Update: Asus contacted us and pointed out that they ended up releasing the Zephyrus S GX701 with a 300 Hz display. In other words, the battle for first place has been won. Now it's a battle for second place.

Original article Now that CES is in full swing, Acer and Asus are once again teasing gaming laptops with displays that support ultra-fast refresh rates of up to 300 Hz. It remains to be seen which machine will be the first to become available for purchase, but it is no longer a race between two horses; MSI has saddled itself with a 300Hz stallion. More on that later.

We first heard about these laptops with faster refresh rates back in September. If all had gone according to plan, Asus would have announced the Zephyrus S GX701 in October and Acer would have announced the Triton 500 laptop with a 300Hz panel in November. So where are they now?

As of now, both machines appear to have been scrapped, and today in Las Vegas Asus is showing off another 300Hz laptop, the ROG Strix Scar III (pictured above).

Asus advertises this as "the world's fastest 300Hz/3ms gaming laptop display. While this is likely to be favored by professional gamers participating in esport tournaments, Asus claims that it has more mainstream benefits as well.

"Higher frequencies also improve the experience when the refresh rate is fixed and the FPS drops below the maximum. The delay between refresh cycles is shorter, allowing the display to react faster to new frames generated by the GPU. If the system is running v-sync to eliminate visual tearing, the higher frequency reduces the visible stuttering that can occur when the display is forced to wait until the next cycle to display a new frame. 300Hz allows for a full refresh cycle every 3 .3ms every time a completely new frame is ready to be drawn, which matches the 3ms response time of a pixel," Asus previously explained.

At least one configuration will combine a Core i9 processor with a GeForce RTX 2070 GPU, as the enhanced GPU will facilitate the use of higher refresh rates. However, the display resolution is 1920x1080. For less demanding games, the 2070 should be sufficient.

Meanwhile, Acer also previewed its Triton 500 gaming laptop at CES. When we asked Acer when this laptop would be available, they said they did not have an updated timeline at this time.

Now back to MSI. The company announced at CES that its upcoming GE66 Raider laptop will be "the first gaming laptop with built-in 300 Hz."

MSI also announced what it claims is the first monitor with a 1,000R curvature, and last week I I wrote about the Odyssey G9. It is not yet available, so technically, MSI could still be the first in that regard as well.

We do not have inside information on the hold up, but it could be a validation or product issue with the panel manufacturer supplying the screen; Asus has the ROG Swift PG27UQ and Acer has the Predator X27, which has a 144Hz refresh rate, G-Sync support and HDR-enabled, 1,000 nits brightness, 27-inch 4K IPS monitor. This 300 Hz laptop will eventually arrive, at which point we will test its capabilities with something a little more demanding than Hearthstone.