• 3 hours ago
Transcript
00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here and in front of me is a laptop that will turn you into
00:07an MLG pro gamer. This is the Asus 703 Scar, and they have two variants to this product,
00:14so this is the Scar version that's geared towards first person shooter games, and then
00:18they have something called the Hero Edition, which is geared towards MOBAs, so things like
00:22Dota and League. But I'm more interested in first person shooters, I'm just better at
00:26those types of games, so I was interested in this particular variant. Now the thing
00:29that makes this thing special, the thing that makes this a first person shooter oriented
00:33device is entirely the screen. Now when you look at the hardware, I've done a review of
00:37its smaller brother, the 15 inch 503, and surprisingly the components are very similar,
00:42like the build quality, the keyboard, even the battery size is almost identical, so I'm
00:47not going to do a full review of this device, because I've basically done the full review,
00:52I'm going to focus mostly on the screen, but I'm just going to go through, I guess, its
00:56main components, just in case you guys are curious. Okay, let's start with the keyboard,
01:01pretty good keyboard, nothing super special about it, good layout, roomy with RGB lighting,
01:06but the keys are a little bit softer than you might expect. The trackpad uses Windows
01:10Precision Drivers, so you'll probably like it. The keyboard deck is this like, faux carbon
01:14fiber finish, it's not real carbon fiber, obviously, at least not at this price point,
01:19but I think it looks nice, and I guess everyone's going to be a little bit different, but I
01:23think it's a nice design overall. One thing you'll notice is that there isn't a single
01:27drop of red on this entire laptop when it's off. When it's on, there's like a red power
01:32button, and I guess the top logo lights up red, but it's a really kind of plain looking
01:38laptop, which I like. I think this is a nice transition away from the classic Republic
01:43of Gamers thing that Asus has done in the past, like just red everywhere. I like this,
01:47and I think next year we're just going to see even more not super red laptops, which
01:51is great. The build quality on this thing, really good. $1600 for a gaming laptop is
01:56certainly not cheap, so you expect good build quality, and they deliver. The one thing that
02:00I don't love about this, in terms of the build quality, or just the build in general, is
02:05that the bottom panel is very difficult to open. I had this problem with the 503 as well.
02:10There's a hash that you can get into just for the necessities, like the RAM and the
02:13storage and stuff like that, but if you want to access the fans or the Wi-Fi card or just
02:17stuff that's inside, this bottom panel is not easy to remove. There's screws, they come
02:21off, but it's just a pain. Now, the laptop has 16 gigs of RAM pre-installed. You can
02:26easily upgrade it to 32 by adding a single stick. The fans are definitely audible, but
02:31they don't get too loud in-game, and thermal performance is not bad as well. You can definitely
02:34play for extended periods of time without issues. The battery life on this laptop isn't
02:39great. It's a 64 watt hour battery, and I'm only getting around two and a half hours of
02:42battery life with the screen at 250 nits. Now, there are devices with a 17 inch screen
02:47that have like 99 watt hour batteries, but the reason why this one is short, well as
02:51short as it is, is mostly because of the screen. So, this screen is the main attraction of
02:57this laptop, and the reason why I'm even doing this video is because I think that this is
03:03one of the most impressive screens I've seen on a 17 inch device. So, it's a 120 hertz
03:09panel, and it's a TN panel. Now, before you just want to take a huge steaming dump on
03:13the fact that it's a TN panel, understand that I've seen a lot of laptop screens, and
03:17yes, for the most part, TN panels are terrible, but this one is very good. I've seen another
03:22laptop. It was the MSI Raiders. Those also have a TN panel, which are also really good,
03:27but this is 120 hertz, but it's 5 milliseconds, so it's very fast response time, and when
03:31you're playing shooters, it feels like you're playing on a high-end desktop monitor. It's
03:35just a really nice looking screen. The visuals are good, the colors pop, everything looks
03:39really smooth, and unfortunately, you're watching this video at 24 frames per second,
03:42so you can't see the full 120 frames per second, but it is a really impressive looking screen.
03:47Now, there's two kind of issues to this thing. First, it doesn't have G-Sync, and that's
03:52not something that I, like, I'm not worried about it, but I feel like on paper, some people
03:56might be upset by it because there are other laptops that do have 120 hertz panels that
03:59do support G-Sync, but, I mean, this screen blows most screens out of the water just because
04:05of how quick the response rate is. Now, depending on how you run your games, this may or may
04:10not affect you, and I think that kind of leads to the next question of the fact that this
04:15laptop is only running a GTX 1060, and this makes this laptop very niche of a product,
04:24and, okay, let me explain. I think a lot of people are going to look at this and be like,
04:28why does this thing only have a GTX 1060? Why don't they put a 1070 or even a 1080 in
04:32Forget about the heating issues and all that stuff, but you would think that a laptop with
04:36a 120 hertz, 5 millisecond screen should have, like, a really high-end graphics card in it, right?
04:42And I would agree, but if you're looking at the price point, you want to be able to supply
04:47a laptop for people that are really hardcore, like, competitively into games, and if you
04:51look at any competitive gaming, they're always running their stuff at the lowest graphics
04:55settings because they just want the highest frame rate possible, and when you do that
04:58on this laptop, if you take any of the competitive shooter games, like, I don't know, Overwatch,
05:02CSGO, if you run those games at even high graphics settings, you're already above that
05:06target of 120 frames per second. So, yeah, you could put a 1070 or try to put a 1080
05:12in here, but a lot of those frames would just be wasted because you're not even able to
05:15see it, and the person who's buying this doesn't want super high graphics quality. That's just
05:21not what this was for. So, if that's what you're in the market for, if you want to play
05:24Witcher 3 at, like, 10,000 frames per second, this is not that laptop. But if you're looking
05:29to be slightly more competitive in your first-person shooter games, this is a great pickup. It's
05:34not cheap, but I think of all the laptops that I've seen for people that are really
05:38hardcore about a particular shooter, this is a really, really good one. Okay, hope you
05:43guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next
05:46time.