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350,000 pesos is a lot of money. You can
do a lot with that. Invest it in the
stock market, build your portfolio,
build a business, buy a secondhand car
for transportation, or even a fancy
watch for yourself. Alternatively, you
could also buy what is arguably one of
the most powerful gaming laptops on the
market today, the 2025 ROG Stricks Scar
18. To give you an idea, the Stricks
Scar 18 packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU,
an RTX 5090 GPU, and 64 GB of RAM. With
that, it can very much run anything you
throw at it. And I mean that in a
literal sense. But is the price worth
all of the specs and features this
laptop offers, or should you build a PC
instead? Or better yet, should you
invest that 350,000 somewhere else?
Well, let’s find out in this review of
the Asus ROG Stricks Scar 18.
Before we go into the goods packed into
the ROG Stricks car 18, let’s talk about
the design of the gaming laptop.
Compared to 2024 model, there’s one big
change ASUS made to the design of the
stricks car 18. It now features the
anime vision LED matrix originally found
on the Zephros models. The LED matrix
isn’t as big as the one found on the
Zephorus, but it’s a nice addition to
have. Users can fully customize the
appearance of the dot matrix to their
liking via the Armory Crate menu. And
personally, I change it every so often
just for the heck of it. Aside from the
anime LED matrix, the rest of the laptop
remains largely unchanged, at least from
the surface. There’s still the huge RGB
back lit ROG logo on the right side of
the lid. In case people don’t know what
laptop you’re using, I personally like
the ROG logo with the new anime LED
matrix design, but I’m sure some of you
will prefer a more minimalist styling.
But hey, this is a topsp spec gaming
laptop after all. And like before, it
retains the all black design from the
lid to the base with the premium feel
you would expect from an ROG laptop.
Though it’s a bit more subtle, Asus also
redesigned the intake and exhaust vents
of the Stricks Scar 18 for 2025. At the
base of the laptop, the vents on the
sides are slimmer and the exhaust ports
are now located at the rear. As a result
of this subtle design change, there’s
even more RGB all around the base and it
wraps around the entire laptop,
including the rear. And personally, it
gives off a lot of aura points when you
turn it on. It also reminds me of the
underglow of cars. Similar to last
year’s model, the interior lid and the
base is still made out of plastic. It’s
a nice kind of plastic though, and it
does feel nice to the touch. However, it
does have the same premium feel as
compared to a metal one, but personally,
it’s very much livable with. What I
didn’t like about it though is that it
isn’t exactly smudge resistant. You can
easily leave fingerprints and residue,
especially if you eat while you game,
and it’s also a bit hard to clean. You
really need to get in there to get it
off. Okay, wrong choice of words, but
okay. This being an 18-in laptop, you
get a full-size keyboard at your
disposal. It also comes with dedicated
keys for the volume control, mic, mute,
unmute, performance mode, and even the
armory crate. And of course, all of
these keys are RGB back lit, and they
can do custom colors at your disposal.
They’re properly spaced out, and the
keys look identical to the one in the
2024 model. However, they do feel a bit
different as compared to other ROG
keyboards I’ve tried recently. They
require a bit more effort to press and
the travel is a bit longer. It did take
me a few days before I got used to these
keys, but they feel great. I was able to
type rather fast and accurately, which
includes writing the entire script for
this video and even writing the entire
review. More importantly, my fingers
didn’t get tired after all of that
typing. Instead, what made typing not so
comfortable was the new front edge of
the laptop where my arms and wrists are
resting. They have a bit of a sharper
profile, which meant that there were
some marks left on my arms after I was
typing for a while. As for the trackpad,
it’s a bit bigger than before. It still
feels nice to the touch. More
importantly, it is very accurate when
you’re playing around with it. I like
the mechanical build with the physical
clicks that you can actually hear when
you use it. Despite the size increase,
it features good palm rejection. In
fact, I didn’t even need to use a mouse
most of the time when I’m out and about.
Mainly because it’s already too bulky.
And this brings us to the topic of the
size of the laptop. It’s not exactly the
most portable laptop out there given how
huge and heavy it is. In fact, I’m
already having a hard time just carrying
it in this A-roll. It’s almost 400 mm
long, and when closed, it’s still 32 mm
thick. As for the weight, 3.3 kg. It’s
so big, it doesn’t even fit my usual
bag. And I even had to bring a different
bag with me just so I can bring it
around wherever I go. And yes, of
course, I still bring it around. I mean,
who doesn’t want to fararm with this?
Fortunately, because of its big size,
you do have a lot of ports at your
disposal for peripherals, SSD, mouse,
and even controllers. Sadly, no SD or
even micro SD card slot here, which I
think is a missed opportunity if you’re
someone who’s in the creative business.
Now, let’s move on to the part of the
laptop you’ll be looking at the most,
the display. The display of the 2025 ROG
Stricks Car 18 remains unchanged from
last year. still features an 18inch 2.5K
miniLEDD panel with a 240 Hz refresh
rate or as ASUS calls it the ROG Nebula
HDR display. It also supports Dolby
Vision which you can turn on via the
Dolby Atmos app. As expected from this
display, you have vibrant colors and
with the 240 Hz refresh rate, the
movements are super smooth even if
you’re just playing around in the menu.
With the Dolby Atmos app, you can even
adjust whether you’re watching something
dark, bright, or vivid. But for this
review, I’m set it mainly to vivid
because I really want to get the nice
colors. And given how big the screen is,
it’s also great for watching videos in a
group. I definitely enjoyed binge
watching my favorite movies and animes
on this laptop. Given how vivid the
screen colors are and how deep the
blacks can be, but aside from the
display being vivid, the colors are
quite accurate, too. You do need to turn
on HDR since it isn’t turned on at the
start, which is a bit weird. And the SDR
colors aren’t that great, and they do
look a bit oversaturated. But when I
turned it to HDR, I didn’t even need to
calibrate it, and the output was very
similar to my monitor at home, which is
calibrated by Spyder. But of course,
what’s productivity, right? You’ll
appreciate this display the most when
you’re gaming. The vivid colors work
well with the 240 Hz refresh rate,
giving you a very immersive visual
experience when you’re playing games.
With the power of the laptop packs, it
can also run games at the highest
settings, too. But more on that later.
And it’s not just the visuals that pull
you in when you’re using the ROG Stricks
Car 18. The speakers are equally
amazing, too. This laptop features a
four speaker system and is complemented
by Dolby Atmos. Even without Dolby Atmos
set to dynamic in the Dolby Access app,
you already have a great sound stage and
clear mids. It lacks a bit of bass for
my liking, but that’s to be expected
with laptop speakers. What’s more
important for me though is the sound
stage as you can be immersed not just
visually, but also audibly. And best of
all, it’s very loud too. And there’s no
distortions either with the speakers
maxed out. Now we get to the good part,
the performance. Our review unit of the
2025 Stricks car 18 is the topsp spec
variant. As mentioned earlier, it packs
an Intel Core Ultra 9, 275HX processor,
64 GB of DDR5 RAM, 2 TB of SSD storage,
and an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU. If you need
more storage, you can open up the back
and add more. The same goes for the RAM.
As with any ROG device, you can choose
the performance mode you’re in. Of
course, when you’re plugged in, I always
set it to turbo mode to maximize the
performance of this laptop. You can even
tinker with the settings yourself in
manual mode to max out the settings. But
of course, do this at your own
discretion. The last thing you want is
to break a 350,000 gaming laptop because
you overclocked everything in something
just effed up. On paper alone, you
already know that Asus fitted all the
topsp specs parts available during the
launch of this laptop. With that, we’re
not surprised it scored amazing in
almost all of the benchmarks we ran. But
benchmarks only tell one part of the
story. What we were more interested in
was the performance in real life. And as
expected, it could easily handle almost
all our productivity apps
simultaneously. We mean running
Premiere, Photoshops, and Lightroom all
together. And the Strict Scar 18 didn’t
slow down. Of course, the fan started to
spin up and it became a bit more
noisier, but that’s to be expected. And
even with all of these apps running, you
can still load your favorite games. Work
and play allin-one. With Premiere
running in the background, Genchin,
Ready or Not, and even Forza Horizon 5
still ran smoothly without any issues.
Mind you, all of these games were run
with the graphics settings maxed out. I
even tried running two games at once,
and the Scar 18 could even handle it.
The laptop did heat up a bit, and the
fans became even louder when I did this.
But the important thing is the frame
rates for either game were consistent.
For better reference, on Force Horizon
5, I had a consistent frame rate of
around 140 plus with all of the graphic
settings maxed out. It’s a similar story
when I was playing Ready or Not that
featured a lot of mods. So, there’s no
doubting the performance of the ROG
Stricks R18. The fans can get really
loud when you’re in turbo mode and
running games, but if you’re just using
it to get work done on silent mode,
you’ll barely hear it at all. Despite
how big this laptop is, the 2025 Stricks
Scar 18 packs a 90Wh hour battery, which
is similar to the other ROG laptops of
this generation. But as expected from a
gaming laptop, especially one of this
size, you don’t exactly have the best
battery life. You get the most battery
life when you’re just in silent mode and
working on productivity tasks. These
include Google Sheets, Spotify, Discord,
and with RGB turned off, but you’re
still connected to Wi-Fi. From my
experience, I did have around 4 to 5
hour of battery life with this exact
setup when I was trying to get work
done. But when you’re in performance
mode, it uses up a lot more juice. After
just 30 minutes of playing Tekken 8,
which just maxed out settings, I only
had around 60 to 58% battery life left.
With that in mind, you’ll find yourself
looking for a charger or even an outlet
quite often. Even if you just plan to
get work done, you can just bring the
smaller 100 W USBC charger with you. But
if you plan to play games and use turbo
mode, you’ll need to bring the big 380 W
charger, which is really big and weighs
a lot. With everything it can do, the
2025 ROG Stricks car 18 seems like the
perfect gaming laptop. It’s a bit on the
heavier and bigger size, but if you can
work around with it, you can play all of
the latest games without any issues
wherever you are. There’s just one big
problem, and it’s a big one. The price.
The 2025 ROG Stricks car 18 with the
same spec as ours retails for 348,990
pesos. That’s a lot of money to drop for
a gaming laptop. If you’re shocked at
that price, well, I don’t blame you. And
honestly, if you look around, you might
be able to get the 2024 version of the
Scar 18 for almost 100,000 pesos less.
And by comparison, that is still a very
powerful laptop today, even with just a
4090. But if you’re a big player and
want to aura farm wherever you go, can’t
go wrong with the 2025 ROG Stricks Scar
18. You just have to pay to play,
literally. Would I get one if I had a
budget? Definitely. Still, what do you
think of the 2025 ROG Stricks car 18?
Would you rather spend your 350,000
pesos here or buy something else?
Whatever the case, share your thoughts
in the comments below. And if you
enjoyed this video, please do drop a
like and subscribe to watch more. Don’t
forget to follow us on our social media
platforms, too. That’s Facebook,
Instagram, X, and Tik Tok. And of
course, visit yugatech.com for the
latest tech news and reviews. Once
again, this has been, and I’ll see you
guys in the next video. Bye.
⚠️ This transcription is auto-generated from YouTube captions. Some text may not be 100% accurate.
Okay, let’s talk about a number that makes you do a double-take: PHP 350,000. That’s not just laptop money.
That’s ‘I could buy a decent secondhand car’ money. Or maybe even ‘start a small business’ money. So when we unboxed the 2025 ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18, the question wasn’t just ‘is this fast?’ We were all thinking something much bigger: is any laptop, no matter how powerful, actually worth that much?
In our latest video review, we put this absolute unit of a gaming machine through its paces. We’re talking about specs that sound like they’re from a sci-fi movie. An Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, and a whopping 64GB of RAM. It’s the kind of hardware that promises to laugh in the face of any game or creative task. But here’s the real review.
Beyond the benchmark numbers and the flashy lights, we had to ask ourselves the hard question every Filipino tech enthusiast would ask. With this kind of cash, are you better off building a monster desktop PC? Or, you know, doing literally anything else with that life-changing amount of money?
We dive deep into the performance, the new Anime Vision LED matrix, and whether this beast justifies its colossal price tag for users here in the Philippines. The answers might surprise you.
What You’ll See in This Video
- Packs a monstrous Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU for future-proof gaming.
- Features the new Anime Vision LED matrix display on the lid for customizable graphics and alerts.
- Comes with a hefty 64GB of RAM, ensuring buttery-smooth multitasking and gameplay.
Ready to see if this PHP 350,000 titan is a wise investment or a glorious overkill? Watch our full, no-holds-barred review on the YugaTech YouTube channel to get the complete picture before you even think about emptying your savings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2025) available in the Philippines?
Yes, it is expected to be available through official ASUS ROG stores and authorized partners. However, given its premium price and niche specs, availability might be limited at launch.
How much does the ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2025) cost?
The model reviewed, with the top-tier RTX 5090 GPU and 64GB RAM, carries a price tag of approximately PHP 350,000. Lower-spec configurations may be available at a lower cost.
Is it better to buy this or build a desktop PC for the same price?
That’s the million-peso question (or, well, 350-thousand peso one). Building a desktop PC with similar specs would likely offer more raw power and upgradeability for less money. Our video explores this exact dilemma, weighing the portability of the laptop against the value of a custom-built desktop.
What’s new with the 2025 model compared to last year?
A key new feature is the addition of the Anime Vision LED matrix display on the lid, previously found on the Zephyrus line. This allows for custom animations and notifications. The internal hardware, of course, has also been upgraded to the latest generation.
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