Featuring an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, and the stunning ROG Nebula Display, the Strix SCAR 18 is ready to immerse you in the latest games like never before. Preview Content .
Featuring an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, and the stunning ROG Nebula Display, the Strix SCAR 18 is ready to immerse you in the latest games like never before. Preview Content .
in 3 offers
The lowest price for Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 Notebook Laptop 18" 240Hz QHD i9-13980HX 32GB 1TB RTX4080 W11 Black G834JZ-N6020W right now is $4,699.00 at Umart, compared across 3 retailers.
The all-time low was $2,506.70 on 8 June 2026 — today's price is 87% above the lowest ever. It has been notably cheaper before — worth setting a price alert.
Prices last updated 29 June 2026.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 Notebook Laptop 18" 240Hz QHD i9-13980HX 32GB 1TB RTX4080 W11 Black G834JZ-N6020W
Featuring an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, and the stunning ROG Nebula Display, the Strix SCAR 18 is ready to immerse you in the latest games like never before. Preview Content .
Featuring an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, and the stunning ROG Nebula Display, the Strix SCAR 18 is ready to immerse you in the latest games like never before. Preview Content .
Last updated at 29/06/2026 15:44:38
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18in QHD+ i9 13980HX RTX 4080 1TB SSD 32GB RAM W11H Gaming Laptop (G834JZ-N6020W)
30-day returns
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 G834JZ | 18" QHD+ 240Hz Gaming Laptop - i9-13980HX, RTX 4080 12GB, 32GB DDR5, 1TB Gen4 SSD, Windows 11 Home
7-day returns
[G834JZ-N6020W] Asus ROG STRIX SCAR 18, I9-13980HX, 18"QHD+, 1TB SSD, 2X16GB, RTX 4080-12G, W11H, 2Y
7-day returns
originally posted on bestbuy.com
First of all, this machine is an absolute beast. I became hesitant after seeing so many mixed reviews with others experiencing the unbearable coil whine while researching this product. After getting hands on, I had a Hallelujah moment because thankfully I am not experiencing the coil whine that others have experienced. Upgrading from the Alienware M15 R2 with the RTX 2080, my jaw hit the floor with how much of a massive performance upgrade this 4080 is. Crazy to believe how only a couple years difference has made such an increase in performance. The only downside I have seen thus far has been the backlight bleed on the screen in dark scenes. It is subtle, but yes it is noticeable in darker scenes or when there is darkness around the screen edge like some of the ... MoreFirst of all, this machine is an absolute beast. I became hesitant after seeing so many mixed reviews with others experiencing the unbearable coil whine while researching this product. After getting hands on, I had a Hallelujah moment because thankfully I am not experiencing the coil whine that others have experienced. Upgrading from the Alienware M15 R2 with the RTX 2080, my jaw hit the floor with how much of a massive performance upgrade this 4080 is. Crazy to believe how only a couple years difference has made such an increase in performance. The only downside I have seen thus far has been the backlight bleed on the screen in dark scenes. It is subtle, but yes it is noticeable in darker scenes or when there is darkness around the screen edge like some of the photos other reviewers have posted. During normal gameplay it is nonexistent to the naked eye. Besides the backlight bleed in dark scenes for the price, quality and specs, you won’t find a better deal at the moment. In my personal opinion, this laptop will easily be one of the top gaming laptops of 2023 and am satisfied with the purchase.
originally posted on bestbuy.com
Pros- Beautiful, fast 18" qhd 240hz panel. I measured 488 nits max brightness, 99.9% SRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 86% AdobeRGB. Full 240hz is great, and I can't see any noticeable ghosting. Amazing performance and excellent price/performance. The maxed out i9 13980HX is outstanding for all manner of productivity and with thermal velocity boost (TVB) single core performance is also really good! The 4080 is really close to the 4090 in the Scar (the scar has 10-15% more frames in games on average) while costing way less. The conductonaut extreme liquid metal does a great job keeping all core thermal loads in check - 120w all core in blender and cinebench have temps barely at 80c. Fan noise is actually better than my other previous gaming laptops. The keyboard feels nice, and ... MorePros- Beautiful, fast 18" qhd 240hz panel. I measured 488 nits max brightness, 99.9% SRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 86% AdobeRGB. Full 240hz is great, and I can't see any noticeable ghosting. Amazing performance and excellent price/performance. The maxed out i9 13980HX is outstanding for all manner of productivity and with thermal velocity boost (TVB) single core performance is also really good! The 4080 is really close to the 4090 in the Scar (the scar has 10-15% more frames in games on average) while costing way less. The conductonaut extreme liquid metal does a great job keeping all core thermal loads in check - 120w all core in blender and cinebench have temps barely at 80c. Fan noise is actually better than my other previous gaming laptops. The keyboard feels nice, and the touchpad is excellent. The armory crate software is bloated, but is overall useful. The plastic build doesn't feel cheap, and the weight savings is much appreciated. This machine can travel without feeling like a desktop replacement in weight. There's an adequate amount of ports, and the 2.5g ethernet is a great addition. Charging through usb-c is also great when away from my desk where this machine sits 90% of the time. Cons- After reading the first bit, why only 2 stars? Memory support. The website only goes as far as to say that 32GB is supported. That's accurate. But I went through 5, yes, -FIVE- 32GB kits until I got the machine to boot with one. G.Skill, Kingston, Team Group, Corsair, and finally Crucial. This machine apparently does NOT support dual rank ram or dual sided ram. It also will not support 4800mt/s at any faster than CL40. In fact, the only timings I could get to boot was a Crucial kit that is 40-39-39. The CL34 4800 kit wouldn't boot. The dual rank 2Rx8 kits wouldn't take. It shouldn't have been this difficult to find a kit to upgrade to 32GB! The i9 also is supposed to support 5600 mt/s ram, but this machine does not for some reason. The i9 cpu in this machine is supposed to be unlocked (all of the HX chips are supposed to be unlocked) and this means that the chip is able to be overclocked or undervolted (and NO, the -30mv in BIOS isn't good enough). ASUS somehow thinks this should be disabled. Please add this ASUS - this is an enthusiast's machine and your competition allows both undervolting and overclocking (msi, razer, alienware, etc) of the cpu. Coil Whine - I believe every unit will have the small electronic mice making noises constantly when utilizing the GPU. That means doing anything hardware accelerated or playing games you will hear this constant and sometimes loud noise. This isn't as noticeable when the fans ramp up in speed. This isn't normal, and other brands do not suffer from this - but I will admit that the other brands are more expensive also. You get what you pay for? Primary SSD runs HOT. Constantly hitting 70c when just simply copying some photos and videos (about 50gb). It would have been nice to get a displayport output to not have to buy an adapter to connect to my high refresh external display (which doesn't have hdmi 2.1). Even a mini displayport would have been acceptable. Battery life? Really I didn't expect much when actually using the machine and it is about what I expected. About 3-4 hours actually using it. It could have been a bigger 99.9 Wh battery but that honestly wouldn't have moved the needle on battery that much. Just would have been a nice to have thing. OVERALL- As awful as the cons are, I just don't see a better option with these specs and 16:10 aspect ratio at 18". Some of these things I will have to live with (coil whine, lack of ports) and some can be fixed with a firmware update (unlocked cpu, better ram support). It's up to ASUS to continue support and provide fixes for this machine, and I wouldn't advise anyone to buy this expecting anything needing firmware/BIOS patches to ever be enabled/patched (again cpu unlocked/ram support). Buy this if you can't stomach another grand to get another brand and learn to live with it's faults? That's what I plan to do...
originally posted on bestbuy.com
I really wanted to like this Asus ROG Astrid G18 but I kept on having issues I couldn’t fix. The screen is gorgeous but my unit had some noticeable backlight bleeding on the lower bottom left corner. By noticeable I mean that in games with dark scenes or while watching letterboxed content you would easily see that patch of grey where the screen bleeds. The keyboard and trackpad are quite a joy to use! For whatever reason the number pad keys are slightly smaller than the rest of the keyboard but it’s not a big deal. The speakers are also very good! The Scar series has even better speakers but these are no slouch. The webcam is nice but Windows Hello support would’ve been a dream. The charger is not any smaller or larger than other brands out there roughly the size ... MoreI really wanted to like this Asus ROG Astrid G18 but I kept on having issues I couldn’t fix. The screen is gorgeous but my unit had some noticeable backlight bleeding on the lower bottom left corner. By noticeable I mean that in games with dark scenes or while watching letterboxed content you would easily see that patch of grey where the screen bleeds. The keyboard and trackpad are quite a joy to use! For whatever reason the number pad keys are slightly smaller than the rest of the keyboard but it’s not a big deal. The speakers are also very good! The Scar series has even better speakers but these are no slouch. The webcam is nice but Windows Hello support would’ve been a dream. The charger is not any smaller or larger than other brands out there roughly the size and thickness of one of those elongated paperback novels they print nowadays. Gaming performance is phenomenal! The 4080 is such a good GPU. I never really went crazy for ray tracing until this GPU came along with its effortless 60FPS or higher in games like Cyberpunk at QHD+. It’s a game changer. Yea, I did have bad coil whine especially when games are launching before the fans kick on or in other CPU intensive tasks like app installs. The cooling system works really well especially if you can manage to put the G18 on a stand or at least some elevation in the back for airflow. The fans are not whiny and they have a satisfying “woosh” to them. Overall, the G18 offers a good price to performance ratio. I will comment that I returned mine because of the backlight bleed and an issue that a restore didn’t fix (I would get event 41 errors whenever the G18 was resuming from sleep while on power or battery), but these sort of things happen. It’s the silicon lottery. As to build quality it’s not any better or worse than previous Strix models from Asus. The display lid is metal and the rest is plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap. The plastic keyboard deck is smooth and helps to keep temps in check. If this ever becomes available again on Best Buy it’s a good deal and a good buy.
| Product type The sub-category of the product | Notebook |
| Form factor The shape or design of the product | Clamshell |
| Panel type | IPS |
| RGB colour space | DCI-P3 |
| Colour gamut | 100% |
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18in QHD+ i9 13980HX RTX 4080 1TB SSD 32GB RAM W11H Gaming Laptop (G834JZ-N6020W)
30-day returns
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 G834JZ | 18" QHD+ 240Hz Gaming Laptop - i9-13980HX, RTX 4080 12GB, 32GB DDR5, 1TB Gen4 SSD, Windows 11 Home
7-day returns
[G834JZ-N6020W] Asus ROG STRIX SCAR 18, I9-13980HX, 18"QHD+, 1TB SSD, 2X16GB, RTX 4080-12G, W11H, 2Y
7-day returns
First of all, this machine is an absolute beast. I became hesitant after seeing so many mixed reviews with others experiencing the unbearable coil whine while researching this product. After getting hands on, I had a Hallelujah moment because thankfully I am not experiencing the coil whine that others have experienced. Upgrading from the Alienware M15 R2 with the RTX 2080, my jaw hit the floor with how much of a massive performance upgrade this 4080 is. Crazy to believe how only a couple years difference has made such an increase in performance. The only downside I have seen thus far has been the backlight bleed on the screen in dark scenes. It is subtle, but yes it is noticeable in darker scenes or when there is darkness around the screen edge like some of the ... MoreFirst of all, this machine is an absolute beast. I became hesitant after seeing so many mixed reviews with others experiencing the unbearable coil whine while researching this product. After getting hands on, I had a Hallelujah moment because thankfully I am not experiencing the coil whine that others have experienced. Upgrading from the Alienware M15 R2 with the RTX 2080, my jaw hit the floor with how much of a massive performance upgrade this 4080 is. Crazy to believe how only a couple years difference has made such an increase in performance. The only downside I have seen thus far has been the backlight bleed on the screen in dark scenes. It is subtle, but yes it is noticeable in darker scenes or when there is darkness around the screen edge like some of the photos other reviewers have posted. During normal gameplay it is nonexistent to the naked eye. Besides the backlight bleed in dark scenes for the price, quality and specs, you won’t find a better deal at the moment. In my personal opinion, this laptop will easily be one of the top gaming laptops of 2023 and am satisfied with the purchase.
Pros- Beautiful, fast 18" qhd 240hz panel. I measured 488 nits max brightness, 99.9% SRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 86% AdobeRGB. Full 240hz is great, and I can't see any noticeable ghosting. Amazing performance and excellent price/performance. The maxed out i9 13980HX is outstanding for all manner of productivity and with thermal velocity boost (TVB) single core performance is also really good! The 4080 is really close to the 4090 in the Scar (the scar has 10-15% more frames in games on average) while costing way less. The conductonaut extreme liquid metal does a great job keeping all core thermal loads in check - 120w all core in blender and cinebench have temps barely at 80c. Fan noise is actually better than my other previous gaming laptops. The keyboard feels nice, and ... MorePros- Beautiful, fast 18" qhd 240hz panel. I measured 488 nits max brightness, 99.9% SRGB, 99% DCI-P3, and 86% AdobeRGB. Full 240hz is great, and I can't see any noticeable ghosting. Amazing performance and excellent price/performance. The maxed out i9 13980HX is outstanding for all manner of productivity and with thermal velocity boost (TVB) single core performance is also really good! The 4080 is really close to the 4090 in the Scar (the scar has 10-15% more frames in games on average) while costing way less. The conductonaut extreme liquid metal does a great job keeping all core thermal loads in check - 120w all core in blender and cinebench have temps barely at 80c. Fan noise is actually better than my other previous gaming laptops. The keyboard feels nice, and the touchpad is excellent. The armory crate software is bloated, but is overall useful. The plastic build doesn't feel cheap, and the weight savings is much appreciated. This machine can travel without feeling like a desktop replacement in weight. There's an adequate amount of ports, and the 2.5g ethernet is a great addition. Charging through usb-c is also great when away from my desk where this machine sits 90% of the time. Cons- After reading the first bit, why only 2 stars? Memory support. The website only goes as far as to say that 32GB is supported. That's accurate. But I went through 5, yes, -FIVE- 32GB kits until I got the machine to boot with one. G.Skill, Kingston, Team Group, Corsair, and finally Crucial. This machine apparently does NOT support dual rank ram or dual sided ram. It also will not support 4800mt/s at any faster than CL40. In fact, the only timings I could get to boot was a Crucial kit that is 40-39-39. The CL34 4800 kit wouldn't boot. The dual rank 2Rx8 kits wouldn't take. It shouldn't have been this difficult to find a kit to upgrade to 32GB! The i9 also is supposed to support 5600 mt/s ram, but this machine does not for some reason. The i9 cpu in this machine is supposed to be unlocked (all of the HX chips are supposed to be unlocked) and this means that the chip is able to be overclocked or undervolted (and NO, the -30mv in BIOS isn't good enough). ASUS somehow thinks this should be disabled. Please add this ASUS - this is an enthusiast's machine and your competition allows both undervolting and overclocking (msi, razer, alienware, etc) of the cpu. Coil Whine - I believe every unit will have the small electronic mice making noises constantly when utilizing the GPU. That means doing anything hardware accelerated or playing games you will hear this constant and sometimes loud noise. This isn't as noticeable when the fans ramp up in speed. This isn't normal, and other brands do not suffer from this - but I will admit that the other brands are more expensive also. You get what you pay for? Primary SSD runs HOT. Constantly hitting 70c when just simply copying some photos and videos (about 50gb). It would have been nice to get a displayport output to not have to buy an adapter to connect to my high refresh external display (which doesn't have hdmi 2.1). Even a mini displayport would have been acceptable. Battery life? Really I didn't expect much when actually using the machine and it is about what I expected. About 3-4 hours actually using it. It could have been a bigger 99.9 Wh battery but that honestly wouldn't have moved the needle on battery that much. Just would have been a nice to have thing. OVERALL- As awful as the cons are, I just don't see a better option with these specs and 16:10 aspect ratio at 18". Some of these things I will have to live with (coil whine, lack of ports) and some can be fixed with a firmware update (unlocked cpu, better ram support). It's up to ASUS to continue support and provide fixes for this machine, and I wouldn't advise anyone to buy this expecting anything needing firmware/BIOS patches to ever be enabled/patched (again cpu unlocked/ram support). Buy this if you can't stomach another grand to get another brand and learn to live with it's faults? That's what I plan to do...
I really wanted to like this Asus ROG Astrid G18 but I kept on having issues I couldn’t fix. The screen is gorgeous but my unit had some noticeable backlight bleeding on the lower bottom left corner. By noticeable I mean that in games with dark scenes or while watching letterboxed content you would easily see that patch of grey where the screen bleeds. The keyboard and trackpad are quite a joy to use! For whatever reason the number pad keys are slightly smaller than the rest of the keyboard but it’s not a big deal. The speakers are also very good! The Scar series has even better speakers but these are no slouch. The webcam is nice but Windows Hello support would’ve been a dream. The charger is not any smaller or larger than other brands out there roughly the size ... MoreI really wanted to like this Asus ROG Astrid G18 but I kept on having issues I couldn’t fix. The screen is gorgeous but my unit had some noticeable backlight bleeding on the lower bottom left corner. By noticeable I mean that in games with dark scenes or while watching letterboxed content you would easily see that patch of grey where the screen bleeds. The keyboard and trackpad are quite a joy to use! For whatever reason the number pad keys are slightly smaller than the rest of the keyboard but it’s not a big deal. The speakers are also very good! The Scar series has even better speakers but these are no slouch. The webcam is nice but Windows Hello support would’ve been a dream. The charger is not any smaller or larger than other brands out there roughly the size and thickness of one of those elongated paperback novels they print nowadays. Gaming performance is phenomenal! The 4080 is such a good GPU. I never really went crazy for ray tracing until this GPU came along with its effortless 60FPS or higher in games like Cyberpunk at QHD+. It’s a game changer. Yea, I did have bad coil whine especially when games are launching before the fans kick on or in other CPU intensive tasks like app installs. The cooling system works really well especially if you can manage to put the G18 on a stand or at least some elevation in the back for airflow. The fans are not whiny and they have a satisfying “woosh” to them. Overall, the G18 offers a good price to performance ratio. I will comment that I returned mine because of the backlight bleed and an issue that a restore didn’t fix (I would get event 41 errors whenever the G18 was resuming from sleep while on power or battery), but these sort of things happen. It’s the silicon lottery. As to build quality it’s not any better or worse than previous Strix models from Asus. The display lid is metal and the rest is plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap. The plastic keyboard deck is smooth and helps to keep temps in check. If this ever becomes available again on Best Buy it’s a good deal and a good buy.
I was super hyped for this laptop. The performance of the laptop lives up to that hype, getting about 60 fps on Cyberpunk 2077 without frame generation with frame generation about 85ish (at max settings including the Psycho settings). Hogwarts Legacy looks amazing at about 120 fps with frame generation (ultra settings) as well in the open areas, gonna have to play more of that game to see how it does. However, I enjoy darker looking games probably the most, Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol, Devour, Labyrinthine, and some others. And I’m not sure if it’s normal but I have terribly bright corners on the devices screen, I’ll attach pictures with lights on and in low light, I do know that cameras overexpose that brightness. But playing horror games or darker games in ... MoreI was super hyped for this laptop. The performance of the laptop lives up to that hype, getting about 60 fps on Cyberpunk 2077 without frame generation with frame generation about 85ish (at max settings including the Psycho settings). Hogwarts Legacy looks amazing at about 120 fps with frame generation (ultra settings) as well in the open areas, gonna have to play more of that game to see how it does. However, I enjoy darker looking games probably the most, Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol, Devour, Labyrinthine, and some others. And I’m not sure if it’s normal but I have terribly bright corners on the devices screen, I’ll attach pictures with lights on and in low light, I do know that cameras overexpose that brightness. But playing horror games or darker games in general feels like playing with a bright/negative vignette setting. Other than the screen issues, I’ve some common issues on setup and automatic updates happening where the computer would shut off randomly without warning and restart. Coil whine does exist on this device under load but it’s common for the higher end gpus… albeit not terrible, but some of the other reviewers mentioned a weird sound like a static-y electronic low res noise. I thought it was my headphones but I took them off and heard it, it was not coil whine and I have no idea what it was, it wasn’t consistent and didn’t stay long, this was during idle/web browsing. Temperatures are pretty nice CPU under load around 80 degrees Celsius and GPU under load was around 70-72ish degrees Celsius. Other notes about frame generation to those new to the 4000 series cards, this setting has given me some input lag, it’s there but not terrible or unplayable by any means, more useful than bad. Very happy about the MUX switch for the computer which amps up the systems performance. (Have to select ultimate GPU mode in Armory Crate software) I’ve had the laptop for a day as of writing this and was purchased on March 2nd.
So far, this laptop has been great to me since I started using it. Build quality is good, screen quality and refresh rate is awesome. No problems with the keys, bottlenecking with the GPU and CPU power limits (so far), or pretty much anything. This machine can content create and game at the same time. Weight: Due to the laptop having less aluminum/metal in the chassis, it is a lot lighter. The charger brick itself is like a 1/4 the weight of the laptop. Build Quality: For my standards, not to shabby. It feels solid, the lid feels solid, and the keyboard does not flex unless significant pressure is applied. It is made with plastic parts, if this is a major contributing factor towards your purchase then I say wait until more reviews come out. Battery: Not good off the ... MoreSo far, this laptop has been great to me since I started using it. Build quality is good, screen quality and refresh rate is awesome. No problems with the keys, bottlenecking with the GPU and CPU power limits (so far), or pretty much anything. This machine can content create and game at the same time. Weight: Due to the laptop having less aluminum/metal in the chassis, it is a lot lighter. The charger brick itself is like a 1/4 the weight of the laptop. Build Quality: For my standards, not to shabby. It feels solid, the lid feels solid, and the keyboard does not flex unless significant pressure is applied. It is made with plastic parts, if this is a major contributing factor towards your purchase then I say wait until more reviews come out. Battery: Not good off the charger, but that should be expected with a 13th Gen Intel Processor and 4080M in the chassis. Speed: Fast. Super fast. I was getting 45 MB/s download speed. GTA V took 25 minutes to install, as an example. Boot Up: Fast again. Longest I’ve seen was about 18 seconds. Display: Crazy awesome. Smooth like butter with the 240hz refresh rate and 2560x1600 resolution. Gaming: Fantastic. Fans are loud on Performance Mode, but with the Armory Crate software (which is a bit buggy), you can toggle between different modes. For Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX and DLSS 3 enabled I was 70-80+ frames at Ultra settings. FPS games were also insanely fun to play on this. Content Creation: Again, really good. The only gripe is that this laptop only comes with 16 GB of RAM, which is not bad, but for certain applications more is better. With all good things, however, comes some not so good ones. I have experienced two problems with this beast. 1. Sometimes the fans throttled from low to high RPM in a very short period of time. A windows update (for some reason) fixed this. 2. Very minute coil whine (for me at least). It’s kind of random when it appears, and it’s not very loud. It sounds like a faint buzzing noise that lasts for about 5 seconds before going away. For me, that’s not a huge deal. If you hate having loud fans or cool whine though, than consider your options before purchase. (Edit: it also was much more noticeable during the setup phase. It was again, a faint buzzing noise that lasted about 4 seconds in intervals of roughly 7 seconds. This went away after a Windows Update and restart, but as mentioned above it is kind of random sometimes.) Would I recommend this? For the price, absolutely. If the fans being loud and the possibility of coil whine are something to turn you away, then I recommend checking out some other options first.
I took a chance on ASUS because I really wanted the 18" screen and everything thing else I could afford would only have 16". Had some concerns based on the initial reviews here, I should have taken heed. My thoughts and issues in no particular order: * The lights and bootup sound are cool. * When I first turned it on it sat there doing nothing for 2 minutes, only the rgb on the front swirling, no display, no sounds. So I pushed the spacebar, and it stuck. Eventually the membrane popped back up, but it still sticks one out of every 2-3 times I push it. *WiFi 6 is blazing fast *The backlight bleed is bad, but the flashlighting along the bottom is unacceptable at this price range. * The 18" screen is impressive. The color depth is absolutely stunning. * Will randomly ... MoreI took a chance on ASUS because I really wanted the 18" screen and everything thing else I could afford would only have 16". Had some concerns based on the initial reviews here, I should have taken heed. My thoughts and issues in no particular order: * The lights and bootup sound are cool. * When I first turned it on it sat there doing nothing for 2 minutes, only the rgb on the front swirling, no display, no sounds. So I pushed the spacebar, and it stuck. Eventually the membrane popped back up, but it still sticks one out of every 2-3 times I push it. *WiFi 6 is blazing fast *The backlight bleed is bad, but the flashlighting along the bottom is unacceptable at this price range. * The 18" screen is impressive. The color depth is absolutely stunning. * Will randomly crash in the middle of things, no errors, just screen goes black and it sits there with the rainbow LEDs swirling. * Armory Crate is glitchy and the UI is garbage. * Coil Whine isn't terrible. Most of the time it's covered up by the noise from the fans. When I set it to silent mode though, it's definitely noticeable. * I can't get it to detect the display as anything other than Generic PNP Monitor. As such, I can't enable HDR in windows settings and all of the games say that the display is not HDR compatible. * Ridiculously high frame rates in every game I played. It's so fricken powerful *ABSOLUTE FINGERPRINT MAGNET. I thought the matte surface would have been good about this, I was wrong. Overall, it's a shame that there are so many random quality issues that I can't see gambling this much money on its longevity. Will be returning it.
My laptop's screen does not have the same severe backlight bleed others have experienced. As you can imagine, whether yours does unfortunately dumb luck; You may win the lottery or lose it. The Best Buy return window should certainly be taken advantage of in these scenarios. **Random freezes -possible fix** I've seen a few people mention random freezes, which my laptop has also experienced. There was no rhyme or reason to the freezes and they occurred once or twice per day. My Reliability History showed hardware failures rooted to nvlddmkm.sys, which is usually Nvidia driver related. I went to Asus' website and downloaded the EXACT Nvidia driver they list for the G18 - the driver is from January 2023, I believe. Since then, hardware failures and freezing have not ... MoreMy laptop's screen does not have the same severe backlight bleed others have experienced. As you can imagine, whether yours does unfortunately dumb luck; You may win the lottery or lose it. The Best Buy return window should certainly be taken advantage of in these scenarios. **Random freezes -possible fix** I've seen a few people mention random freezes, which my laptop has also experienced. There was no rhyme or reason to the freezes and they occurred once or twice per day. My Reliability History showed hardware failures rooted to nvlddmkm.sys, which is usually Nvidia driver related. I went to Asus' website and downloaded the EXACT Nvidia driver they list for the G18 - the driver is from January 2023, I believe. Since then, hardware failures and freezing have not occurred (been around 1 week). I'd highly recommend uninstalling your Nvidia drivers and downloading the driver recommended by Asus if you experience intermittent freezing. Hopefully this is a software issue that can be resolved by future updates. If I was not as tech savy as I am, this laptop would have been returned due to the freezes. Performance is exactly as expected - blazing fast in nearly every way. My laptop's screen is beautiful - 1600k and 240hz is nice. Only 16GB of RAM leaves a bit to be desired, as running multiple programs and a game maxes it out. It sounds like upgrading RAM isn't as simple as it should be with the system not booting with certain types. I have yet to upgrade to 32GB but plan to in the future. This gaming laptop is excellent by strict performance measures and far exceeds anything from last generation. My laptop has a bit of coil whine during gaming but it isn't particularly noticable. Once the fans kick on, the coil whine is inaudible. This also appears to vary based on the genetic lottery. The overall risk when deciding to purchase this laptop is quality control. Backlight bleed, coil whine, and freezing may impact your unit more than others'. While I'm keeping this laptop, I can see why it's so aggressively priced. The old saying holds true in that we often get what we pay for.
Runs pretty cool at 80C/85C, GPU/CPU both running at 175W/70W during gaming, for this much power this is good. Performance is great, this is about 30-40% faster than my desktop 3070. In Cyberpunk I get around 55 fps on ray tracing ultra preset, on this I get 78 fps. Shadow of Tomb Raider its 120 fps vs 156 fps, so yeah, its a hunge improvement. This puts it at around a 3080 desktop level for a laptop. Some issues are the backlight bleed, its a bit extreme, but I noticed it has gotten a little better with use. It may be that the heat from the screen is alleviating the pressure. I got another one at the same time to compare side by side and both had the glow issue, this is probably due to too much pressure on the display during assembly. Performance is just Epic, I ... MoreRuns pretty cool at 80C/85C, GPU/CPU both running at 175W/70W during gaming, for this much power this is good. Performance is great, this is about 30-40% faster than my desktop 3070. In Cyberpunk I get around 55 fps on ray tracing ultra preset, on this I get 78 fps. Shadow of Tomb Raider its 120 fps vs 156 fps, so yeah, its a hunge improvement. This puts it at around a 3080 desktop level for a laptop. Some issues are the backlight bleed, its a bit extreme, but I noticed it has gotten a little better with use. It may be that the heat from the screen is alleviating the pressure. I got another one at the same time to compare side by side and both had the glow issue, this is probably due to too much pressure on the display during assembly. Performance is just Epic, I get ~32,000 cinebench score multi core and ~2000 single core, timespy is a solid 18,600. You can undervolt after updating to bios 307, I have mine set to 50mw. However it does have some PROBLEMS. Advanced optimus is jank, sometimes it will not switch to dgpu mode when gaming, and when it does it takes a while and you are stuck with a black screen. When you change to dgpu mode only the laptop will randomly lose the ability to change brightness and you have to switch it to hybrid mode to fix it. This is a pain and enough for me to want to return it. Also DSR FACTORS are missing from the nvidia control panel, not sure if this is due to nvidia drivers or the laptop itself. Fresh install did not fix it. There are also alot of random freezes that require you to hold down the power button to restart the laptop. As far as UPGRADEABILITY goes, I tried 64GB of Samsung 2R8 DDR5 and it did not work, I upgrade to Crucial 32GB DDR5 and that did work fine. Just be aware that the first bootup with new ram might take a bit longer than usual, don’t be scared if you see a black screen for 2-5 minutes. This is by no means “cheap”, but compared to Alienware, Razer, and MSI’s $3500 4080 laptops this is more affordable. However random lock ups, buggy advanced optimus, terrible backlight bleed make this a questionable purchase at best.
Let me preface this review with the fact I bought an "Open box - Excellent condition" unit. It was missing all the "new experience" things like plastic on the unit and clearly looked like it had been handled by end users/techs. Using it for less than an hour initially I can see why it was a return. When I started it up, it was locking up and stuttering and would not allow even app installations or driver updates. I ended up giving it a clean install of Windows 11 and most of the problems went away. Kudos to Asus for having all their drivers available for download. Armory Crate is as large and bloated as always but it is required not only to control your lighting but it does extend other functionality for GPU overclocking (if you so choose) and SOME CPU control but ... MoreLet me preface this review with the fact I bought an "Open box - Excellent condition" unit. It was missing all the "new experience" things like plastic on the unit and clearly looked like it had been handled by end users/techs. Using it for less than an hour initially I can see why it was a return. When I started it up, it was locking up and stuttering and would not allow even app installations or driver updates. I ended up giving it a clean install of Windows 11 and most of the problems went away. Kudos to Asus for having all their drivers available for download. Armory Crate is as large and bloated as always but it is required not only to control your lighting but it does extend other functionality for GPU overclocking (if you so choose) and SOME CPU control but not enough to tame the outlandish 100c thermals of this monster. On paper this thing is an absolute beast. You get a full power 4080 pulling 175w. You get the top dog Intel 13980HX chip. You get a monster 18" display that is bright and gorgeous at 2560x1600. Temps out of the box are fantastic even under sustained load for multicore. The 13980HX chip is giving you out of the box performance same as a 12900k or 13700k which is crazy powerful. The mobile 4080 is clocking in at DESKTOP 3080 level performance and is a truly worthy upgrade over last gen 3000 series GPUs even the mobile 3080ti. Even under load the fans aren't super loud which was a pleasant surprise. Audible? Most definitely, but I've heard much worse on much less powerful laptops. It isn't even that heavy for all the power you're getting. Asus clearly did their homework taking care of the cooling and offering some serious power at a great price point. I spent several weeks with it not only benchmarking it but playing a lot of World of Warcraft Dragonflight and Fallout 76. WoW is very GPU intensive now especially at higher resolutions so I found many spots (especially in Valdrakken) that really pushed the FPS down at Ultra 10 settings into the 60s and 70s. It ran Fallout 76 pretty well keeping a rough average around 100fps which is nice. I absolutely adore the keyboard. It is large and well spaced and felt well when typing on it. But all that good is wiped away from several cons for the Asus G18. Two of these are deal breakers. For starters, the display. The ghosting and bleed is ridiculously bad. The entire bottom of my display is lit up along with the sides and top corners. Any dark display and the bleed is just not acceptable. It seems to be a problem of the panel itself and the display bezel is attached extremely tight further increasing the bleed. I tried for weeks to get over this issue but it was eventually one of two issues that is making this a return. Second is the lack of memory options. This laptop is not only stuck on 4800 rated DDR5 but it balks at most dual rank modules or faster timings. If you want to run 5600+ memory, most dual rank modules or faster timings on 4800 modules the system either won't train/boot or fails memory diagnostic tests in Windows. I was lucky to have access to many makes/models of DDR5 modules from 4800 to 5600 speed to test while trying to find the fastest pair and the limitations in rank, timings and speed were disappointing. This was tested with the G306 BIOS update. I did not get a chance to test the 307 BIOS with various kits of memory as I no longer have them in my possession. Third, is coil whine. Don't let companies tell you it is, "normal." It is not. I've owned plenty of laptops and desktops and I will not settle for a card rife with coil whine. I will return it and try another till I find one greatly minimized or not at all. If it was normal, they would all whine. The fact you sometimes get whine and other times do not just doesn't fly with me. Fourth, the PSU adapter plug is awkward and for the size and heft I feel it puts a lot of pressure on the power port. Having seen too many laptop power ports fail after time due to stress, I am not a fan of the design nor placement on the left side. I would have preferred it on the rear of the unit. Lastly, temps. When gaming where fewer cores are in play, this unit will consistently push to 5.1-5.5ghz and temps will peg to 100c with fans going full. I waited and installed the G307 BIOS update and while that allowed a full -0.080 under volt, the unit still would peg right back to 100c when gaming. The GPU also hit thermal max every time which is 87c. This all adds up to a hot and bothered unit and heat and noise. There is no way to adjust core frequencies down per core. Even turning off e-cores doesn't help. Yep, right back to 100c. There are several other laptops on the market powered by the 13900hx-13980hx range of CPUs that do not hit even in the 90s under load. For a laptop that only comes with a 1 year warranty, this was the second major issue that is causing a return. As powerful as this unit is with a large, expansive display the negatives outweigh positives. Even with BIOS updates, nothing will negate the deal breaking bleed/ghosting of the display, CPU and GPU temps or coil whine. I will give Alienware or MSI a try next.
very decent laptop, does have a loud coil wine but i cant live with that because i cant hear it over my semi (i am a truck driver and needed something i could use in my semi and this fit the bill nicely). the screen is almost too bright because i find my self turning the brightness way down in low light situations and running it at 3/4th the way up to max when in bright areas. i did open it up and it does have 2 nvme slots (one of them occupied by a 1tb nvme drive that i replaced with a 2tb one and put a 2nd one in). there are 2 ram slots both of them occupied by 16gb Samsung chips. It runs warm enough that so far while playing games i dont need to run my heater in my truck so keep that in mind if you plan on putting it on your lap, it can burn you! something i did ... Morevery decent laptop, does have a loud coil wine but i cant live with that because i cant hear it over my semi (i am a truck driver and needed something i could use in my semi and this fit the bill nicely). the screen is almost too bright because i find my self turning the brightness way down in low light situations and running it at 3/4th the way up to max when in bright areas. i did open it up and it does have 2 nvme slots (one of them occupied by a 1tb nvme drive that i replaced with a 2tb one and put a 2nd one in). there are 2 ram slots both of them occupied by 16gb Samsung chips. It runs warm enough that so far while playing games i dont need to run my heater in my truck so keep that in mind if you plan on putting it on your lap, it can burn you! something i did find interesting is if you go to the ASUS website they don't have any of the drivers for this laptop (at least as of Saturday the 11th of feb 2023) and since windows install evidently cant see the nvme drives without some drivers you have to run the ASUS cloud installer from the bios to reinstall windows on it. over all a good laptop and it fits my old laptop's backpack (made for a 17 inch laptop). if you are on battery and not playing a game it seems to have decent battery life. i didnt realize i was unplugged and was useing it for about 2 hours before i realized it was unplugged and plugged it back in. it was only down to 30% battery at that point.
| Product type The sub-category of the product | Notebook |
| Form factor The shape or design of the product | Clamshell |
| Panel type | IPS |
| RGB colour space | DCI-P3 |
| Colour gamut | 100% |
