We review the ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II!

We’ve already gone through our first impressions of the SCAR II in an earlier hands-on, so today’s article will basically be talking about the performance of the ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II as it relates to synthetic benchmarks and gaming. To catch you up if you’re not a fan of back reading, the ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II is a refreshed version of the same notebook released by ASUS last year, sporting NVIDIA’s new Turing-equipped RTX 2060 GPU. While only the GPU was changed from last year’s model, the ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II feels like a different beast performance-wise, easily beating Max-Q equipped GTX 1070 notebooks in the same class.

A gamer’s notebook

There’s little question that the ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II was made for gamers. If the LED light on the ROG logo embedded on the lid didn’t clue you in, the fully illuminated keyboard and the totally unnecessary light bar in front of the chassis will.

Like most gaming notebooks today, the ASUS’ Aura Sync lighting can be customized via ASUS’ Armory software, accessible via a dedicated button right above the function keys.

There are enough USB ports on both sides of the chassis to accommodate commonly used peripherals like mice and USB microphones.

The keyboard is large enough that we had no trouble acclimating to it, and had excellent travel despite not being a mechanical keyboard.

The trackpad is big and generous, but honestly you’ll probably stick with ASUS’ included Strix Impact mouse that comes with the package.

ROG Armory helps you configure and track your settings

Just like with any ROG notebook, ASUS includes software that allows you to boost your graphics a little bit as well as configure RGB lighting for the notebook’s LED lights.

Performance, at a price

With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at the overall performance of new RTX 2060 GPU that beats inside the heart of the SCAR II.

We’ve already taken a look at the desktop version of the RTX 2060 here, so we have a rough idea of what kind of performance to expect from the GPU.

Simply put, the RTX 2060 approaches GTX 1080 levels of performance, and handily beats even GTX 1070 Ti GPUs in some tests.

Sometimes we wonder why companies even include displays that have gaming-grade 144Hz displays in some models since many models can’t really make the most of it. Thankfully that’s not the case for this particular SCAR II, as the notebook is capable of taking full advantage of that ultra-fast panel thanks to the hardware inside of it.

Battery life? What battery life?

Gaming notebooks usually don’t have a lot of battery longevity, and the ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II is no exception. Watching Netflix with the balanced battery setting and 50% brightness, the ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II lasted for around 3 hours exactly on a single charge.

Hefty price tag, but the performance is there

Despite being almost identical to last year’s model, NVIDIA’s new RTX 2060 in the ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II manages to elevate its performance to a whole new level. You’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to play new and demanding games on it at high without having to worry about your frames dropping.

Probably the only bad thing about the ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II is the price. At Php 124,995 this thing is not cheap, though the performance is certainly there.

ASUS ROG Strix GL704GV SCAR II specs

• Intel Core i7-8750H processor
• NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU, 6GB of VRAM
• 16GB of DDR4 RAM
• 256GB M.2 NVMe PCIe storage
• 1TB HDD storage
• 17.3-inch full HD display with 144Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time
• WiFi, Bluetooth