You may have missed it, but something amazing happened in laptop land this past January. And I don’t mean to advertise Intel processors with 24 cores or RTX 4090. Yes, this was also important, but suddenly a new screen size was added: 18 inches. Acer, ASUS, Alienware, and Razer all come with gaming laptops with 18-inch screens. Acer, Alienware, and Razer are still far away, but ASUS managed to send us the Rog Strix G18. An i9-13980HX processor, an RTX 4090 video card, and a price tag of €4,400, it’s €100 cheaper than the Medion X40 we recently tested.

So, to be with the review of this laptop unique selling point To start with: an 18-inch screen. This is a big boy and you can see at a glance that it’s a bit larger than the most commonly used 17.3 format. This is also due to the laptop itself. ASUS has tried to keep the screen edges narrow, but they remain fat, so the bottom screen edge is already 5.5cm above the table top. The screen ratio itself is 16:10 and if you are used to a traditional laptop screen of 16:9, it is noticeable that it is a bit higher. Despite the narrow bezels, there’s a camera at the top edge of the screen, which is nice, because ASUS has often omitted the camera entirely on gaming laptops in the past.

This camera has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, which is acceptable for 2023 standards, but nothing more than that. Most manufacturers opt for cameras with higher resolution, as you see more and more that can be used for facial recognition. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the SCAR 18 and the fingerprint scanner is also missing. Not being able to use the biometric login method at all and as a proverbial method peasant Typing in your password or pincode isn’t quite what you’d expect with a €4,400 laptop.

For comparison: a 13.3-inch laptop next to an 18-inch SCAR 18

What you get is a brightly lit and durable case. The back of the SCAR 18’s screen is made of metal, while the rest of the body is made of plastic. The full metal might have given it a more premium look, but there is little fault with the plastic. About the keyboard, it’s smooth, but it doesn’t feel cheap. The plastic around the case is made translucent and richly equipped with RGB LEDs front and back, with which you can blink, “breathe” or jump along to the music in all the colors of the rainbow. If you don’t feel like the whole Santine booth, you can of course turn it off.

An RGB stripe on the back adorns the approximately 32cm wide grille from which the laptop blows warm air. This suddenly shows that there are very serious devices installed in the laptop. Choosing this wide flush opening also means there are no connections in the back. This is especially useful with large laptops that are often in the same place, because connections you don’t often disconnect, such as HDMI, power, and ethernet, are then out of sight.

Now you’ll find them all on the left along with two USB-C connections, one of which supports Thunderbolt. On the right side are two “normal” USB connections, with a maximum transfer speed of 10Gb/s.

Normally we don’t talk much about the bottom of a laptop, but with SCAR 18 it’s a real sight. ASUS tried to handle some characters (GROL?) and also punched the bottom richly. This is necessary because the system is equipped with three fans, all of which must be able to suck in fresh air. The speakers are also located at the bottom; The large 18-inch body contributes to the sound quality. The speakers produce slightly more volume than a smaller midrange laptop, and especially more low-end tones.

image bottom across Check the notebook

Finally, the keyboard and touchpad, especially the latter, work very well. The large body provides plenty of space for the touchpad, so you can scroll, point and click. The surface is made of glass, as it is on almost all high-end laptops. The keyboard has a somewhat heavy tactile feel, but after you get used to it, it clicks nicely on a laptop keyboard. The keys have a long travel and the keycaps form a micro-pattern, so your finger slides easily into the center of the key.