13″, 14″, and 15.6″ notebooks rule the mobile roost these days, but 17″ notebooks endure for folks who care about performance above all. Asus is trying to make life easier for folks who want to lug around such large machines with its ROG Strix Scar II. This machine is built around a 17.3″ display, but Asus has slimmed down three of the four screen bezels to the point that it claims the Scar II is no larger than a notebook with a 15.7″ chassis.
Like the Zephyrus S announced today, the Scar II's top-end panel is a 144-Hz, 1920×1080 affair with a claimed 3-ms response time—exceptional for a notebook screen. The Scar II also boasts 100% coverage of the sRGB color space. A 60-Hz 1920×1080 model will also be available. Buyers can choose a Core i7-8750H CPU with six cores and 12 threads or a Core i3-8300H with four cores and eight threads. No matter what CPU you choose, the Scar II delivers pixels to its panel with a GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics chip. The machine supports DDR4-2666 RAM in pools as large as 32 GB.
The Scar II's inch-thick body has room for NVMe SSDs ranging from 128 GB–512 GB and 1-TB hard drives in either plain-old-5400-RPM, 7200-RPM, or 5400-RPM SSHD flavors. Owners can hook up peripherals using USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A ports, three USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a single Mini DisplayPort 1.2 connector, an HDMI 2.0 out, and an SD card reader. The Scar II has a Gigabit Ethernet jack and 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi with a 2×2 MIMO antenna.
As with the Zephyrus S, the Scar II has four-zone RGB LED lighting on its keyboard, a dual-zone RGB LED light bar on its front edge, and another blinkenlight zone behind the ROG logo on its lid. Asus will announce prices when the machine launches in September.
Share
