ASUS ROG Strix Scar II Gaming Laptop, 17” 144Hz IPS-Type Full HD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB, Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD, RGB KB, Windows 10 - GL704GV-DS74

I bought this Asus to replace an aging MSI I had for 4 years. That sported a 4th gen i7 with a gtx980m that performed admirably (despite being close to 9lbs without the brick). With the dawn of VR however I needed something beffier to run my Oculus Rift S.After doing research, I settled on this laptop as a sweet spot of price, specs and looks. With that being said, there are faster ones which are more expensive and cheaper ones that are all plastic and heavy so keep in mind it all depends on your preference and budget.I will try to be as in depth as necessary to appeal to the layman and include some little caveats to keep in mind before even considering this purchase. Lets start with,The good:Aesthetically, this laptop is sexy af. Brushed aluminium cover with a two tone finish is something to behold. The rog insignia is full rgb, as is the light bar across the front and while rgb may not be everyone's cup of tea, its beautiful nonetheless. The keyboard has 4 addressable lighting zones and eveything is controlled by the asus aura software. It weighs in at roughly 6lbs and is only 1" at its highest point, excellent considering,The Specs:The main reason we buy the Republic of Gamers series. The 8th gen i7 is snappy and can handle it all while the 1060 (in my model) is by any standard an amazing gpu. Gone are the days when we settled for an excessively under powered chip as Nvidia has dropped the mobile branding and have stuffed a full desktop grade gpu into this slim chassis. The 16 gigs of ram are 8-8 taking advantage of both ram slots and dual channel support for better performance. The base configuration is an m2 ssd with 256gb and a 1tb secondary 7200rpm drive. Both are upgradable but suit my needs fine. The wifi and bluetooth connectivity are above average and I always have a solid connection where my MSI would wane.Dat a...*I mean screen144hz at 1080p with a 3ms response time is so buttery smooth that you cannot go back to console gaming after the experience. I cannot describe how good gaming looks, kinda like the matrix, you must see it for yourself. Colour reproduction is amazing as well.With all the hardware packed into such a sleek package, heat would always be a major concern but after a couple round of benchmarking using Uniengine's Heaven, the cpu hit low 80's with the gpu in the high 70's. Note this is only after a few attemps, without any additional cooling. I must point out that no matter what a laptop cooling pad is ALWAYS recommended to prolong the life of your laptop. Heat kills.All things considered I am thoroughly satisfied with the unit, however there are a few short comings that appear to be prevalent in this model that should be remembered.The Bad.I kinda feel bad to post bout battery life here because with performace comes poor battery life. However, the integrated graphics chip should be able to maximize my run time based on usage for smaller tasks like web browsing etc. My 4 year old MSI gave me 4+hrs in this regard while I get a max of 4 hrs on this with pretty EVERYTHING turned down. If long battery life is a game chager for you, keep this in mind.The trackpad has an issue across many ROG models (google it) where the trackpad seems to lag during regular use. It happens frequently enough that you notice it and doesn't occur when using a mouse. I have since uninstalled and deleted my drivers and restarted which seems to have worked, at least for now.The webcam is kind of a joke. The quality is just ok and the placement is ridiculous. It feels as if they forgot about it while focussing on the thin bezels until the very end and were like, lets just fit it in on the bottom but not in the center because it has an insignia there. A better implementation is very much needed.The Backlight bleed to me is the most noticeable con to this laptop. It is well documented to be a common issue with this series and I suspect was an impact of the thinner bezel and lack of consideration for what it entailed. I only have some bleed on the right side of my screen and its hard to get it on a picture. It shows up on black transition screens and while not a dealbreaker, I expect that at this pricepoint it is too trivial an issue on too beautiful a screen.With that said, I recommend the laptop and think that the good far outweigh the bad. I even posted a screengrab of my heaven score and you will notice *on reddit* that it is an above average result besting many full desktops with the gtx 1060.Hope this was helpful and informs your decision.

I've read all the comments before buying this laptop. This is my second Asus after ZenBookPro 15inch, which wee bought for the whole family a couple of years ago. I still like a lot, and decided to stick to the brand. The one I am replacing is my 7 year old Samsung laptop. My old laptop was not top of the line even at the time of purchase, but served me well. So, have to say, that if you're switching from anything more than 5 years old laptop, you will be completely satisfied, and may disregard the majority of negative reviews.It starts up and ready to work in like 5 seconds after I installed all the programs necessary to me.I didn't notice any backlight bleed with the naked eye in a dark room with black screen video, it is much more pronounced if you take a picture of a screen, though.Fans do accelerate sometimes, but the noise is not as terrible as some described. My old laptop with spinning hard drive and single fan was just as loud or more. This is a powerful machine that needs to cool itself, after all. I went to task manager when the fans started spinning fast, and it turned out Amazon photos started backing up my new pictures. So there is always a reason behind.Coil wine exist, not in the form of whining, but rather scratching or radio static noise, it is low enough to get used to it. From what i read it is common issue regardless of brand and model these days.I followed the advices from other commenters and popped-in another 16GB RAM stick and 500GB SSD into the empty slots (pictures attached). It was relatively easy. The bottom is not glued, and does not have any security screws. Maybe some day I will also clone the main NVMe drive (which is Intel 660p) and replace it with 1TB 970Evo. I noticed that the network adapter is also easy to upgrade when the day comes.My biggest complain is location of the webcam. I, personally, don't mind thicker bezels in exchange for a nice webcam on top of a screen.No complains about the weight, since it's going to be sitting on top of my desk 99% of a time. It is almost as heavy as 7 year old classic laptop it replaces. The power block is big, though.The keyboard is convenient and large, with springy keys. All the shortcut buttons are where they should be. I'm not a gamer, so I set the background lighting to static color.Yes, there are some unnecessary software to uninstall, drivers to update manually. It didn't bother much, it was the way to get to know a new machine. As some also complained, there was no sound from the speakers for couple of days with all the audio drivers up to date, but then something auto updated and magically it's all good now.Didn't test yet the thermal performance with demanding applications running over long periods of time, like video rendering, so have nothing to say. But in regular PC use, like MS Office, Chrome etc. it runs perfectly normal.Overall, I am very satisfied. It is a beautiful, very well built laptop, which starts up and runs any programs very fast.