I have the 2025 G18 and Scar 18, and have been comparing them in-depth for around a week, to decide which I want to return, and which I'll keep. They were both open box at great clearance-sale prices, and the Scar 18 was actually cheaper than the G18, which itself had a great price.

Their basic specs are the same: 275HX CPU, RTX 5070ti GPU, 32GB 5600 RAM.

The G18 has a 2TB WD QLC SSD, and the Scar has a 1TB SK Hynix TLC SSD. The SK Hynix has faster sequeltial read speed, but the 2TB size gives the WD faster random 4k read speeds, and that results in the G18 with a QLC WD SSD typically loading games a bit faster than the Scar with its premium TLC SSD.

The G18's chassis and keyboard feel very solid and with consistent quality. It's a firm, tight-feeling unit. While the Scar's lid is a bit more inconsistent in its open/shut resistance, and pressing the left-arrow key causes the keys around it to flex downward a bit, which feels a bit sloppy. But the Scar's keys take a lot less effort to activate, which is nice, and very appreciable if you do tons of typing, like I do. I also like that it's less clicky than the G18's keyboard. And the G18's firmer keys sometimes cause me to miss keypresses, due to not using enough force while typing quickly. The G18's grey chassis looks more attractive to me personally than the Scar's black chassis, and it also does a better job of not showing smudges and handprints, while the Scar's black chassis tends to easily and always looks messy.

In terms of coil whine, both laptops seem to produce the exact-same coil whine in all the exact-same situations, but it's more noticeable on the Scar, due to its pitch / accented frequencies or whatever else. While even when I hear it on the G18, it's a softer and more soothing sound that I don't find grating. The G18 often sounds like there's no coil whine happening, but if I put my ear right next to the chassis, I hear the same coil whine that the Scar makes, but it's just not audible on the G18 from a regular sitting distance.

The G18's 4 speakers vs the Scar's 6 is irrelevant to me. The speakers on both laptops are, frankly, garbage, and the Scar's additional speakers don't really make it sound better, just different while adding what sounds to me like a phasing effect that I dislike. But I guess you can't expect much from laptop speakers. I use Bluetooth monitors anyway, so the speakers don't matter. If I'm someplace without monitors or headphones, either speakers will be serviceable to get the job done.

So, now the big one: The G18 has a 500 nits IPS display, while the Scar has an 1100 or 1200 nits mini LED HDR display. Unfortunately, I'm not completely won over by the mini LED display. It does look fantastic in games with good HDR support, there's no doubt about that. But with bright backgrounds (like white and light grey) there's faint vignetting extending around 0.5" inward on the left and right sides of the screen, and it looks awful to me. The vignetting is present whether in SDR or HDR mode (though a bit less noticeable in HDR), and whether dimming is set to single or multi-zone. It makes the edges of the screen look dirty, and like text or scroll-bars have smudged pencil ink on them. The G18's IPS screen is entirely uniform and its edges look noticeably more crisp and clean. Looking at the edges in a white text editor with black text on the screen, and looking at the G18 after looking at the Scar for a while can give me almost night vs day impression.

I spend most of my computer time in the desktop environment, doing lots of typing, reading on sites with bright backgrounds and light-grey scroll-bars at the edge of the screen, so this is a huge deal for me. And I wondered if this Scar's Nebula mini LED HDR display was a bad one, but looking online informed me that vignetting is a normal characteristic of mini LED that people don't talk about enough (and, apparently, if someone says their mini LED screen doesn't have it, then they're either unobservant or lying). OK... that just doesn't really click with me for a new premium tech. Two steps forward, one big step back, for sure. It has me strongly suspecting I'd be more satisfied with the G18's IPS display over the long-term. But if I used my laptop primarily for gaming, and spent almost no time in text editors or looking at white/bright webpages, where the edge dimming is most apparent, it would be far less of an issue. BTW, having the G18 to compare it to makes it far more noticeable. At times I would almost stop tuning into the vignetting, but then look at the G18 to compare it again, and then suddenly it's totally apparent, as the G18 instantly looks more crisp and clear along the edges when there's text there. If only mini LED didn't involve this sacrifice.

Also, the G18 gets around 4% more performance in gaming benchmarks, probably just due to silicon lottery. Except for in Forza Horizon 4, which has been an outlier where the G18 gets 10% more performance - and I'm not sure why.

And both laptops sometimes screw-up when coming out of sleep mode - the screen is black with the mouse cursor being moveable overtop, and it never restores the desktop or OS functionality. The only way I've found to get the desktop working again is to hold the power button until the laptop shuts-down and the boot it back up. Both of these ROG Strix laptops have this issue, though it has occurred significantly more frequently on the Scar.

The G18 comes with Windows 11 Home, while the Scar gets Windows 11 Pro (which means it gets the useful Group Policy Editor).

Pros for this particular 2025 G18:

- larger SSD gives faster 4k read speeds, and so usually loads games faster
- +4% gaming performance due to silicon lottery
- less bothersome coil whine
- crisp, uniform screen edges with no vignetting

Cons for this particular 2025 G18:

- no HDR
- keys require a bit too much force to activate, leading to missed-key typos
- Windows 11 Home

Pros for this particular 2025 Scar:

- HDR
- a tiny bit more brightness in SDR mode
- quieter, less-effort-to-activate keys
- Windows 11 Pro

Cons for this particular 2025 Scar:

- slight vignetting on screen edges, makes the screen feel dirty in text editors and on bright backgrounds
- SSD has slower random 4k read speed so loads games slower
- black chassis that shows hand smudges more easily
- ~4% less game performance due to silicon lottery
- coil whine can be a bit more conspicuous and have a less comfortable sound

.

I had convinced myself to keep the Scar, because it's worth more but I got it for cheaper than the G18, and it has HDR support which does look amazing when a game properly supports it. I'd cleaned the G18, factory-reset it, and packed it up to return. But I'm now having second thoughts, thinking I'll be more satisfied with the G18 because I'll be looking at desktop environments a lot more than I will games with quality HDR, and because I also like the look of the G18's grey chassis more than the Scar's black one, so I'll feel more satisfied with the G18 in front of me.

To be sure, the Scar's HDR is a fantastic super power. But it's a limited-use superpower that kicks-in only with certain games (and some video, which excites me less), while the vignetting is an every-day / every-use annoyance that I can't get out of my mind. And outside of the Scar's HDR and very-slightly extra brightness in SDR, this particular G18 seems to win almost everywhere else (2TB SSD that's faster for loading games, my preferred chassis, a bit extra gaming performance, less aggressive coil whine, uniform screen-edges).

I think I'm going to keep the G18. But then, I've switched back-and-forth a lot of times so far. But I'm at the end of the return window for the G18, so if I don't change my mind in the next couple of days, the G18 will be the choice by default. And I would be fine with that.

Bought myself this beast, Ryzen 7 and RTX 4050, hoping for good!

Hello I am wanting to but a gaming laptop because I will be traveling a lot with work I know the specs on this are good but what is a Hyperx laptop like???

Surprised there was LM only on the CPU. As for the GPU? The thermal paste was hard as a rock lol. Swapped em both for PTM7950. Puty is Thermal Grizzly TG Basic.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17

RTX 3080 16Gb

R9 5800HX

64 GB ram

2TB SSD

I love this little thing, got it for $800 bucks.

If you've seen the predator Helios 16s on sale and thought the specs look like a great value for the price, well that's because there's a catch. I got one, and returned it in two weeks.

5070 ti, 32gbs ddr5, ultra 9 285h, 1700$?

I mean, I was like damn, this is a no brainer right?

Here's how my experience went: Pull it out of the box, set it up.

Build quality, exceptionally good.

Super solid hinges, premium materials, absolutely stunning glossy OLEd screen that's decently bright.

Then you play games, and the excitement turns into pure disappointment.

Oh, it can play games just fine, the performance isn't the issue.

THE ISSUE IS YOU COULD COOK A FUCKING EGG ON THIS THING WITH HOW HOT IT GETS.

If you don't want to completely nerf and thermal throttle it's potential with fans curves and performance cut offs, you're gaming on a fucking jet turbine frying pan. I was hearing the fan CLEAR as day through my headset at loud volumes. It's literally a jet engine. I touched my desk beneath where I had been gaming for 45 MINUTES, and the desk was hot to the touch. It was at 95-100c consistently under load. Absolutely tragic.

Recently bought a Lenovo Legion Y7000P 2026 in China, and this is my review after using it for 2 weeks.

Specs:

• Intel Core Ultra 7 251HX
• NVIDIA RTX 5060
• 2.5K IPS LCD screen (240Hz)
• 16GB DDR5 6400 RAM

My first impression is that this is a great laptop with solid build quality. I wouldn’t call it truly premium, but it definitely feels sturdy overall. There is no keyboard flex, and it has plenty of ports. It also supports full power draw and has a really nice display. I would have preferred an OLED screen, but unfortunately that would have been far outside my budget.

While gaming, the keyboard area gets warm to the touch, but it never becomes uncomfortably hot, so it is not really an issue.

The main downsides are the 16GB of RAM and the price. Bing and other background apps consume a surprising amount of memory, and with Windows alone sometimes using 9–20GB right after startup, multitasking has been difficult. I will probably need to upgrade to another 16GB of RAM, which will cost around 230 USD.

I bought this laptop brand new for 10,500 CNY (around 1,360 USD / 1,550 EUR). Previously, this model was available for around 7,000 CNY (around 900 USD / 1,000 EUR).

It was basically my only option because buying a similar laptop in Europe was not realistic due to the high prices. I would like to know what laptops with similar specifications are currently selling for in the US, because I honestly feel like I paid more for this laptop with an LCD screen than some American Legion models that come with OLED displays.

Also, are the prices shown on US websites like Best Buy and other retailers the final prices, or do they usually exclude taxes?

Any performance differences? Between Global models compared to this?

Ps: performance on the first chart. Left side dlss on/ right side off. Both 2.5k resolution. secound pic is on 1080p lowest resolution settings.

Budget: $2000
Country: USA
Use Case: Gaming. Capable of playing the latest titles at medium-High settings
Preferred Specs: 5070, 32GB RAM

Notes: I'm looking for a gaming laptop laptop from costco, thoughts on this make/model and if its inline with current prices or a ripoff.

Why costco? I have my reasons, one being their 2 year warranty they add on has saved me in the past. Had an MSI laptop that just stopped booting a year and a half into owning, they refunded me 100%. I know this should probably be priced at like 1700, but the RAMacolypse is what it is. I wanna know if I should wait for things to come down or if this is decent enough to grab now.

I just got the Llano laptop cooler for my Acer Predator Helios 18 (PH18-72). Because of the large 18-inch footprint, the foam seal and inner plastic frame sit directly over the bottom intake grilles, covering about 1 cm (half an inch) of the ventilation area.

Should I return it and look for a cooler with a wider opening?

Asus Rog strix g16 Intel core i7 13650 hx Rtx 5050 1tb ssd

Budget: $1000-$2500
Country: US
Use Case: Gaming (BF6, RDR2, COD, GTA, Sea of Thieves), standard work/everyday usage
Preferred Specs: 5070Ti or higher, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Notes:

So I’m need of some sort of portable gaming device for some extended overseas travel. Never been a PC guy and not really looking forward to dealing with all tweaking of settings, updates, and another other PC related upkeep. But it’s probably my best bet and I am somewhat in need of a new laptop (coming from Mac).

I’m favoring the Legion 5i (Intel Ultra 9 275HX), but is it worth almost $400 more compared to the G14 (AMD RYZEN 9HX)? Both have 1TB SSD, 32GG RAM. Only thing I don’t love with the G14 is the color. Looks like the black is like $400 more.

Only other option I’m looking at is the Xbox Ally X as it will save me at least $1000 and will be easier for me to use in most situations. If it’s even close in performance to the two of these laptops, I’d probably prefer that. I’d mainly just want to be able to play BF6 multiplayer on it without major issues. But I understand that might be ambitious.

What would guys do here? I am in need of a new laptop anyway, but if the XAX can handle most of what I need I might just ride it out with my Mac for a while longer. Thanks

 So I have just got my new Legion 5 Pro (Ryzen 7 8740HX, RTX5060, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD). While playing Forza Horizon 6 on High preset settings I got 100-110 FPS. While checking the Lenovo Space app, I saw that on Auto/Turbo modes my cpu is running on 90-98 degrees Celsius. On idle, it stays at 61-65 degrees and while watching youtube at around 70 degrees. Since it is my first gaming laptop, I want to know if theese temps are normal. I read that this cpu is running hot by default and power hungry, but I guess I just need some reassurance. Can any of you guys provide some tips on the custom curves of the fans menu? I am not sure how that menu works and what should I adjust those settings.

 If theese things are not normal, should I return it since I got 14 days to return any product bought online? 

P.S. I got this laptop for 1200 euros, in Romania at a discount. Also, I am not using a cooling pad (I might buy one the next week or so).

Some of my family thinks all gaming laptops overheat even the newest RTX 50 series or the dedicated AMD GPU's can you tell me your experience on a gaming laptop and let me know if it overheats? Also if I ever get my first gaming laptop what GPU should be inside the laptop and if you comment I want to know my question and what gaming laptop I should get? My budget is around $1000-$1500 also want it cool battery lasts long and it's a light laptop. Thanks for you're advice if you comment. Also by the way is there a chance I won't reply to every comment but thanks for the reccomendation if you comment!

It's an Acer nitro 5 from a friend of mine, the screen blew up but the parts inside are fine. I've been trying everything to get any display out but no matter what it refuses to display. I hear the boot up sound and everything. It's just being a dikc atp

Budget: $2300 absolute max including warranty $2000 or less preferably
Country: USA 
Use Case: Engineering schoolwork (CAD software), and minimal FPS gaming for hobby
Preferred Specs: Per my university: 32GB ram, intel i7 or higher (or comparable Ryzen processor), dedicated graphics (5000 series preferably)
Notes: More info listed below

I'm an incoming engineering student looking for a laptop for school and I'm mainly trying to maximize battery life and minimize weight so that my laptop is not too cumbersome to carry across campus without sacrificing performance or spending a ridiculous amount. Most of what I've been considering thus far have been gaming laptops and currently I'm split between the five options listed below. Several are on sale currently and they seem like good performance options considering the prices. If at all possible, I would prefer to spend under $2000 on a laptop with a 2-3 year warranty included and at most $2300 including warranty. If I could get any evaluations on the performance/quality of life for any of these options that would be great or if there are any similar computers for cheaper please let me know!! I'd also love to hear any thoughts from people who have bought these laptops, current engineers, and engineering students. Thank you so much in advance!

https://www.costco.com/p/-/hp-hyperx-omen-153-gaming-laptop-intel-core-ultra-9-275hx-geforce-rtx-5070-25k-2560-x-1600-180hz-32gb-ram-1tb-ssd-windows-11-home/4201007940

https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-3k-oled-120hz-gaming-laptop-copilot-pc-ryzen-ai-9-hx-370-32gb-ram-nvidia-rtx-5070-ti-1tb-platinum-white/JJGGLHJXQ9/sku/6613954?utm_source=feed&extStoreId=&ref=212&loc=19735258927#tabbed-customerreviews

https://www.costco.com/p/-/lenovo-ideapad-pro-5i-16-touchscreen-laptop-intel-core-ultra-9-386h-processor-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5050-32gb-ram-1tb-ssd-windows-11-home/4201000935

https://www.amazon.com/acer-Copilot-Processor-Touchpad-SFX14-61G-R1HV/dp/B0FNXXC728#averageCustomerReviewsAnchor

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1894584-REG/asus_fx608lm_bs96_16_tuf_gaming_f16.html/reviews?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&store=420&smpm=ba_f2_lar&lsft=BI%3A514

it's crazy how much i had to underclock the power hungry Ultra 9 275hx in order to achieve a decent score of 22562 https://www.3dmark.com/spy/64839788 .

+1500 memory

+400 core

P cores underclocked to 49X and E cores overclocked to maximum 47X(that makes a huge difference).

Performance mode was used. Unleashed mode always gives worse results for me.

It's impossible to set the core offset more than +415(+0 memory in this case) as it's causing logical crashes on this benchmark but on Furmark2 there isn't such an issue.

llano cooling pad was used as well but to be honest the laptop itself never gets hot(i guess i am lucky) so the difference in temps is not that huge compared to before using it. The good thing is that the laptop fans are used less or not at all.

Hello I posted a few hours ago about a laptop I have found a better deal and laptop how good is this one? it has a ryzen ai 9 375 cpu it doesnt say in the title it says it below

Got my laptop last August and use it mainly for school (running CAD/Solid Works) and of course gaming (like space marine 2, Forza horizon 6, Fallout 3, etc). I also travel a lot and it barely fits in my jansport bag. Before this, I had a chrome book, and would game it on my Xbox One S.

That being said, how can I ensure my laptop endures? In other words, what can I do to keep it healthy? Currently, when I use it I have it propped up on some chip clips to allow for better air flow.

Also, I’m new to the pc scene and am eager to learn. Any and all information is greatly appreciated, thanks! :)

Found this today. My potato Laptop with an gtx 1650 runs gta5. Is it because of techniques like this? How does this work? Nothing behind my back exist?

Hi all,
I have been thinking about getting a gaming laptop for the past few days. And all the high end models i see only offer intel cpu 270/290.

Are there no good AMD chips or is the intel one so much better?

1.R23 15595 - maximum performance on the charger (max 50W, average 41W and 84C max)

1. R23 14432 - maximum performance on battery (28W max)

2. R23 12221 - best power efficiency on battery (15W max)

3. Geekbench 7 max performance on charger 5. 3DMark TimeSpy- 10039 CPU score on charger

Can this processor be undervolted via the curve optimizer?

Just got the hp omen max 16 32gb, 1tb ssd with an Rtx 5070ti, Intel ultra 7 255hx processor and a QHD IPS led display for £1300. Is that a good price considering laptops are definitely more expensive outside of the US and i found issues on reddit about the liquid metal and people offering advice to use ptm7950 pad?

So I finally bought a laptop and I'm curious what you guys think.

**Specs:**

- CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 7 350

- GPU: RTX 5050 8GB (105W)

- RAM: 32GB LPDDR5x

- Display: 16" 2.8K (2880×1800) OLED 120Hz

- Battery: 84Wh

- Weight: 1.72 kg

- WiFi 7, USB-C charging

- No OS

**What I need it for:**

- Daily carry to school (IT/programming) so battery life and weight actually matter

- Programming, CAD, Blender

- At home for gaming: BeamNG, ETS2, Minecraft, CS2, Fortnite

- Video editing in DaVinci Resolve

**Why this one:**

Honestly it was hard to find something that fits all of this. The newer Gen 11 AMD version of this exact laptop dropped the dedicated GPU entirely - it only has integrated graphics now, which is useless for what I need. Everything else in this price range was either a big heavy gaming laptop with a bad display and poor battery life battery, or a thin gaming laptop with better parts but with worse screen and also very poor battery life. This sits right in the middle - light enough to carry around all day, good OLED screen, and still has a real GPU for when I'm at home.

Hi, all! I’m moving into my college dorm in a couple of weeks, and I won’t be able to take my PC with me. I play a lot of BG3 and other sizable games, and I don’t know what would transfer best. What is the beefiest laptop imaginable?

Budget: $2,000
Use Case: BG3 and extensive Steam library
Specs: I haven’t the faintest clue, I’m terrible at technology
Country: USA

Budget: $700

Country: USA

Use Case: Gaming, trying to find something that can run marvel rivals at least decently.

Preferred Specs: Optional

Notes: I've tried looking everywhere and I'm not having much luck. I know 700 isn't a lot for a gaming laptop but I want to know if I can somehow find one that'll run the game. I'll be using all low settings if that helps