Plenty of lights to go around. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Following a teaser last month, Asus’ latest ROG Strix Scar gaming laptops have arrived and they’re leaning all the way into the gamer aesthetic. The 2025 Scar 16 and 18 come with RGB lights all the way around the bottom of the chassis as well as a user-programmable LED dot-matrix display on the lid, as seen on other ROG devices like Asus’ gaming phones.
Beneath the flashy exterior, the Scar 16 and 18 can be maxed out with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. It can also be configured with up to 64GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and a 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD. The ROG Nebula HDR display comprises a 16:10 2.5K Mini LED panel with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits and a 240Hz refresh rate. There are two Thunderbolt 5 ports included, and the design allows for easy access to the bottom panel for component upgrades.
The Strix Scar 16 and 18 have all the cooling tech you’d expect from a gaming laptop of this caliber, including an end-to-end vapor chamber and sandwiched heatsink. Combined with the Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal treatment on the GPU and CPU, Asus claims that it can keep fan noise levels to a library-like 45dB, even during extended gaming sessions.
On top of all that, the ROG Strix Scar comes with the aforementioned light show. Asus calls it AniMe Vision, and you can customize it to display personalized animations and sync it with any other AniMe Vision devices you own. Download some prebaked artwork or cook up your own using Asus’ pixel editor — the choice is yours.
The ROG Strix Scar starts at $2,599; Asus says its new gaming laptops will begin shipping in February.
