The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 holds onto its crown with confident performance upgrades and an ultra-customizable display

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is rubbing shoulders with the most powerful gaming laptops on the market, and very nearly outright beating them. That would be enough to make it exciting, but its endlessly customizable 4K Mini LED display keeps this line in prime position for anyone after an 18-inch rig. Just be prepared to invest.

Highly customizable, impactful Mini LED display

Side-mounted ports won't be for everyone

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The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 has always been a tricky one to pin down. This line consistently sees some of the more impressive benchmark numbers when I test at the top of the GPU food chain, but last year's model was more of an aesthetic refresh while 2026's iteration is a solid refinement further.

What's new? In a nutshell, a 4K resolution on that fantastic Mini LED display and brand new thermals under the hood. Combine that screen with rising component costs, however, and you've got a rig that pushes well past $4,000 in its RTX 5090 form. The best gaming laptops are all far more expensive this year, but is it worth investing quite so much cash when prices are up? I spent three weeks with the 2026 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 to find out.

This is Asus's speedster, so it's keeping its configurations fairly close to the top of the price range. Like last year's, the 2026 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is strictly an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 affair, but this time it's paired with a slightly upgraded Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. That's not going to give you too much in the way of real world gaming performance, but is geared towards heavier AI workloads better. All that's paired up with a predictably high amount of RAM, either 32GB or 64GB.

$4,299.99 - $5,299.99 / £4,199.99 - £5,499.99