Thin, powerful, and noisy.
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Razer has built a reputation for producing high-quality gaming accessories and PCs, and the Razer Blade (See it on Amazon) gaming laptop is no exception. Build-quality is top-notch, and its super thin profile, understated design and personalization options are at a level far above comparably-equipped gaming laptops. Of course, its gorgeous build and svelte size comes with a heavy price tag, making it a gaming laptop only suited for well-heeled gamers or those who must have maximum portability. For everyone else, it's not the best option.
Before we get into the details, here are the specs of the Razer Blade sent me for review:
- Display: 14-inch 1920x1080 IPS Matte Display
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
- Processor: Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz
- Memory: 16GB DDR4 2400Mhz
- OS: Windows 10
- OS Drive: 256GB SSD PCIe M.2
- Storage Drive: N/A
- Optical Drive: N/A
- Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, combination headphone/microphone port
- Battery: 70Wh lithium-ion polymer
- Weight: 4.0 pounds
- Price:$1,899
The 14" Razer Blade sports Intel's latest-generation i7 processor, the quad-core Kaby Lake i7 7700HQ running at 2.8GHz, and it can boost up to 3.8GHz. Handling the graphical heavy lifting is an Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card with 6GB of video RAM. It also comes with 16GB DDR4 RAM, which is pretty standard for a laptop in this class.
For storage, the base model comes with a 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD, and there are no complementary storage options so you can't have an SSD and a hard drive, like in a lot of gaming laptops, but this is the price you pay for having such a thin notebook. There are configurations with 512GB and a full 1TB SSDs, but the cost increase is about $200 per 256GB. That means the 1TB model is $600 more than the base model, coming in at $2499 USD. There's also a 4K version of the Blade, but it only offers 512GB and 1TB SSD configurations.
The base model's 256GB of storage is definitely a problem, especially for a gaming laptop. We filled it up quickly loading up games and software for benchmarks. Add your music, files, photos, and whatever else, and you hit the ceiling fast. Many other comparable laptops have a storage hard drive and leave the SSD to the OS and programs that benefit from an SSD's speed.
Fortunately, all the ports on the Blade are high-speed, so external storage won't bring you down too much. It has a Thunderbolt 3 port, as well as three USB 3.0 ports, facilitating the quick transfer of data between devices. Beyond that, there's an HDMI 2.0 port and a combination headphone/microphone jack. There's no Ethernet port, which is a major bummer on a gaming laptop, but it does have Killer Wireless AC-1535 connectivity, as well as Bluetooth 4.1.
From a design standpoint, the Razer Blade is simply beautiful. A matte black milled-aluminum chassis makes the accents on the laptop (the green USB ports and Razer logo on the lid) really pop, and it's impressively thin too, especially considering it has a GTX 1060 inside. When closed, the Razer measures just 0.70-inch tall, with an almost impossibly thin display. The 4K model is the same thickness, but weighs slightly more, coming in it 4.3 pounds versus the base model's 4.1 pounds. Even the power brick for the Blade is downright tiny, and is one of the smallest we've seen among comparably equipped laptops. The only downside to its matte black finish is it does attract fingerprints.
Lights and Keyboard
It wouldn't be a Razer product if it didn't have customizable lighting, and naturally the Blade is Chroma-enabled so you can trick out the lighting scheme in all sorts of really cool ways using Razer's Synapse software. In addition to enabling certain lighting patterns you can go so far as to customize individual keys, which is awesome. If you want to set just your WASD keys to glow blue while the rest of the keys lighting pulses in and out, you can do it in the software. Beyond that, pushing the function key dims all the keys except the top row of function keys, which is a really nice little touch that makes it easy to do things like adjust volume or brightness.
The keyboard itself feels phenomenal. Typing on it isn't quite as satisfying as typing on a mechanical keyboard, but as far as laptops go, it's top-shelf. The keys have just the right amount of travel and spring to them, making them as satisfying to use as they are to look at.
What's not so great are the right and left buttons on the trackpad. They're just too small. The Blade is a 14-inch notebook, but sacrificing button size on the trackpad is puzzling. I often found myself missing the buttons entirely because they just don't feel like they're where they ought to be.
The Blade's 1080p display is sharp and bright, and its matte finish keeps it from reflecting too much ambient light. Even in full sunlight, it's possible to see the screen, but it's still best viewed in the shade. The Blade's built-in stereo speakers, located on either side of the keyboard, produce passable sound without distortion at the upper limits of its volume.
Performance
Here's how the Razer Blade sent to use for review did in our tests. It's being compared to three other systems with the same GPU; two of which have the same CPU as well: the Alienware 13 and the MSI GE62VR, while the Asus GL702VM has the Skylake version of the CPU. As you can see the Razer Blade performs exactly as expected given its hardware configuration, and is literally the same as some of its rivals, for the most part. The 6GB GTX 1060 handles DirectX 12 with no problems, and does a great job with older DirectX versions. Hitman gets a passable 29 fps at the game's highest settings, and I also tested Hitman at its lowest settings, and it ran at 74 fps. Overall it wasn't the fastest of the similarly configured systems, but basically the same as the Alienware 13 and Asus notebooks, and just a tick slower than the MSI Camo system.
Since the MSI GE62VR and the Alienware 13 have identical processors and graphics cards, and nearly identical performance, the choice between the three comes down to features like price, build quality, keyboard. Interestingly, the three systems could not be more different as the MSI is huge and kind of cheap-feeling, while the Alienware is sleek, refined, and has a gorgeous OLED display. I'd personally go with the MSI out of those three since it offers slightly better performance for less money, but if I was looking to spend almost $2k I'd definitely opt for the Alienware OLED package.
Also, though I love a powerful laptop as much as the next gamer, and I also love a thin notebook, the two are difficult to combine since this laptop's powerful parts create a lot of heat that has to be exhausted out of a razor thin chassis, pardon the pun. Though the Blade's fans do a great job keeping everything cool, coming in cooler than other laptops we tested by a full 10 degrees Celsius, they are way too loud. Putting a load on either the CPU or GPU winds the fans up, and there's no fan control software included. Once the processors are done with some heavy lifting the fans spin down almost instantly, but it doesn't make up for how excessively loud they are when spun up. It's easily my biggest complaint with the Razer Blade.
Purchasing Guide
The Razer Blade is available in several configurations, but the one we tested is around $1,700 depending on who you buy it from. You can configure it with more storage as well, which obviously bumps up the price on Amazon on $2000 or more. There are no significant discounts on the machine to report:
• See the Razer Blade on Amazon
The Verdict
There's certainly a lot to like about the Razer Blade as it's a gorgeous, well-performing laptop. I love the thin chassis, its sharp display, and little things like its terrific keyboard and customizable lighting let you know it's a top-of-the-line laptop. Unfortunately this beautiful piece of hardware suffers from a few major flaws including not much storage, excessive fan noise, and the lack of an Ethernet port. Since it costs much more than other gaming laptops with similar specs, these transgressions make it hard to recommend unless portability and style are your number one priorities.
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