The Asus ROG Strix Scar features a large number of “AniMe” lights.

Asus’s ROG brand has never been one to give up on external lighting, but these latest laptops come close to creating a full light show on their lids. The company’s latest Strix lineup, specifically the ROG Strix Scar, is crammed with more “AniMe” LEDs on its case than on the back of the last edition. Rogue 9 phone. If the only thing you demand from your gaming gear is excessive lighting, the new ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 will be at the top of the heap.

However, if you don’t care about lighting, there’s still a lot to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 have an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX processor and up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop version with 175W max TGP and 24GB of VRAM. As for its screen, OLED hopefuls will need to get a 2560 x 1440 Mini-LED display with a 240Hz refresh rate. At least Asus promises that this display will be brighter and will support Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.

The AniMe backlight array is displayed across the bottom right corner, and you can set it to trigger a number of preset images or animations. At a press conference, I saw for myself how the pre-installed system allows you to add your own GIFs to the backlight and adjust the RGB light bar surrounding the structure.

These are hefty laptops, weighing in at 6.28 pounds on the light end, but these desktop replacements can support up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. Better yet, Asus has made the process of disassembling and replacing these parts much easier. The battery and RAM are secured with latches that take a few seconds to remove rather than needing a specialist screwdriver.

ROG is also showing off the newly redesigned Flow Z13, a Windows gaming tablet with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU. This chip should deliver solid gaming performance with the tablet’s large 2.5K (2560 x 1440) 180Hz display. Asus said it includes a vapor chamber and Arc Flow fans to keep the tablet cool with a massive laptop chip inside. Naturally, it comes with a foldable keyboard and stand typical of a regular iPad.

I still don’t sell player tablets or phones to anyone other than the most hardcore Genshin Impact players. There are more options for smaller gaming, especially with all the excellent portable devices available, such as Asus ROG Ally X.

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