 What's up internet? I'm not a big fan of laptops. I'm on record of saying that I always use desktops and so when ASUS told us they were sending us their 2020 desktop killer, the ASUS ROG Strix Car 17, I was a bit skeptical. I was like, it's a laptop. How good can it be? And so from the start, I was biased against the thing. But as luck would have it, my desktop died right when the Scar 17 arrived. And so I had no choice but to use the Scar 17 as my primary device for around two weeks. So madaling sa leta na matay ngayong desktop ko, na matay sa selos. Because at the end of those two weeks to make a long story short, I really really enjoyed using the Scar 17. Rest in peace na lang desktop ko and kung di na siya maayos and I have to keep using the Scar 17, that really would not be too bad. So first things first, how was the laptop for work? And because of hardware sugar, I have to juggle a lot of things on my computer. I have to viber suppliers and I have to chat with the team on Slack and I have to have Word Open and Excel Open. I have to research products so there are a bunch of multiple browsers open. I have to check emails, I have to check the back end of the inventory, I have to talk to customers on Facebook, I have to edit for YouTube. So there are a bunch of different windows always open on my computer and to make sense of all of that visual clutter, I really need to work with a dual monitor setup. This is non-negotiable for me. I need to have at least two monitors to be able to do my workflow properly. So my first concern was when switching to a laptop, was will it be able to properly recognize a monitor when I plug it in, when I plug it into the laptop. I plugged in the LG 32 inch monitor I have, which uses an HDMI cable and that was perfectly alright with me. So I had the smaller laptop screen, then I had the larger 32 inch screen. Once the screen was extended, I basically functioned like a dual monitor setup. The Scar 17 also has USB Type-C ports so if you have a monitor that supports Type-C, you can also connect to the laptop using USB Type-C and it even supports G-Sync through that setup. So I was happily at work again and handling multiple programs was no issue since the Scar 17 has an i9-10980HK and 32GB of RAM so really you can keep any program, multiple programs up and running, it will not choke up the computer, it will handle everything just fine and as part of my usual workflow, I do need to stream things such as pwede magtanong our live tech show and I used the Scar 17 to stream and it handled everything again without any hiccups. I was able to use OBS and have the browser windows open, it handled Discord with four people talking all at the same time and it performed just as well as the desktop that I'm used to and to top it all off, it did all of these things through Wi-Fi not through a LAN cable. I mentioned that because I have another bias against Wi-Fi. If it were up to me, everything would still be wired and this is how I operate with my own desktop. I don't use Wi-Fi, I use a LAN cable to connect to the internet because I find wired connections to be more reliable, faster and generally less prone to headaches than Wi-Fi connections but all of that changed when I tried out the Scar 17, it has Wi-Fi 6 which is the fastest Wi-Fi standard now and download speeds were exactly the same using Wi-Fi and the wired connection and again this is revelation to me again I'm biased for the wires but using the Wi-Fi of the Scar 17 was just as good as a wired connection and it was so good that I even stream pwede magtanong all through Wi-Fi where before I would have been paranoid to do so and I would have insisted on a wired connection and of course if you want Wi-Fi 6 and your router does need to also support that standard and we did review one Wi-Fi router with Wi-Fi 6 which is what I used in conjunction with the Scar 17. Gaming over the internet was also so smooth over the Wi-Fi, no dropped connections, no instability, it was really just like working and gaming on a wired connection. You might get the impression of kind of old-fashioned, I like the desktop, I like wired connections because usually these things are much more reliable than a laptop, than a wireless connection. To be honest I was really amazed with the Wi-Fi performance of the Wi-Fi 16 and once I was able to trust it I went around just using the Wi-Fi and I didn't bother to plug it into a LAN cable anymore. So we've done work, we've done internet and at the end of a long day na sinasagot may mga customer mo na andaming tanong, madami makulit, andami makareklamo, but hindi gumagano yung ARGB fan dun sa RGB header and so many other small things like that doing inventory that you know it's like do we have two PSUs of that type or just one type of that PSU? I mean all those little things at the end of a long day you just want to shoot people, you just want to blow things up. So how was the Scar 17 with gaming? Well it has a 2080 Super for a graphics card and its screen is an amazing 300 Hz IPS display and in all seriousness it was the most immersive gaming experience I've had outside of VR. This thing is just incredible, 300 friggin Hz. The 2019 model of the Scar 17 topped out at 240 Hz. So basically the motto of ASUS is if an 8th broke let's make it faster. So from 240 they jumped to 300 and I played COD on this thing. My favorite gaming experience with the Scar 17 was in COD the single player mission gone home and that's the one where you have to scout out three locations and it's up to the player how he wants to tackle which location to go to first and how to approach the mission whether stealthy or guns blazing and there's a lot of differences in the environment. You start out in the forest and then you have to go to a villa type of setting which is indoors. You have different kinds of enemies whether on a vehicle or on foot. You can play in the dark or you can play with you know without shooting out the lights. So there's a lot of variety in that mission and the Scar 17 did everything so well. The gaming experience was so seamless that I didn't even bother to look at the frame rate counter anymore because what would be the point it just really sucked me into the game and a part of me just wanted to wander around the forest a little bit. I didn't want to engage the enemy at first but once you do go run and gun the Scar 17 handles all of the frenetic action well all of the explosions all of the running all of the jumping and again it was the most immersive gaming experience I've ever had outside of VR. And really the credit goes to the IPS 17 inch 300 hertz screen coupled with the 2080 Super which can really crank out the frame rates to a display that can also handle it. It is an IPS screen so the colors are vivid but I didn't experience any of the lag or motion blur sometimes associated with IPS displays. There was nothing to mar the experience and to be honest I have no words well I have some words sobrang ganda it really blew me away playing on this thing and so it is a performance laptop but one thing that differentiates a laptop from a desktop is that you have it on your lap or you have it quite close to you and you're pumping out the hurts like that if you need it to run performance it's going to get hot but did the Scar 17 go nuclear on me was it uncomfortable to use even after prolonged gaming even after running it on load for a long time actually its cooling was excellent it shunts heat to the side as well as through the rear it does it in such a way that the keyboard doesn't get hot asus claims that it deliberately shunted heat away from the keyboard surface and to be honest I don't know how true that is but from a user perspective it's true that the keyboard does not get hot you don't feel any heat it's not uncomfortable to use even after hours of peak gaming and more importantly because you have the mouse on your side the side the perimeter of the laptop doesn't get hot as well you don't feel uncomfortable that your hand is close to a furnace or you know you don't you don't feel that the hot after hours of hot air blowing on your hand that you don't want to play anymore because while the Scar 17 cools well it doesn't shunt heat to your hand or you do feel the heat around the perimeter of the laptop but it doesn't get too bad that it affects your mouse hand which is close by the Scar 17 also doesn't use normal thermal paste it uses liquid metal from thermal grizzly which probably helps it deal with a lot of the heat that it generates bottom line this is a well engineered package which can run at performance without choking on its own heat and it vents that heat in such a way that the user does not feel that he is the recipient of that heat or the user doesn't feel that he becomes an extra heat sink that has to soak up all of that heat as well so you can keep gaming on this thing until you become tired not when the laptop becomes tired and i was surprised with the additions of the Scar 17 because all of them are premium you don't feel that asus just tack them on to say that oh yes it also comes to the mouse or oh yes it also comes to the headphone all of the included items are in their own right very premium and they complement the stellar nature of the laptop first we have the mouse which is the gladius 2 so it's rgb easily controlled or easily synced with the laptop and it's a quality mouse it feels very solid the build quality is strong and there's a very satisfying click you know when you use the mouse you don't feel it's a tiki-taki mouse that won't be able to register what you're doing with it it handles different surfaces well which is something you might need to think about if you're using a laptop when you might be bringing it around to places you know where without the accompanying mouse pad i tried it on a variety of desks and it read everything smoothly i didn't have any problems using the mouse on different surfaces the included headset is the rog delta and this is really really nice to use the again solid build quality it's very comfortable without pinching too much on your head the sound quality is stellar like if you play it with an fps you can hear all of the gunfire and even a nuanced sounds like the footsteps of your enemies and it has a detachable mic which makes sense because you want it portable alongside your laptop the cans or the headphones fold so they're easily stored as well there's some nice rgb going on the rgb is subtle because it's on the perimeter of the headphones but you can see them unlike some other rgb on headsets where it's just in the middle of the headphone here asus wisely put some rgb around the perimeter of the cans and so if you put rgb on headphones you want other people on stream or you know other people watching you to see them and if that's the objective then it makes a lot more sense to put them around the perimeter or wider surface area than just sticking some small rgb patch on the logo in the middle of the headphones rgb aside the rog delta is super comfortable to use sound quality is very good i couldn't resist i used it as my headset in pwede magtanong and again sound quality was stellar and i was super spoiled i didn't want to go back to my other headsets after trying the rog delta next up it's the web camera that comes with this car 17 this one was a bit mainstream or average again i used this for pwede magtanong and the image quality to me just seemed all right to be fair i didn't really monkey around with the settings anymore i didn't want to make a big deal out of it i used it in sort of low light where web cameras really don't do well so it was just all right for me but it's good that the option is there that it's already included in the package just so that if you do need a webcam for whatever reason for work or for play you don't need to scrunch around to find one one already comes in the box it's easy to snap on to the laptop and it's easy to tilt or orient it to get the vantage point that you want again the quality was so so for me but it's good that the option is there and so these add-ons really complement the premium nature of the rog scar 17 because to be honest the scar 17 is not cheap man i mean you will pay a pretty penny for all the bells and whistles but at the same time you get your money's worth even the accessories that come with the laptop all feel premium especially that rog delta and rounding out the accessories as an included rog backpack this makes sense because it is a heavy laptop and the power brick really is the size of a brick and it's about the same weight so the laptop is nice and roomy and it does a good job of providing different compartments for the different things that you want to stick into it like the laptop the power brick and things like that the styling of the backpack is all right it's not too heavy on the rog and while the rog label is there it's subtly included it doesn't scream like oh look at me i do wish that the compartments were a bit more specialized like oh this compartment is clearly for the mouse and this compartment is clearly for the rog delta but that's a minor quibble the laptop gets the job done and i really used it as well bringing the laptop around different places again the complete package from rog they provide everything you need to enjoy the laptop right out of the box to its fullest capacity right away and since we're on portability this is a performance laptop so you will run through the battery pretty quickly especially if you're playing a game or doing video editing or anything basically under load you probably maybe get an hour 30 two hours that's um it might last a bit longer of course if you're just doing minor things like word editing or youtube surfing or watching a video so the battery will run out relatively quickly especially if you're on load but i noticed that it does charge up relatively quickly as well and of course at the same time you probably won't be running around too much with this thing without the power brick and an accessible power outlet nearby so yes you can run and gun literally with this thing like outdoors or you know use it as a real laptop and and you could probably get in a game or two but inevitably because it is a performance laptop you're going to run through the battery pretty quickly and the use case of this is really more as a desktop killer like you have it indoors most of the time with you the scar 17 is also very customizable one particular feature which i found amusing was the keystone or basically there's a small fob that you can detach from the laptop and you can customize the laptop so that once you insert that key or once you insert the keystone the laptop will automatically change the settings that you have selected and it even activates a special storage section where you can scroll away files that you don't want anybody reading anybody watching i noted earlier that this thing's wifi super fast so if you got something online that maybe is for your eyes only a little bit naughty that then you can stick it into that secret compartment or that secret storage space of the scar 17 which is activated by the keystone and this is just one of those nice things you know probably a lot of users won't think about it but for that very dedicated subset of users that wants to make the laptop their own like everything down to the last detail is customized to how they like it then the keystone is a nice way of ensuring that that the scar 17 automatically snaps to the settings of the guy configured it when he plugs in the keystone you do also have the usual aura sink and armory crate to configure the laptop for performance settings and for the rgb the rgb of the laptop is a bit understated yes you have the rgb on the front part with the rog logo and then the perimeter of the laptop has basically rgb strips and then the keyboard is rgb personally i like my rgb useful so i set them to display the system temperatures or to sync up with the system temperatures so when things became hot i knew they were hot because the entire laptop turned red it's easy to sync the gladius mouse and the rog delta headphones with the rgb scheme of the laptop and you have the usual rainbow and other effects and things like that let's sort of wrap up with the specs and for me when i review stuff i you i put the specs in the last part why is that because i don't want to get obsessed too much with numbers but i do acknowledge that specs have their place and so the scar 17 has an ips 17 inch 300 hertz display it has a 2080 super gpu its cpu is an i 9 10 9 80 hk on the left side it has three usb type a ports and an and the usual audio jack port the rear has the usual land port and the hdmi port as well as one usb type c so actually you could get two monitors working with this thing one running on type c and the other running on hdmi so at the most you could have uh triple screen the laptop screen the type c screen and the hdmi screen and i was hard pressed really to find things i didn't like about it but upon reflection the speakers could be better i to be honest i didn't even i tried to watch a video using the scar 17's native speakers or you know the built-in speakers but the sound was just basically evaporated in the air i couldn't hear the dialogue and things like that of course when i switched to the rog delta everything was superb and the video quality was excellent thanks to the ips display but the built-in speakers seem like an afterthought and while i really love the screen it does max out at 1080p so for those looking for higher resolutions you do have the option of plugging in a 4k monitor which the hdmi port supports but if you will be using the laptop screen as your primary gaming screen you could do a lot worse to be honest 300 hertz is amazing but if you are looking for that extra boost beyond 1080p then you will need to get another monitor to do that but you know more than the specs is how everything came together and it just works so well in this package the scar 17 can handle basically anything you throw at it whether it's productivity apps whether it's video editing whether it's streaming whether it's gaming so i freely admit that i started this review biased i have a thing for desktops i look down on laptops you know things fell into place my desktop failed on me it wouldn't boot up anymore just around the same time as the scar 17 arrived and so i really migrated to using this thing i for work for play and i brought this thing to bed with me just so i could say that yeah i played cod from my bed hasn't everybody 300 hertz haven't you experienced that before i mean there's a ridiculous amount of hardware perfection in the scar 17 everything works so well that it's really upended my expectations of a laptop and ironically it's hard now for me to go back to my desktop after having experienced the scar 17