 Get ready to experience the ultimate gaming machine of 2023, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 G834. Yes, while it's still early in the year, we're pretty confident in saying that the chance of something toppling it is slim. After all, it packs a 24-core i9-3980HX and a 175W RTX 4090 along with an 18-inch 16x10 display which kicks off a new trend in gaming laptops. To match the powerful hardware on the inside, the outside is RGB City with colorful strips on the back and the front as well as an illuminated ROG logo. The lid is crafted from sturdy metal while the rest of the build is made from quality plastic with translucent sections. The important pieces like the CPU and GPU are still hidden behind reinforcements and heat shielding. The build quality is very good with no flex from the base or lid and the ladder easily opens with just one hand. In terms of dimensions, while the laptop breaks past the 3kg point, it's still better than the 5kg monsters of the past. It's also thicker than most gaming machines, measuring 23.1mm at the front and 30.8mm at the back. The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 offers a spacious base, allowing for a full-sized keyboard with a numpad and large arrow keys. Typing and gaming on it is very pleasant thanks to the long key travel and clicky feedback. Adding to the aesthetics, the per-key RGB backlighting can be customized using the AuraSync software, giving you the freedom to express your personal style. The touchpad may look small, but keep in mind the 18-inch form factor. You've got plenty of space to move on it, while the smooth finish and accurate tracking make using it very pleasant. Going to the sides, you can see that they're translucent as well. Due to the different heat vent designs and allocation, the I.O. is now solely on the left and right. The left side has the bulk of it with the power plug, a 2.5 gigabit LAN port, one HDMI 2.1 port supporting external 4K screens at 120Hz, two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an audio jack. The rest is on the right, including two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen1 ports. The HD webcam has made a comeback above the display, which is neat. As for the panel itself, it's nothing short of amazing. ASUS calls it a Nebula display, which means a QHD Plus resolution that makes for a sharp image, a super-fast 240Hz refresh rate, and a 10ms response time. The screen is excellent if you want to get into content creation, with a peak brightness of 502 nits and 100% coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts. You can toggle between them in the Armory Crate app. The colors are accurate in both gamuts, with the DE value of 1.3 in the sRGB gamut, and 1.0 in the DCI-P3 gamut. In short, you get to see all the digital cinema colors, and they're pretty realistic looking. We'll leave links to our display profiles in the description below. The SCAR-18 doesn't forget that audio is a part of the experience as well, delivering a 4-speaker setup. It has Dolby Atmos support, and delivers very high volume and great quality, with no significant deviations across the entire frequency range. Only 2 per 100 people watching this video are subscribers. If you decide to just start following us, we'll be able to reinvest more in our laboratory, thus making even more helpful videos for you. Thank you, you're awesome. Considering the Core i9 and the RTX 4090 inside, the laptop's 90-watt-hour battery pack lasts for a very respectable 8 hours and 30 minutes of web browsing, or 5 hours and 7 minutes of video playback. As for the performance of the Core i9-3980HX, it's something unprecedented. Its 24 cores and 32 threads deliver the best performance from a laptop CPU that we've seen so far, quickly securing the number one spot in our top laptop CPU ranking, as well as breaking the 30,000 points barrier in Cinebench R23. The bigger deal for gamers is the 175-watt RTX 4090, which also secures the number one spot, this time in our top laptop GPU ranking. It's the fastest GPU available right now, destroying everything in its sight, as well as bending every game or benchmark to its will. You can achieve over 60 frames per second at 4K resolution on most games, or take advantage of the fast refresh rate when playing at lower resolutions. For instance, here's footage of the laptop running Elden Ring at max settings at a buttery smooth 114 frames per second. You can find more gameplay footage of the RTX 4090 over on our laptop media benchmarks channel, which has been growing steadily, something we really appreciate. What allows the laptop to perform so well is the ROG Intelligent Cooling Setup, which here has seven heat pipes and three fans. The CPU and GPU also get the liquid metal treatment with Thermal Grizzly's Conductonaut Xtreme. In the stress test, the Core i9-3980HX sustains 133 watts and a clock speed of 3.35 GHz in long runs, while being able to hold 147 watts for the first few seconds at the start of the test. As for the GPU, the RTX 4090 is able to go to 172 watts, which is pretty close to its 175-watt limit, all the while maintaining sub-1900 MHz speeds. The comfort is exceptional as well, as even after 30 minutes of torture, the laptop's base has a hotspot of only 35°C. Noise-wise, the laptop isn't as loud as we thought it would be, despite the third fan inside. It would be a shame if the Scar 18 didn't bring proper upgradability, but with two Sodom slots and two M.2 slots for the fast Gen4 drives, you can definitely put as much RAM and storage as you want. Here's our teardown video, which shows how to get inside the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 for upgrades, clean-up and maintenance. There's nothing bad to say about the Scar 18, as it presents the latest hardware that's available, while being able to make it perform very well. Its large display is phenomenal, while its size and heft come with the territory of going for a desktop replacement-type gaming machine. If you're in the market for a premium gaming laptop that can handle anything you throw at it, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 should be at the top of your list. For more information about the laptop, check out the review on our website, which has even more tests and information.