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This article is an in-depth comparison between the Asus ROG Strix Scar 3 and the 2019 HP Omen 15. If you don’t wanna make a bad choice you should definitely read this article before you buy it.

ASUS Scar III	HP Omen 15
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Keyboard and side RGB lighting looks cool. Awesome audio output. Unique Keystone hardware key may appeal to some.	Intel Core i7-4710HQ CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M graphics. PCI-connected storage offers faster performance than SATA-based competition. Touch screen. Programmable macro buttons, extra-wide touchpad, and customizable keyboard backlighting.
CONS	CONS
GeForce RTX 2060 graphics and 240Hz display are a questionable pairing. Primarily plastic enclosure not as rigid as metal chassis. The screen doesn’t support Nvidia G-Sync. Fans get loud while gaming.	Rear-mounted ports are inconvenient. Ethernet requires adapter dongle.

Expert Reviews For ASUS Scar III:

By eTeknix
If you’re looking for a laptop that provides exceptionally high-levels of performance that would look good in any setting, then the ASUS Scar III is definitely it. Coming at a price that is perhaps lower than you might expect (based on the excellent components inside) it may not have all of the bells and whistles offered by alternatives, but it’s sleek professional style and amazing performance gets a huge thumbs up from us!

By HardwareZone
When I buy a gaming laptop, I want it to work right the moment I power it on. ASUS says that leaving one of the DIMM slots free helps customers save because they can simply buy one more stick of RAM instead of, say, a 2x16GB kit (if they were upgrading from 2x8GB), but it still doesn’t seem worth it to me. Furthermore, the performance deficit that comes with single-channel memory is massive, and it doesn’t seem right that I’d have to pay more to upgrade the laptop in order to get my money’s worth.

By PcWorld
In reality, the Scar III doesn’t really do much that other gaming laptops don’t. While you’d be perfectly happy with its performance, you might be better off with building your own PC with the same components – unless you need the laptop form factor, you’re not missing anything here.

By IndiaToday
Asus has finally gone for a design that makes its gaming laptop look elegant and aggressive at the same time. Kudos to the design inputs from the BMW Designworks for making a conventional gaming laptop so appealing. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most exciting gaming laptops you can buy today.

By AusGamers
That said, the closer look with the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR III reveals a solid and exceptional laptop. From a great keyboard feel to a vibrant display to decent hardware that lets you max-out all the most visually demanding titles playable today. Minor issues aside there’s very little not to love here, making this a great gaming laptop.

Expert Reviews For HP Omen 15:

By LaptopMag
The HP Omen 15 offers great performance, a colorful 144-Hz display and a comfortable keyboard, but its screen could be…

By ExpertReviews
In all, though, there’s not much that the HP Omen 15 (2018) does wrong. It may not be as thin, light or drop-dead gorgeous as the Razer Blade 15 or as all-out brutish as the Acer Predator Helios 500, but it’s well-priced and a darned good compromise.

By HardwareZone
One other note to point out regarding its specs and price is that it’s one of the few notebooks equipped with a massive 32GB of memory, which is great if you dabble in a lot of content creativity jobs and you need a capable multi-tasker.

By NotebookCheck
With the Omen 15, Hewlett-Packard delivers a compact gaming notebook that can be called successful overall. However, despite its purchase price of 2100 Euros (~$2396), it is not free from weaknesses.

By T3
Sacrifices must be made in this tight form factor, and the Zephyrus GX502 makes ample, smart decisions to walk that razor’s edge between practicality, performance, and…

DETAILED REVIEW:

Above we have shown the overview and depth specifications of both the Laptops. Now, we are sharing the full review.

DESIGN: Scar III vs Omen 15

When it comes to design both laptops definitely look like gaming devices, but I think that Omen looks cleaner. It’s all black without any colorful accents and what is characteristic for Omen laptops is the X shape pattern on the lid. The logo is not backlit, this is only silver mirror-like material which looks great. Inside there’s nothing fancy as well. All we can see is the black deck and a clean looking keyboard with a touchpad. The back looks awesome, but the hinge in the center makes the screen a little bit more flexy. The fingerprints show easily on the brushed metal surface. However, it is easy to clean.

Scar 3 is a very eye-catching laptop. You have a metal lid with brushed aluminum texture and the ROG logo that you can light up with RGB colors. On the back, it has extended the exhaust section, but when you open the laptop it doesn’t stick out too much. On the front and on the sides there is one large light bar that makes the laptop look like it’s hovering above the ground. The deck is made of solid plastic with few extruded lines and a keystone slot on the left-hand side. the fingerprints are not so visible on it.

BUILD QUALITY: Scar III vs Omen 15

The build quality is another thing to mention, and I think that Omen is the winner here. It feels more premium as it is all made of metal. The chassis was perfectly stiff and solid. I was surprised because you can usually find such top-end quality in over $2000 laptops like Asus ROG Zephyrus or Razer Blade 15.

The Scar 3 has an only metal lid, but the deck and bottom are made of solid plastic. It’s still well built and sturdy, nothing creaks, but compared to Omen the Scar 3 feels much cheaper to the touch.

Both laptops come with a thin-bezel display, but only HP managed to fit 720p webcam properly on the top bezel. On the other hand, Asus decided to not include any webcam even though there is a lot of space under the display.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

When it comes to size, the Omen is smaller in almost every dimension and despite being all metal it’s also about 200g lighter than Scar. If you pay much attention to portability this is the way to go, but in practice, Scar 3 is not a very big gaming laptop as well.

KEYBOARD / TOUCHPAD: Scar III vs Omen 15

The keyboard in HP Omen 15 looks clean and it’s pretty good. It’s still the same keyboard as in the previous generation, so it has 1.5mm key travel, good spacing, it’s comfortable to type on and easy to get used to. It has one dedicated key to open the Command Center app, but unfortunately, there is no button for instant boosting the fan speed and the arrow keys are pretty small. You have 4-zones of RGB where the 4th zone includes only WSAD keys. The light is strong and vivid, but the black keys hide the light when you look at the keyboard at certain angles.

In my opinion, the keyboard in Scar 3 is better in every way. It has long 2mm key travel, good spacing, and 5 additional useful keys. It’s not full size, but don’t worry – you have the number pad displayed on the touchpad after touching the right top corner. The useful feature that it has is the “overstroke” technology which registers the keypress before you actually press the key all the way down. In Asus Scar 3 you have also very vivid per-key RGB. You can customize every single key the way you want or use one of many built-in effects.

If it comes to touchpads it was more comfortable for me to use Omen’s touchpad. It uses Elan drivers and it is surprisingly precise. As same as Scar, it has 2 dedicated buttons for left and right-click. The touchpad in Scar uses Windows Precision drivers, so you can take advantage of better gesture controls. The tracking is very good as well, but it felt like Omen’s tracking was smoother and nicer to watch.

PORT SELECTION:

As for the ports selection, another point goes to the HP which offers much more. Except for the I/O that both laptops have the Omen has, in addition, full-size SD card slot, MiniDisplay port and USB C with Thunderbolt 3 support.

In Scar 3 you can find a new feature called Keystone which is a magnetic NFC chip that you can plug into the slot on the right-hand side. It can save your gaming and lighting profiles and also unlock the secret Shadow Drive where you can store your files.

DISPLAY:

Omen 15:

My Omen came with a 1080p 144Hz IPS panel with about 9ms response time. This one doesn’t support G-Sync, because I had the configuration with RTX 2060.

If you want G-Sync you have to choose the model with RTX 2070 or 2080. There are also other display options that you can choose including 1080p 60Hz, 1080p 240Hz, and 4K 60Hz.

The color coverage of my 144Hz panel was 95% of sRGB color gamut, 73% of AdobeRGB and the brightness of 329 nits.

You can easily use this laptop for color correct work, the games look great and smooth and the viewing angles are good.

Scar III:

If it comes to Scar 3, I’ve got the unit with a 1080p 144Hz IPS-level display with 3ms response time. Despite it doesn’t support G-Sync it’s the smoothest 144Hz display that I’ve tested, which in combination with powerful hardware allows you to take advantage of the fast refresh rate.

The color accuracy is good as well, the colors are vivid and sharp with a cold tone. I find them very accurate, the games look great, but I can recommend this laptop for content creation as well.

You have 97% of sRGB color gamut, 73% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 320 nits.

This is an IPS-level display, but the viewing angles were as good as in Omen’s IPS and the quality of both pannels was good.

SPEAKERS: Scar III vs Omen 15

The Omen uses Bang & Olufsen audio and it sound good. It can get loud without distortion and the sound is crispy and clear. There is some bass, but it’s nowhere close to something like Asus Scar 3. As always a definite winner in this category is the Asus Scar 3 which has the best sounding speakers on the gaming laptop market right now. I was surprised by the amount of bass that they can produce. Every shot and every explosion in game was full and punchy so there was no really need to use the headphones. Mids are just on point but the highs may seem to be a little bit overwhelmed by lows.

GAME PERFORMANCE:

The performance comparison is probably the most exciting part of this review. I’ve got both laptops with the same specs, so the comparison will give you better idea of what to expect from each device.

I pushed both laptops to the limits, so for testing purposes i set the performance mode in Omen for more CPU power and i enabled the maximum fan speed for better cooling. Unfortunately there’s no any button for that, so you have to set it each time manually in the Omen’s Command Center app.

In Scar 3 you have the button to switch between 3 performance modes, but you can also set it all manually. For testing purposes i manually overclocked the GPU and set the max fan speed in Armoury Crate app.

Here is a quick preview of the game performance-:

BATTERY: 

As for the battery life i managed to use the Scar for up to 5,5 hours when browsing the web and doing light productivity work. When gaming battery died after 1,5 hour.

The Omen which doesn’t have Optimus was a little bit behind – it ran for up to 4,5 hours when light work and 1 hour and 10 minutes when gaming.

SUMMARY:

Omen 15:

The 2019 HP Omen 15, I think that it’s a very good and interesting laptop for those who are into tweaking CPU power settings to get the best results. It’s one of the fastest RTX 2060 laptops that i’ve tested this year and with a slight touch of undervolting the temperatures are good as well.

It has few advantages over the Scar, for example Thunderbolt 3, SD card slot, G-Sync with higher specs models and wider range of configurations including full size RTX 2080 for under $2000. It feels more premium thanks to full metal build and despite being metal it’s also slightly lighter. The price speaks for Omen as well, because it’s usually cheaper than Scar 3 with the same specs.

For the downsides we can also include shorter battery life, high temperatures on performance mode without tweaking and no dedicated button for boosting the fan speed.

Scar III:

On the other hand we have the Asus ROG Strix Scar 3 which i think is a great choice for those who have some extra dollar to spend. It’s not the cheapest out there, but it has many features that will take your gaming experience to the next level.

The performance is good as well. With RTX 2060 can play most of current games on ultra settings at smooth 60fps and above. All of that at respectable temperatures without throttling. Buying Scar 3 you’re also getting a great and very useful per-key lighting keyboard, tons of RGB, the best sounding speakers on the market and the fastest 144Hz 3ms response time display with good color accuracy.

For the weak sides we can include lack of SD Card slot and MiniDisplay port, no webcam and higher price tag.

WHICH TO BUY?

In this case, I give the win to the 2019 HP Omen 15, because it offer more useful features, it’s cheaper, more portable and full metal build makes it more premium. Nonetheless the Asus Scar 3 is a great laptop as well.

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.