The ASUS Scar 15 is the newer version of the Scar 3 from last generation, so it’s still
covered in the all important RGB lighting.
I’ll show you what changes this newer 10th gen model has in store for us in this detailed
review.
The overall design is very similar to the 9th gen Scar III from last year, it’s got
a matte black metal lid and a smooth black plastic interior with a subtle ROG design
on the top right.
The build quality was decent, no sharp corners or edges, and flex to both the keyboard and
the lid were on the lower side, it was quite solid and fine during normal use.
Weight distribution felt good, it sat fine on my lap, and this allows for it to be opened
easily with one finger.
It weighs a bit over 2.3kg or 5lb, and after adding in the 230 watt power brick and cables
we’re looking at 3.1kg or or under 7lb.
It’s not too thick given the specs inside, but was a little deeper compared to many other
15 inch machines as the back sticks out.
My Scar 15 has a 15.6” 1080p 300Hz screen, no FreeSync or G-Sync, and no option of disabling
optimus.
The ASUS Armoury Crate software gives us the option to enable or disable panel overdrive
which affects screen response time.
With overdrive off, we’re getting results that are typically closer to what we’d see
from 144Hz screens, with an average grey-to-grey response time of about 7.4ms.
There’s a link in the description explaining what all these numbers mean.
Once we enable overdrive, the average response time lowers to 4.44ms, so still a bit above
the 3.33ms we need for all transitions to occur within the refresh window, though some
transitions were under this.
When compared to others, we can see it’s actually using the same panel as the Razer
Blade 15 Advanced and ASUS Zephyrus Duo 15, so I’m guessing we’re just looking at
some variance between the panels, leading me to believe results may vary a bit.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 96% of sRGB, 69% of NTSC, 75% of AdobeRGB
and 75% of DCI-P3, decent results from a gaming laptop.
My panel wasn’t quite able to get to 300 nits at 100% brightness, and the contrast
ratio was pretty average at 820:1.
Backlight bleed was minor in my unit, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
Like many other ASUS gaming laptops, there’s no camera here.
Although there’s no camera, it does still have a microphone, and this is what it sounds
like.
The chiclet keyboard has per key RGB backlighting, unfortunately the function keys up the top
aren’t fully illuminated, and the secondary functions of other keys weren’t as bright
as the main function.
Brightness can be adjusted between 3 levels with the function and up and down arrow keys,
or left and right arrows can be used to cycle between lighting effects - but all of this
can be done through software with more control too.
I didn’t have any problems using the keyboard, though the arrow keys felt a little small,
typing on it was fine, here’s how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The power button is separate from the keyboard up the top right, there are also extra keys
above the keyboard on the left to change volume, mute, enable turbo mode or open the Armoury
Crate software, which is the control panel for the machine.
The precision touchpad is smooth and works fine.
It doesn’t click down as it’s got separate left and right click buttons, and if you hold
down the top right corner it enables numpad mode, as this is missing from the keyboard.
Unfortunately you can’t use it as a touchpad until you disable numpad mode.
Fingerprints and dirt aren’t too obvious, more so on the touchpad, but either way the
smooth surface was easy to clean with a microfiber cloth.
You’ve probably noticed by now that there’s an RGB light bar running along the front and
both left and right sides of the machine, and this is in addition to the ROG logo on
the lid which also has RGB lighting.
I think you can customize these areas independently of the rest in the Aura Creator software as
you can select them, but I couldn’t work it out easily, at the very least you can apply
the same effect to the lid, keyboard and light bar together.
On the left we’ve got three USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right has the keystone, and there’s an air exhaust vent on this side, so nothing
to get in the way of right handed mouse users.
The keystone is this red key on the side which is held in by magnets, basically you can customize
things on the system like lighting and performance profiles and bind them to the keystone, then
when you connect it everything automatically changes to your settings, so I only really
see it being useful if you’re sharing the laptop with other people.
It can also be used to unlock a hidden encrypted drive, so you can store, uh, stuff.
The back has two more air exhausts towards the corners, then from left to right a gigabit
ethernet port facing the preferred way so you can easily pull the cable out without
lifting the machine, HDMI 2.0b output, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, and the power input.
Both the Type-C and HDMI ports connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, so VR should be possible.
The Type-C port does not have Thunderbolt and cannot be used to charge the machine.
The back sticks out a bit and has some ventilation holes, and there’s a cut out under the screen
which is meant to assist in allowing airflow into here.
Underneath appears to not have air ventilation holes directly above the intake fans, they’re
more towards the center, similar to other designs from ASUS like the TUF A15, we’ll
check thermals shortly.
Getting inside requires removing 11 Phillips head screws, but the two down the front corners
don’t come out of the panel and instead pop it up to help opening it.
You’ve got to be careful when removing the bottom panel, as it’s attached to the motherboard
by two ribbon cables for the RGB lighting.
The battery is down the front.
There appears to be space for a 2.5” drive bay next to it, though mounting hardware wasn’t
provided, but the space can be used for two M.2 storage drives, meaning there are 3 in
total.
There are two memory slots near the middle, and the WiFi 6 card is hiding under the installed
M.2 SSD.
The two speakers are on the left and right sides towards the front, I thought they sounded
alright, there’s some bass but they were a little tinny sounding, not as good as the
Zephyrus M15 from ASUS that I’m testing at the same time, but the latencymon results
were ok.
Speaking of sounds, by default it makes this one on boot.
Fortunately you can disable it through the Armoury Crate software or BIOS.
The Scar 15 is powered by a 4-Cell 66Wh battery.
I’ve tested it with RGB lighting off, background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness.
It only lasted for about 4 and a half hours, a lower result when compared to the Scar II
and Scar III with the same size battery just above it, granted my Scar 15 does have higher
tier specs which probably drain more power.
Like many other laptops from ASUS, when you unplug from wall power the screen will flash
black while it automatically swaps from the 300Hz refresh rate to 60Hz to help save power.
I wish more laptops had this feature, as it saves power and it’s unlikely you’ll be
running any games well enough on battery power to take advantage of 300Hz anyway.
Let’s check out thermals next.
ASUS are using liquid metal on the CPU here, as is the case with many of their Intel 10th
gen lineup.
By default there’s no undervolt, and undervolting is locked through software, however you can
undervolt through the BIOS, but it’s capped at -0.08v. Still though, better than some
others where it’s not possible at all.
The Armoury Crate software lets us pick between different performance modes, which from lowest
to highest are silent, performance, turbo, then manual is kind of like turbo mode but
you have more control, it lets you adjust fan speed.
In the upcoming thermal tests, I found the fans in turbo mode were at the same speed
as manual anyway, so I didn’t test them separately.
The idle temperatures were ok with a 21 degree Celsius ambient room, stress tests were done
with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and the Heaven GPU benchmark
run at the same time, while gaming was tested playing Watch Dogs 2.
The CPU was thermal throttling in turbo mode at 95 degrees Celsius, though the undervolt
starts to lower this, and then the cooling pad helps a little extra.
The cooling pad isn’t helping too much however, less so when compared to other laptops tested
which I suspect is due to the bottom panel not having holes directly over the intake
fans, so it’s not as useful.
The GPU was also thermal throttling at 86 degrees Celsius, and this was happening or
was otherwise not far off it.
The temps look good in silent mode, but when we look at the clock speeds we can see the
GPU is only running at 300MHz.
This is next to useless for most modern games, and during my test the game was unplayable,
so I wouldn’t count on silent mode for tasks that require GPU power.
The GPU didn’t change much in the other modes, while the CPU gets a bit better with
turbo mode, then more with the undervolt, then we can see how small the difference with
the cooling pad was.
The 2070 Super was able to run up to its 115 watt limit in performance and turbo modes,
but it seems to be capped to around 25 watts in silent mode which explains the low performance.
Performance mode appears to cap the processor at 35 watts, while turbo mode raises this
up to 50 watts.
I didn’t bother attempting to increase PL1 because as we saw just before, thermal throttling
was already being hit or it was close.
Here’s how game frame rates differed with these different modes in use, turbo and manual
mode were the same as expected, then lower results with the lower modes.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle, so not too
much of a difference between performance mode or turbo mode in a CPU only workload compared
to what we just saw with the GPU also active, where there was a bigger difference.
When we look at how it compares against others, the single core result is still quite decent
when compared to the Ryzen competition, but the multicore score is behind other cheaper
Ryzen alternatives.
When idling the keyboard was around the low 30 degree Celsius point which is pretty normal.
With the stress tests running in silent mode it’s only in the mid 30s in the center now,
still low, but as we saw the power limits are capped pretty heavily here.
Performance mode wasn’t too different, a bit warmer up the back where you don’t really
need to touch.
In turbo mode it’s still only low 40s in the middle, so just warm feeling and not an
issue, let’s have a listen to fan noise.
It sounded silent to me at idle.
It was on the quieter side even under load in silent mode, but again, low power limits
means low performance here, that’s the trade off.
Performance mode was similar to many other laptops that I’ve tested, but then turbo
mode was a little louder, and as mentioned in this test was the same as using manual
mode to manually set the fans to full speed.
Now let’s check out how well the Scar 15 performs in games and see how it compares
with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the Scar 15 is highlighted
in red.
I don’t have too much other 115w 2070 Super data yet.
Compared to other machines this is a nice result, though the Infinity W5, aka Eluktronics
Mech-15 G3 with the same CPU and GPU was one FPS ahead, but it was about 10 FPS higher
in 1% low, probably a result of being able to disable optimus which the Scar unfortunately
does not offer.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
The position of the Scar 15 drops back a bit now compared to the same selection of laptops.
This test tends to be more dependent on the processor, and it’s the lowest result I’ve
got with the 10875H here.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset.
The Scar 15 was back in the same position as Battlefield V now as this is more of a
GPU heavy test, though it’s still 7 FPS below the machine above it with the same CPU
and GPU, again due to the tweaks that one offers, but regardless still a pretty good
result compared to most others.
I’ve also tested the Scar 15 in 20 games at all setting levels, check the card in the
top right or link in the description if you want more benchmarks.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K.
Lower times are better here, and the Scar 15 was beaten by the W5 with the same specs.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark.
In these tests a higher score is better, and the score wasn’t that impressive given the
cheaper Legion 5 with Ryzen and 1660 Ti was beating it.
The Scar 15 moves up a few positions out of the same selection of machines in Adobe Photoshop,
though it’s still behind the W5 with the same specs again.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, and the 115 watt RTX 2070 Super was doing well here,
still slightly under the W5 but the scores are much closer together now.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and the speeds were decent
but not top tier like some other options at this price point.
Speaking of prices, for updated numbers check the links in the description, as prices will
change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US it’s available for around $2100 USD with the same
overall specs, though this one has a 240Hz screen instead.
For $800 less though you can get it with 6 core i7, half the storage, 144Hz screen and
2060 though, so there are options.
Now with all of that in mind let’s summarise both the good and the bad to help you decide
if the Scar 15 is worth buying.
The build quality was decent despite the interior being plastic, this is probably a result of
it being nearly an inch thick.
I expected thermals to do better as a result of liquid metal, and I guess with this area
sticking out the back with extra ventilation, but this wasn’t the case.
This isn’t to say that liquid metal isn’t helping, but that even with it we’re still
seeing thermal throttling on both the CPU and GPU while gaming even in a cool room.
Fortunately ASUS does at least give us the option of applying an undervolt through the
BIOS which does help, but even with this and a cooling pad we’re not able to pass 3.9GHz
over all 8 cores on the 10875H in combined CPU plus GPU load.
That’s not too terrible, there are just other laptops that I’ve tested that can
do this that don’t have liquid metal.
A cooling pad hardly helps due to a lack of holes for airflow directly above the intake
fans, which could in part also be a reason for the throttling.
It’s the same sort of design we saw in the ASUS TUF A15, and people have shown how that
ran cooler with the bottom panel off despite ASUS saying the design was to allow air to
flow over other components.
My main concern is that I test in a somewhat cool room, while temperatures wouldn’t increase
even in a hotter environment as we’re hitting the temperature limits, it would mean worse
performance as the components would throttle back more, so that may be an issue if you
live in a hotter environment.
Now regardless of possible CPU and GPU thermal throttle limits being hit, the performance
in gaming was quite good, as you’d expect from the 2070 Super graphics, but I still
think it’s unfortunate that we’re not given the option of disabling optimus, as
this would give us a performance boost and make the 300Hz screen more useful in esports
titles.
The screen otherwise had good colour gamut and response time with overdrive enabled,
though brightness wasn’t quite where I’d want it to be, but that can vary a bit between
panels.
Battery life wasn’t amazing, but that’s generally going to be the case with higher
end specs like this, so perhaps it makes more sense to instead take advantage of that space
to include three M.2 storage slots.
There’s plenty of RGB lighting here which will of course be subjective, but you can
control it or disable it if it’s not your thing.
Unfortunately there’s no camera here, a choice I believe ASUS made pre human malware
happening which I’m sure they’re probably regretting with so many people now requiring
a built in camera.
All things considered, the Scar 15 isn’t a laptop for me personally, but if you like
the RGB lighting and want a fast screen for gaming compared to many other alternatives
then it could be worth considering.
Just don’t assume that liquid metal is going to prevent throttling and keep things running
cool.
Let me know what you thought about the ASUS Scar 15 gaming laptop down in the comments,
is this a laptop you’d buy?
Why or why not, and if you’re new to the channel then get subscribed for future laptop
reviews like this one.