This premium gaming laptop can ruin other monitors for you

My eyes saw the promised land of computer gaming, a beautifully bright world without an ounce of noise. It’s warm, looks beautiful, and is impeccably sharp. It’s also expensive as hell.

I dipped my toe into this world by testing a pre-production version of the upcoming release Asus ROG Strix Scar 18which was recently announced ahead of Computex 2026. It’s a massive 18-inch gaming laptop that comes with a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX CPU, and can be fully equipped with an RTX 5090 laptop GPU and 128GB of RAM. Asus sent me a model to test that maxed out all specs except storage space (it “only” has 4TB). Of course, the company hasn’t announced any prices yet – not even for the base RTX 5080 model. We all know, thanks Ramageddonit will be very expensive.

But what makes the Strix Scar 18 particularly unique is its display: a 4K, 240Hz display with an anti-glare matte finish and a special feature called Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB). The Mini LED panel has over 2,000 dimming zones and up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness in HDR mode. It’s when you turn on HDR mode on That magic really happens. This allows you to use ELMB and have all these dimming zones automatically divide the screen into smaller horizontal bands of pixels, refreshing them row by row very quickly – kind of like a traditional CRT.

The result is an amazingly clear image that shows no blur during fast action in games. It achieves this without introducing a black frame – a more common method of reducing motion blur that causes a flicker effect and can negatively affect screen brightness.

As you’d expect, this thing is an absolute beast when it comes to playing the most graphically demanding games. You have downloaded Cyberpunk 2077 At 4K on Ultra settings with ray tracing turned on and DLSS set to Balanced, it maintained a respectable level (though) Beautiful) 45 fps. This boosted to around 70fps with DLSS switched to Ultra Performance, but you can easily turn down some other settings or turn on frame generation to get much higher frame rates. A less graphically demanding competitive shooter Counter Strike 2 It can be played at high settings and maintain 180 to 200 fps.

It’s kind of like a “tires win games” title. Counter Strike And even MOBAs like league of legends That complements the ELMB screen the most. If you want the fastest jitter response to what you see on screen, you want the clearest image possible – and that means a fast-moving image free of motion blur. But even if you’re not an eSports player with high-level reflexes, it’s quite satisfying to play fast-paced games with this level of intensity and clarity. And when you don’t need it, you can turn ELMB off and turn on HDR for stunning brightness levels during more cinematic gaming.

It’s very difficult to capture the smoothness of the ELMB in photos or video (although I did my best in the photos below). But here’s a simple, repeatable method you can follow. At the very least, you can see how your monitor or laptop screen handles the same torture tests and compare it to what I describe doing the same thing on the Strix Scar 18’s ELMB display.

(Disclaimer: These torture tests feature fast-moving color graphics. If you’re prone to motion sickness, this may make you feel a bit uncomfortable. User discretion, yadda yadda. Relax. Don’t sue us.)

Can you follow the action across the screen and clearly read the names of the characters in this scene? Dota 2? On a regular screen, motion is a blurry mess. But on Scar’s ELMB board, it’s everything Crystal clear. If I follow the action across the screen (before I get a headache from those fast scrolling speeds) I can read names like Lion, Vengeful Spirit, and Dragon Knight with ease. I can also specify each hero’s level and exactly how many health levels they are down. If you turn ELMB off to use other features like HDR, things are still fairly clear but noticeably blurrier, even with the screen’s 240Hz refresh rate. I can no longer easily identify hero names, health bars, and levels. I have to focus my eyes and rely on my awareness to think, “Oh, yeah, that seems to be what Sven is saying.” By the time I do, it’s off screen. The action is over, and if this is a competitive online game, that probably means my reaction time will be a little slower as well.

Here’s another one you can try, the classic Foreign body test:

On the ELMB screen, I can easily see the alien’s three eyes. I can even see that each red panel of the UFO has three distinct vertical lines. Everything is clear as day. When I look at the same test on the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop I recently reviewed itwhich has an excellent 2880 x 1800/120Hz OLED screen, the alien’s eyes and the lines of the spaceship’s white panel are all blurred. My eyes couldn’t separate them from each other, even at the G14’s 120Hz. Does this mean Zephyrus is bad at fast-paced games? No, but the ROG Strix Scar 18’s ELMB display is the best at these things. The G14 is a multi-purpose display, while the Strix Scar is purpose-built.

The ELMB Strix Scar 18 can outperform other OLED displays in the motion blur department, too — even the faster ones. I was surprised to find that I couldn’t make out the alien’s three eyes on me Asus Rog Swift PG27UCDM 27-inchAnd he is An excellent 4K/240Hz gaming monitor. The HP Omen Max 16 with a 16-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 / 240 Hz came close to ELMB. the Dota 2 The test looked very clear on him, with text almost as legible as on the Strix Scar 18. But for the UFO test, the alien’s three eyes and the white lines on his spacecraft remained a bit blurry, though they didn’t completely melt together.

Most people are no We’ll notice these things while playing games, unless they have an easy side-by-side comparison. If your game nights consist of socializing with your friends Inclined friendNone of this matters. Even if you are very sweaty Marathon Gamer, the nice OLED display on a more realistic laptop will treat you well. Asus bends over backwards to squeeze every drop of performance out of the Mini LED panel for the kind of people who have a very specific eye for the smallest details.

The reason you should settle for Mini LED on an 18-inch gaming laptop in the first place is actually quite simple: no display supplier makes an 18-inch OLED display. Asus, Razer, Alienware, etc. all use some form of LCD display in their 18-inch gaming laptops because companies like LG Display and Samsung Display don’t offer an OLED display in that size. Alternatively, you get varying degrees of cool extra features, like a dual-mode display Razer Blade 18 Which goes from 4K/240Hz to 1200p/440Hz, which is the native 300Hz Alienware 18 Area-51And now the ROG Strix Scar 18’s ELMB. There may be more blur-free laptop LCD displays on the horizon if Nvidia is similar G-Sync Pulsar technology It’s eventually making its way to smaller panels, but it’s currently only available on a few 27-inch, 2.5kHz/360Hz desktop monitors.

On the other hand, the Strix Scar 18 will arrive sometime soon and it’s in full 4K. But like all gaming laptops, this will only be for the more hardcore sect of wealthier gamers. I shudder to think of the cost to her next Rouge Zephyrus G14 And the ROG Zephyrus Duo has already debuted at prices that drain your savings account. Ramageddon He is Hit everything hardAsus publishes through it only. Last year’s ROG Strix Scar 18 still packs an RTX 5090, Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD It costs $4500 -And this is with a 2.5K mini LED without ELMB.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the new, fully equipped 18-inch ELMB model I’m testing costs $6,000-$7,000. But that’s the kind of cost you should expect now if you want to be ahead. Especially if this sophisticated feature is most evident in small details, such as a small alien flying past a UFO.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge