---
title: 'Video mpDanDwd7x0'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=mpDanDwd7x0'
video_id: 'mpDanDwd7x0'
date: 2026-05-26
duration_sec: 728
---

# Video mpDanDwd7x0

> Source: [Video mpDanDwd7x0](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mpDanDwd7x0)

## Summary

ASUS unveils the 2026 Strix SCAR 18, a high-performance gaming laptop with a 24-core CPU, RTX 5090, and 128GB DDR5. The focus is on its innovative 18-inch 4K miniLED display with 240Hz refresh rate and ROG Nebula ELM technology, which uses sequential backlight strobing to achieve motion clarity rivaling OLED without flicker.

### Key Points

- **Sponsorship and Hardware Specs** [00:02] — ASUS sponsored the video, showcasing the Strix SCAR 18 with a 24-core CPU boosting to 5.5GHz, RTX 5090 mobile GPU, 128GB DDR5, and a peak draw of 320W.
- **Display Specifications** [01:01] — The 18-inch 4K miniLED display supports 240Hz refresh rate, G-Sync, 1600 nits peak brightness, and approximately 2000 dimming zones.
- **Motion Clarity with ELM Off** [02:11] — With ELM off, display latency is 2.7ms but some blur is noticeable during fast motion.
- **Latency Trade-off** [03:36] — At 240Hz with ELM, latency is 5.7ms, but the improved clarity is worth the extra milliseconds.
- **How ELM Works** [04:02] — ELM uses 40 rows of dimming zones, refreshing sequentially from top to bottom with a 260-microsecond pulse, achieving a 6% duty cycle (backlight off 94% of the time) to hide blur and reduce retinal smearing.
- **Comparison to OLED** [06:43] — ELM produces sharper images than OLED with minor ghosting, as demonstrated by a pursuit camera test showing clearer text.
- **Comparison to G-Sync Pulsar** [08:04] — Compared to a 360Hz G-Sync Pulsar monitor, the SCAR 18 has better text clarity but slightly more ghosting; OLED has blurrier prime image but no ghosting.
- **HDR Mode** [09:29] — Disabling ELM allows full backlight brightness for HDR, achieving 1600 nits peak brightness and 3.5ms display lag.
- **Color Accuracy and Brightness** [10:11] — With ELM, brightness is 461 nits, delta E 1.86 in sRGB and 1.53 in Display P3. Without ELM, delta E improves to 1.41 in Display P3 and brightness reaches 1458 nits in SDR, 1630 nits in HDR.

### Conclusion

The Strix SCAR 18 offers two exceptional display modes: class-leading motion clarity with ELM for competitive gaming, and a stunning 1600-nit HDR experience for immersive content. It's a premium laptop that pushes the boundaries of LCD technology.

## Transcript

Neo, but what if you didn't have Neo money? What if you had 10 TIMES Neo money? Then you might be interested in this. ASUS just sponsored this video,
giving us an exclusive first look at the world's fastest hardware paired with what they claim is hands down the world's best display, the 2026 Stricks
SCAR 18. And then this this thing is yolked. A 24 core CPU that boosts up to yolked. A 24 core CPU that boosts up to 5.5 GHz, a 5090 mobile GPU, 128 gigs of DDR5, and it's even kind of portable. I mean, what's the downside? Ah, yes, that
mean, what's the downside? Ah, yes, that at a peak draw of 320 W and at a sustained 200 W, she won't last long on battery and requires a portable nuclear that's fine because the main thing that I want to look at today is the panel.
I want to look at today is the panel. It's a massive 18-in 4K miniLEDD display that can do up to 240 Hz refresh rate, which okay, that's nothing you haven't seen before, but it supports G-Sync to eliminate stutter and tearing, hits,
1600 nits peak brightness, and features approximately 2,000 dimming zones for phenomenal brightness and contrast that they claim can rival an OLED. All right, that's pretty cool. But wait, there's more. At CES this year, I saw Nvidia's
new G-Sync Pulsar, which uses new generation backlight strobing to vastly exceed the motion clarity of other display technologies, even OLED. And it did so with no flicker that I could perceive. I was blown away. Now, before
you ask, no, this doesn't have exactly that because ASUS built this without Nvidia. But what it does have is a similar solution that our labs folks have had a lot of fun playing around with and I can't wait to check out.
motion performance of a display like this. And just to set a baseline, I'm going to start with the extreme low motion blur or elm set to off. This is actually the mode that we recorded the lowest display latency in at just 2.7
milliseconds. But as you can see, if you look very closely, there is some blur as we're whipping around quickly. But enough of that. Let's check out the motion blur. If you could see flicker through the camera, I was going to say
in person, it not only doesn't look like it's flickering, but even the brightness doesn't appear to have changed to my eye. And yet, if we jump into the game, ooh, these lightning strikes in the sky actually are a really great way to show
it. Can you see that? No matter how quickly I'm looking, I've got like this crystal clear lightning fork in the sky here. Check this out, Adam. He just >> Oh, yeah. That's like weirdly crisp. >> And you're a big fan of black frame
>> No, I hate it. It is absolut It's a blight upon displays all around us. >> I can't see anything. It's uh it's really cool. This isn't even a game that's like running at maximum FPS. >> It'd be cool to see like a like an aim
stuff later. Anyway, thanks. See you later. occasion. >> That does make sense because when when this is kind of spoilers for later, but you're actually going to see the way
that it refreshes sequentially rather than all at once like a BFI thing. There is one drawback. Labs clocked the display at 5.7 milliseconds of latency at 240 Hz and cautions that there may be deviations in that figure from the
pulsing. But if you ask me, a few milliseconds of extra latency is more than worth the extra clarity. And you can really see it when you've got like brightly glowing objects. How much clarity there is in those as I'm panning
around. Okay, but how does it work? And why on earth would ASUS go with an LCD rather than an OLED? I mean, everyone knows that OLEDs have better pixel response times, which gives them better motion clarity, right? Well, right, that
is true. But here's the thing. Even the fastest pixel in the world can't do anything about retinal smearing. See, most modern computer displays use a technique called sample and hold, where each pixel gets updated to the new
image, and then that image stays there until it's replaced by a new transition. This causes your eye to introduce blurring that just plain isn't there, even with very fast pixel transitions. To solve this, ASUS actually looked
back, taking some inspiration from CRT tube displays. And the 2,000 plus dimming zones on this panel are divided into 40 rows, each being 60 pixels high.
ROG Nebula Elm then refreshes the display from top to bottom, row by row, using a super bright, blazing fast pulse duration of 260 microsconds.
This results in a pulse duty cycle of roughly 6%. Meaning that the backlight roughly 6%. Meaning that the backlight is actually turned off 94% of the time, which hides those blurry transition periods flash that LCDs are known for.
flash. This also helps to alleviate retinal smearing. Now, none of this is new information, and in fact, solutions to this problem have existed for a very long time. Black frame insertion or BFI is one such example. The issue with BFI,
though, is that it flashes the whole backlight or turns off every pixel on a self-eissive display at the same time. So, it manifests to your eye as a flickering effect that for some people, myself included, can be quite
unpleasant. Here, though, I don't detect any of that. Which makes sense if you consider that when I saw G-Sync Pulsar, which also uses a similar banded
strobing technique, I also didn't detect any flickering. And by contrast, that any flickering. And by contrast, that one only used 10 bands on a much larger 27in display. So, with everything packed in much tighter, that's only going to
translate into sharper visuals and a crispier overall experience. Really does look freaking awesome. Now, the question on your mind has got to be that's nice, but how does it compare to OLED? And believe it or not, very well. With some
minor ghosting, it actually came out a little bit sharper than our OLED display that we got for reference. Of course, I won't ask you to take my word for that. Now, we're not going to be able to use our over the shoulder for this. We're
going to have to set up a separate camera rig that follows at exactly the screen. It's called a pursuit camera test. But what I can do is I can have the experience without looking at that by just moving my head. What I'm looking
at more than anything else is the blurbusters.com text that's above the UFO. That's the easiest thing for me to evaluate with my meat eyes. And how did I know it says blurbusters.com? Because I wasn't using this one where it's
I wasn't using this one where it's almost completely illeible. That is flipping nuts. And yeah, John, you're right. I do get a little bit of that ghosting. You don't see that here, but the clarity of the main image is way
better. Like, you wouldn't know it looking at this one, but the alien's got three eyes. That's really impressive, isn't it? Display strobing. I now care about it. Of course, this is not the only comparison that matters. What about
only comparison that matters. What about G-Sync Pulsar? Well, ASUS, who sent over video, they didn't want to ruffle any feathers at Nvidia by providing a competing product. So, uh, we bought our own. I really wanted to see these ones
side by side. Once again, solid text legibility. Of course, in-game is not, challenging situation. Let's fire up the Blurbusters UFO. I want to make a bold guess. I was really impressed when I saw
Pulsar, but I wasn't comparing it to anything else. Coming fresh off of this, worse. >> I wouldn't say noticeably worse. >> Okay, let's go look then. Let's go look. He wouldn't say it. It's very different.
Less ghosting artifact on this one. That tells me that either we've got a faster panel here or >> you're running at 360 Hz right now, too. Okay, so it is a faster panel. Yay, go Linus. Or it tells me that we've got
more power budget to play with and we're able to really overdrive it and then compensate. However, the actual text clarity is better here. So, the prime
image is better, but there's less ghosting here. And then OLED is a blurriier prime image, but no ghosting compared to both of these. Man, there is
no best one day a pulsar style strobing here, but I don't think we have the controller for that today. And you know the end of the party tricks for the strict scar. Let's try something new. If
we disable Nebula ELM, we get to use that same powerful backlight that can give you normal display brightness, but it's only strobing periodically to get a it's only strobing periodically to get a freaking bright HDR gaming or movie
freaking bright HDR gaming or movie watching experience. ASUS claims 1,600 nits peak brightness. And honestly, if it was me, I would stick with Elm for competitive titles. If I'm playing more of a sightseeing and exploration game,
this is a pretty freaking awesome experience. And an extra little bonus is that we measured a more balanced 3.5 milliseconds of display lag that can be further improved by enabling overdrive. It's freaking awesome, man. Now, let's
talk about color and brightness. Usually, backlight strobing means a critical hit to color accuracy or general brightness. In this case, amazingly, it didn't. With ELM enabled, Labs measured our brightness at 461
nits, which is brighter than most standard laptops at their maximum without any strobing. And furthermore, in terms of color accuracy, we measured in terms of color accuracy, we measured a delta E of 1.86 in sRGB and an even
more impressive 1.53 in the Display P3 color space. That is accurate enough to be considered accurate even for color sensitive work. And if you're willing to turn Elm off to unleash its full array local dimming, we found the Scar managed
a remarkable average delta E of just 1.41 in display P3 and 1.42 in sRGB. As for brightness in this mode, blinding. In SDR multiszone strong, it pushed 1458
nits in a 5% window. And in HDR, it peaked even higher at 163 nits. But there is one slight caveat for HDR purists. The EOTF tracks a bit brighter
than intended, resulting in an average delta EITP of 26, meaning that your HDR colors are going to tone map a bit brighter. Overall though, pretty pre-production, not to mention
handpicked unit that was sent to us. So, as always, I want to recommend that you check coverage from multiple media sources before you spend this kind of money. But if my experience, not to mention the empirical measurements from
the labs team, are anything to go by, the strict scar offers two incredible experiences. Class leading Elm motion clarity or an amazing 1600nit HDR experience. If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the last season
of ROG Rig Reboot where ASUS sponsored build upgrades for some lucky LT viewers. We're gonna have that link down below.