement devices can support up to 64 GB of DDR5 RAM and 2 TB of SSD storage. Even better, Asus has made disassembling and replacing these parts much easier. The battery and RAM stick are held in place by latches, so they take a few seconds to remove without a special screwdriver.
© Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Photo: Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo
ROG will also debut the newly redesigned Flow Z13, a Windows-based gaming tablet powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU. This chip should deliver solid gaming performance from a large 2.5K (2560 x 1440) 180Hz tablet screen. Asus says it has a vapor chamber and Arc Flow fan to cool the tablet, which has a large number of laptop chips inside. And of course, it comes with a foldable keyboard and a typical stand for your average iPad.
For all but the most avid Genshin players, gamer-specific tablets and phones aren’t yet on sale. There are even more options for small games, especially when you have great handhelds like Asus’ ROG Ally X.
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