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ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 review – a brand new keyboard and an RTX 3080 are waiting around the corner
Ladies and gentlemen say hello to the flagship gaming laptop from ASUS – the ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733. Well… if there is a flagship series this year, considering the extreme similarity between the SCAR and the “regular” Strix G17 G713 specs-wise. It is a surprise to no one, that this laptop comes with some of the best from AMD and NVIDIA – the up to the Ryzen 9 5900HX, and the 130W version of the RTX 3080 with 16GB of graphics memory.
So, behind the sheer monstrosity of the hardware sits a quirky laptop, that may or may not be to everybody’s taste. For now, let’s not concentrate on the metric ton of RGB you get with it. Instead, we are talking about the design choices, that include a somewhat transparent body, and a changeable shroud, or as ASUS likes to call it – Armor Cap. Even though we are not the biggest fans of that styling, it brings something extraordinary – customization. The ability to make your device personal.
Before we dig a bit more in-depth into the styling of the ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733, we would like to tell you that there are three display options. And all of them are wicked. For now, the “base” version of the device comes with a 1080p panel with a 300Hz refresh rate. Yep, you read that right. Next, there is the 360Hz 1080p panel, and the top dog is a 1440p 165Hz display that finally breaks the spirit of “what if” in this aspect of the gaming industry. And yes, all of them are IPS units.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-rog-strix-scar-17-g733/
Contents
Specs Sheet
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 review – a brand new keyboard and an RTX 3080 are waiting around the corner - Specs
- HDD/SSD
- up to 8000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 2x M.2 PCIe x4 slots See photo
- RAM
- up to 64GB
- OS
- Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, Windows 11 Pro
- Battery
- 90Wh, 4-cell, 90Wh, 4-cell
- Dimensions
- 395 x 282.1 x 23.4 ~ 28.3 mm (15.55" x 11.11" x 0.92")
- Weight
- 2.70 kg (6 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 3x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- 1x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.0b
- Ethernet LAN
- 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.1
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- Backlit keyboard
- Microphone
- Array - Microphone
- Speakers
- 2x 4W, Smart Amp + 2x 2W Tweeter
- Optical drive
All ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 configurations
What’s in the box?
Inside the package, there is a 240W power brick, some mandatory paper manuals, as well as a keystone, and two plates for the laptop shoulder. We got one with a metallic finish and one that appears transparent. Provided that there is not much to see beneath the plate, we feel that it is a useless effect.
Design and construction
This device has an unsurprisingly strong chassis. As we said, its design is not really common in the laptop industry, with the cover of the lid employing an RGB-illuminated ROG logo, and reflective dotted detail on the corner to correspond with the back shroud. Speaking of shrouds, this is where you can change the so-called Armor cap. In order to change it, just pull it to the left and it will pop off. Reverse the procedure to put it back on, as it uses a tiny magnet to keep itself attached. By the way, we found it to fall off a couple of times, when we handle the laptop by the shroud. Also, it’s worth mentioning that you can 3D print it through the ASUS ROG Web page.
In terms of dimensions, you get a laptop that weighs 2.70 kg and has a profile that spans from 23.4mm in its thinnest part up to 28.3mm at the thickest. Also, on the bottom, you will see a lot of rubber that we sincerely hope will not interfere with the airflow.
Here, the lid opens easily with a single hand, and despite the pleasant view of narrow bezels around the matte display, we were not really enthusiastic about the lack of a camera.
Now, we’ve come to the interesting part – the base. As you can see, the top right part of the laptop is transparent, revealing the backside of some of the components. And no, you won’t be able to see the cooling or any wiring, but at least it is something. What is more useful, however, are the big Arrow keys, finally to be seen on an ASUS gaming device. Interestingly, the manufacturer has taken an approach, similar to that of Lenovo and HP with their respective Legion and Omen series.
Also, you get a per-key RGB backlight on the keyboard. Speaking of which, this is not an ordinary unit. Instead of the regular scissor electric scissor mechanism, ASUS is using an improved one, that has a spring, and an optical sensor. According to the manufacturer. This means that when you click on the key, and you pass the detection point, the mechanism beneath it interrupts a light signal, which detects an input. According to the manufacturer, this brings the latency down to 0.2ms, which is simply insane.
In practice, the switches definitely feel different. As soon as you reach roughly the halfway point, a pronounced click can be heard, with slight feedback to your finger to let you know that the input was detected. Since the travel is way shorter than that of a regular mechanical switch, you shouldn’t expect miracles, but the experience is definitely pleasant, and to some people – probably satisfying.
This is not it, though, as just above the keyboard, there is a set of five additional buttons, two of which are used for volume control, one for muting the mic, and the other two are meant for Armoury Crate interaction. The one to the right opens the software, while the other toggles between the presets. Interestingly, the buttons here are regular and don’t employ the optical mechanism, which is not an issue, since you are probably not going to use them on a regular basis. Nevertheless, it feels weird switching between the two.
As for the touchpad, we found it to work extremely smoothly with the fast-refresh-rate panels. Indeed, it lacks physical buttons, but the mechanism is decent, and the overall quality is good.
We have to mention that this laptop employs a total of four speakers – two 2W tweeters that are placed on the shroud below the screen, firing towards the user, and two 4W woofers that are found on the bottom panel.
Speaking of the which, on the bottom panel you will find the ventilation grills, which, if we have to be completely honest, look a bit scarce. On the bright side, ASUS says that this laptop’s fans can pull air through the top, as well. As for the exhaust, it happens from a total of four vents – two on the back, and one on each side.
Ports
On the left side, there are two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports. The rest of the I/O is placed on the backside, where you will see the power plug, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI 2.0b connector, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with DisplayPort and Power Delivery capabilities, and a third USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port.
Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance
To access this notebook’s internals, you need to remove the bottom panel. First, undo all 11 Phillips-head screws and then pry the panel with a plastic tool, starting from the edge, where the screw is captive. Before you fully lift it away, you need to unplug the LED strip ribbon cables from the motherboard.
In terms of cooling, there are six heat pipes. One of them is common for both chips, while both the CPU and the GPU have two more each. The last one cools the graphics memory and the VRMs. It’s worth noting that ASUS uses a liquid metal thermal compound for the CPU.
Memory-wise there are two RAM SODIMM slots, that support up to 64GB in dual-channel in total. Additionally, there are two M.2 PCIe x4 slots for storage upgrades.
When it comes to the battery, we found a pretty beefy 90Wh battery pack.
Display quality
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 in the configuration we tested comes with a 300Hz Full HD IPS screen, model number Sharp LQ173M1JW04 (SHP14E1). Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 127 ppi, their pitch – 0.1995 x 0.1995 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 69 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).
The viewing angles are excellent. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.
The maximum measured brightness is relatively high – 350 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 345 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7200K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 51% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.12 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1200:1.
To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.
Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.
The yellow dotted line shows ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 96% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.
Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.
Below you can compare the scores of ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).
The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.
The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 7 ms – super-fast reaction time.
The second graph shows the GtG (Gray to Gray) Response Times from 50% White to 80% White + 80% White to 50% White between the 10% and the 90% amplitudes.
Health impact – PWM / Blue Light
PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733’s display doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels. This renders it safe for use in prolonged gaming sessions, without the risk of further negatively affecting your health.
Blue light emissions
Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.
Conclusions
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution and comfortable viewing angles. Also, it covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut and its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Gamers will be happy because the 300Hz refresh rate is paired with extremely fast pixel response times. Additionally, you can use it for professional purposes that require good color accuracy, mainly thanks to our Gaming and Web design profile.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 configurations with 17.3″ Sharp LQ173M1JW04 (SHP14E1) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.
*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.
Read more about the profiles HERE.
In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.
Office Work
Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.
Design and Gaming
This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.
Health-Guard
Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.
Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount
Sound
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733’s speakers produce a deep loud sound with good quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.
Drivers
All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be downloaded from here: https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-strix/2021-rog-strix-scar-17-series/helpdesk_download
Battery
Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This laptop has a huge 90Wh battery pack that lasts for 5 hours and 53 minutes of Web browsing, and 9 hours and 10 minutes of video playback.
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.
CPU options
This notebook can be purchased with one of two 8-core AMD processors – the Ryzen 7 5800H, Ryzen 9 5900HX.
Results are from the Cinebench 20 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)
GPU options
Also, you can enjoy a pretty powerful GPU as well. The choices here come from the Ampere lineup of NVIDIA – the GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and the RTX 3080.
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 GPU variants
Here you can see an approximate comparison between the GPUs that can be found in the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 model is the best bang for your buck.
Note: The chart shows the cheapest different GPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / GPU.
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
| Far Cry 5 | Full HD, Normal (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Ultra (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average | 130 fps | 124 fps | 120 fps |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016) | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) | Full HD, MAX (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average | 156 fps | 117 fps | 86 fps |
| Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) | Full HD, Ultra (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average | 112 fps | 99 fps | 71 fps |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Highest (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average | 127 fps | 122 fps | 95 fps |
Temperatures and comfort
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
| AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX (45W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 | 3.58 GHz (B+8%) @ 76°C | 3.55 GHz (B+8%) @ 81°C | 3.59 GHz (B+8%) @ 81°C |
| ASUS ROG Strix G17 G713 | 3.44 GHz (B+4%) @ 70°C | 3.38 GHz (B+2%) @ 72°C | 3.44 GHz (B+4%) @ 71°C |
Interestingly, this laptop offers a slight clock speed increase over the Strix G17 G713, but at the expense of about 10°C higher temperatures. Ultimately, this is a factor that puts both cooling solutions on par.
Real-life gaming
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min) | GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min) |
|---|---|---|
| ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 | 1523 MHz @ 81°C @ 129W | 1515 MHz @ 83°C @ 130W |
Here, we see that the RTX 3080 is a pure beast. Even a laptop with this big of a cooling capacity struggles with the temperatures, and we see the 130W TGP choice here to be on the limit of comfortable computing.
Gaming comfort
Yes, the laptop produces a lot of noise, especially in Turbo mode in the Armoury Crate. However, it is not too loud, unless you manually increase the fan speed to 100%.
Verdict
The ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 is not your ordinary gaming laptop. It has some very exciting display options, including the new standard for mobile gameplay – a 1440p 165Hz IPS panel. Also, you get pretty much the best in terms of mobile CPU power, as well, however, we still feel it lacks behind the Comet Lake-H processors when it comes to gaming.
Now that we mentioned gaming… although the RTX 3080 130W is a very, very capable graphics card, the improvement over its RTX 3070 sibling with the same TGP seems… unjustified. In most games, we got an increase of about 5 fps at the highest graphics setting in 1080p. In our humble opinion, most of you people will be better off choosing the RTX 3070. But if you do productivity work or 3D modeling, the 16GB of GDDR6 memory will definitely come in handy.
We saw an interesting trend with the battery life of this machine. First of all, it has a big 90Wh pack, and it features a dynamic refresh rate, which greatly improves the screen on time. When it comes to Web browsing, we got almost 6 hours, while playing HD videos in loop drained the battery for 9 hours and 10 minutes.
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733’s IPS panel (Sharp LQ173M1JW04 (SHP14E1)) has a Full HD resolution and comfortable viewing angles. Also, it covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut and its backlight doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. Gamers will be happy because the 300Hz refresh rate is paired with extremely fast pixel response times. Additionally, you can use it for professional purposes that require good color accuracy, mainly thanks to our Gaming and Web design profile.
On the inside, we saw two RAM SODIMM slots, that support up to 64GB of DDR4 memory in dual-channel mode, as well as two M.2 PCIe x4 slots. While the I/O lacks Thunderbolt connectivity, and an SD card slot, its USB Type-C port supports a DisplayPort output – some consolation.
However, one of the biggest technological feats of the ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733 is its keyboard. Although the pseudo mechanical switches don’t feel that much better than a conventional scissors one, the input latency is extremely low. This is because of the use of an optical sensor.
Unsurprisingly, this laptop is a great gaming device. As it has everything a gamer may need. However, we honestly expected to see an SD card slot for the more creative types of users, as well as a slightly better cooling, regarding the graphics card, as even the last-generation G732 showed slightly lower temps with the RTX 2080 Super, which had a TGP of 150W – 20W higher than the one here.
In our view, upgrading from the G732 is unjustified, but if you go from a Pascal-based notebook, or you want to have one of the most powerful configurations at the time being, the G733 is one of your best choices (when it becomes available).
Pros
- Loaded with RGB
- 1080p 360Hz, and 1440p 165Hz IPS panel options
- Covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut and has an accurate color representation thanks to our Gaming and Web design profile (Sharp LQ173M1JW04)
- Doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment (Sharp LQ173M1JW04)
- 300Hz panel has very quick pixel response times (Sharp LQ173M1JW04)
- One of the best hardware combinations up to this day
- Liquid metal thermal compound on the CPU
- Wi-Fi 6 support and two M.2 PCIe x4 drives
- Optically mechanical keyboard with very low latency and big Arrow keys
Cons
- No Thunderbolt support (due to chipset limitations)
- No SD card reader
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/asus-rog-strix-scar-17-g733/