Big-screen gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Strix G18 (starts at $1,599.99; $3,299.99 as tested) aim squarely at enthusiast gamers, delivering as close to a desktop-like experience as possible. The Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics chip in our test model push speedy frame rates at up to the system's native 1600p resolution—and they’re up for demanding media work, too. This laptop has its limits, though: Despite its price and muscle, rendering demanding, ray-traced games at playable frame rates requires Nvidia’s DLSS frame-generation and resolution-scaling tools. (This is true of most gaming laptops today.) The MSI Raider 18 HX AI remains our Editors’ Choice award winner for maximum speed in this power-focused category, but you may like what the Strix G18 serves up for a lower price.

Components and Configurations: Start Midrange, Scale High

Performance is king in this class, and the Strix G18 doesn’t disappoint on that front. The starting model launched for $1,599.99, though prices have shifted since then, and given market volatility, you’ll find different listings based on availability. The base model includes an 18-inch 144Hz 1200p display, an Intel Core i7-14650HX processor, 16GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Asus has several models between the starting configuration and our review version, mainly upgrading the memory and/or GPU as you rise through the ranks. Skipping up the line to our test unit, it costs $3,299.99.99 for an 18-inch 240Hz, 1600p display, an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory on two SO-DIMMs, a 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. This model has been subject to volatile pricing, too, now up from its original $2,999.99 launch price, though at the time of writing, I did spot it even lower at some retailers.

Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU is a robust 24-core (eight Performance cores, 16 Efficient cores) processor. From the “Arrow Lake” Core Ultra Series 2 processor family, it’s a chip for highly demanding uses such as gaming and content creation, rather than the efficiency and power-saving scenarios other Core Ultra lines serve. The laptop’s Nvidia GPU, meanwhile, is a powerhouse, configured up to its 175-watt maximum TGP in this system and with 16GB of video memory.

Design: A Sizable But Sleek Gaming Machine

We’ve tested quite a few giant-size gaming laptops at PCMag, and the Strix G18 very much looks that part. Manufacturers increasingly leave some design flourishes like RGB underlighting for their biggest and best machines. With its huge screen, formidable chassis, and LED footprint trim, you can immediately tell what the Strix 18 is all about.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Specifically, it measures 1.3 by 15.7 by 11.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.54 pounds—a laptop you’ll think twice about taking with you. This class of gaming system serves more as a desktop replacement that you can move when needed, rather than a daily traveler. You’ll find many smaller and thinner laptops if portability is your priority, while this is about a monitor-style experience and top performance.

Other than the LED strip along the bottom, this is a relatively restrained design–especially compared with the power inside. Asus opted for a minimal, single-color look without any wild geometry or other bits of flair. The ROG logo and a diagonal slash adorn the lid (both not textured or backlit), and the ROG motto (“For Those Who Dare”) sits above the keyboard. 

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Otherwise, the laptop has a clean look and could sneak into a professional setting, which may well be your plan for media or work use rather than gaming. Its build doesn’t feel especially premium for the cost, but you’re really paying for the power and features. A particularly luxe or thin design would send this already high price to the moon.

Asus found plenty of room for inputs on this sizable laptop: It includes a full number pad on the keyboard, as well as a massive touchpad. The number pad helps provide a desktop keyboard-like experience, and while you’re likely to use a mouse for highly demanding work and gaming, the touchpad is a breeze to use when needed. The keys feel satisfying to type on, with cushioned travel but still-noticeable feedback.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

I find the keyboard a little too far away from the palm rests, due to the laptop’s size. I’m used to it now, but it’s a bit awkward to place your hands so far up the system to reach the keys. If it were shifted down, or if the keys were larger, the touchpad would have to be smaller. (This approach would also likely impact the internal layout.)

Display and Connectivity: Making Ample Use of Every Inch

The screen is a major factor in making this a viable desktop replacement. This 18-inch ROG Nebula display touts a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate, Nvidia G-Sync support for preventing screen tearing, and a 500-nit brightness rating.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

To my eye, it’s not the sharpest display. Its matte finish makes it look dull versus alternatives, but it does cut down reflections by a lot. Whether you like such a screen comes down to preference, but this one is plenty usable even if not stunning. The display's refresh rate and resolution are ideal for enthusiast gamers, though some may want a 4K screen. (That goes for creators, too.) In many games, however, 4K is too demanding to see smooth performance, even with a GeForce RTX 5080 chip. This panel's 1600p resolution is competitive, but I’d hope for a sharper option—in addition to OLED—in this price class for creators and movie lovers. As is, the display's visual appearance is a little underwhelming.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

With plenty of surface area, the Strix G18 has loads of ports. The left flank features two USB Type-C ports (both with Thunderbolt 5 support), a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI output, an Ethernet jack, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right, you’ll find two more of the same USB-A ports. The feature set is rounded out by a 1080p IR webcam, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4.

Performance Testing: All-Out Power for All Scenarios

To test this juggernaut, I put it through our normal benchmark suite and compared the results against those of the following laptops...

This group of remarkably similar comparison systems almost all run on the same processor and either the same GPU or the step-up RTX 5090. (Clearly, the Core Ultra 9 275HX stood out to these manufacturers.) The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 ($3,299.99 as tested) and our $3,559.99 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 configuration are smaller 16-inch options that still fall in the same power and price range. The Alienware 18 Area-51 ($4,549.99 as tested) and our $3,999 MSI Raider 18 HX AI configuration are the true all-out power alternatives with 18-inch panels.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.

Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image-editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in the seminal photo editor Adobe Photoshop 25.

With a few exceptions, like the Alienware laptop's PCI Express 5.0 SSD dominating the storage test, these systems were all tightly clustered on the processing benchmarks. Fast, everyday multitasking and productivity performance is a given here. All of these systems have the punch to run media tasks when not gaming: These are ideal laptops for content creation and other professional workloads. Only high-end, business-focused mobile workstations, intended for data scientists, engineers, animators, and other top-demand pros, are faster.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance.

Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game is run at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The degree of these frame-rate boosts changes with the version of frame-generation tech available, with DLSS 2 and 3 stitching in one AI-generated frame for every originally rendered frame, and the latest DLSS, DLSS 4, inserting up to three additional frames. (FSR can generate up to four new frames per original, while Intel's XeSS can only stitch in one new frame per original frame.)

While the performance baseline was, of course, sky-high across the board, you’ll see more separation between the laptops on the graphics benchmarks than on the processing tests. The most obvious standout was the Area-51 because of its RTX 5090— how much extra power that GPU adds is abundantly clear in our charts above. Otherwise, this silicon and thermal implementation was quite on par with the MSI laptop’s in the Cyberpunk and Call of Duty tests. With such parity, consider the pricing and feature sets that sound best to you.

These tests also demonstrated the importance of DLSS, Nvidia’s frame-boosting technology. You’ll have to set aside any reservations about DLSS to run certain games at maximum visual settings. The Cyberpunk 2077 results show how difficult it is for even these powerhouse systems to run the game smoothly with ray tracing enabled and without help from upscaling, even at 1080p or 1200p (never mind higher resolutions). You can see how much DLSS (and frame generation) improved frame rates on the F1 2024 charts.

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits, or candelas per square meter.

The Strix G18’s battery life was respectable for the category. It didn’t approach all-day lasting power, or even the heights of some smaller gaming laptops, but it was long enough to be useful away from the charger. With laptops of this size, you’re likely staying at or near a desk much of the time, but the Strix G18 won’t die on you within a couple of hours away from an outlet.

This laptop’s display, meanwhile, became quite bright at maximum, and its color coverage proved to be impressive—though a hair lower than the alternatives on the deeply specific Adobe RGB gamut.