When the Razer Blade first launched in 2013, it was a classy looking machine. Expensive as all hell, but it looked damn good for the price and had some of the best hardware around.
But we’re not in 2013 anymore. Competitors are starting to catch up, and the classic Razer styling is starting to age. But if you want a gaming laptop for under $3000 that’s thin enough to cart around at work, the Blade still gets the job done.
What Is It?
The Razer Blade is the middleweight of Razer’s gaming laptops, with the Razer Blade Stealth targeted at the Macbook Air/Surface Pro crowd and the 17-inch Blade Pro a full desktop replacement, complete with a GTX 1080.
The Blade is decidedly more affordable than the Pro, and a lot more portable too. A 14″ laptop with a 1080p matte or 4K screen, all models ship with Intel’s Kaby Lake i7-7700HQ (2.8GHz base clock speed, 3.8GHz boost). 3x USB 3.0 ports come as standard, as well as a single USB-C port and 16GB of unspecified DDR4-2400MHz memory.
You’ll get a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB model no matter what. The cheapest Blade will set you back just under $2800 and comes with a 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD drive. There’s still a massive premium on extra storage: the 512GB model with a 1080p screen is $3099.95, and those who need the 1TB drive will have to fork over $3699.95.
Both units come with a 165W power adapter. The 1080p model weighs in at 1.86kg, while the 4K Blade is a little chunkier at 1.95kg. The dimensions for either at 17.9mm x 345mm x 235mm (h/w/d), which is reasonably thin, but not the thinnest around. You can expect the usual standards as well: a webcam, support for Razer’s Chroma peripherals suite, an in-built microphone, 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth 4.1 support and a Killer wireless card.
The keyboard, touchpad and chassis are the same as what’s in the Razer Blade Stealth, which can you read about below. Every Blade purchase also comes with a copy of For Honor or Ghost Recon: Wildlands, an indie top-down shooter called Livelock and FL Studio 12 Producer Edition, software for music production. The 4K version isn’t available in Australia yet, but it’ll also ship with a touchscreen. There’s no such option on the 1080p model.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/01/razers-updated-blade-stealth-is-a-fine-macbook-air-replacement/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/01/razer-blade-stealth-on-desk-410×231.jpg” title=”Razer’s Updated Blade Stealth Is A Fine Macbook Air Replacement” excerpt=”Last year, the unthinkable happened. I was in Taipei for Computex. I’d just walked into a group press conference ready to take notes and transcribe. I opened up my Macbook Air and … half the screen was blank. In between interviews, my screen died.”]
What’s Good About It?
The Blade built its reputation for being a gaming laptop that was as portable as a Macbook, and the 2017 model continues to deliver on that ideal. It’s no longer the thinnest gaming laptop – Origin’s EVO15-s is a fraction lighter and smaller – and competitors are catching up on features and price.
But the Blade still maintains a good balance between form and function. You can get gaming laptops with 8GB or 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 for much less: the Acer Aspire V Nitro and the Gigabyte P55W both come with a GTX 1060, the same CPU and more storage for just over $2000.
But they’re far, far less portable than the Blade, and therein lies the value. The Blade is as comfortable to use on the couch watching Netflix as it is on a desk, playing Overwatch or DOOM. It’s a laptop targeted at people who like the idea and size of a Macbook Pro, but don’t want to pay Apple prices or sacrifice the benefits of the PC ecosystem.
One small upgrade over last year’s model is the RAM: it’s been upgraded to 2400MHz from 2133MHz. That’s not a mammoth upgrade, but it will add a couple of extra frames here or there coupled with the move from a Skylake CPU to the newer Kaby Lake generation.
Unsurprisingly for something sporting an i7-7700HQ and a GTX 1060, the Blade plays games well. How well, you ask?
Given that the Blade doesn’t have a G-SYNC display, you’re going to want to give yourself a bit of headroom over 60fps. But as you can see, you should have no problem running any major AAA title provided you don’t mind dropping the graphics presets down to High or Very High.
The Kaby Lake upgrade has made a difference to the Blade’s battery life as well. Running at 50% brightness with Wi-Fi on, the power profile set to the Windows 10 balanced preset and the volume at 50%, the 2017 Blade happily continued playing movies for just under six and a quarter hours. You’ll get a couple of hours less under a standard productivity load, which isn’t too shabby for a gaming laptop.
What’s Not Good About It?
The Blade might be a thin gaming laptop, and so are the fans. If you’re going to be gaming regularly, have some headphones handy because this thing is loud. The best description I can probably give you comes courtesy of my partner, who looked at the Blade during an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark.
“I didn’t know you were using the PS4,” she quipped. While playing DOOM, the fans were actually so loud that I had to turn the volume up to 70% before the metal soundtrack started to drown it out. Consider yourself warned.
The touchpad, as I discovered with the latest Blade Stealth, is fairly reasonable with a little tweaking. But it shares the same major flaw, in that it’s a little too sensitive when it comes to palm recognition. I’m still waiting for manufacturers to catch up to the precision and intelligence of the Macbook touchpad, and Razer isn’t there yet.
There is one difference in that the Blade’s touchpad has discrete left and right buttons, much like the Surface Book and other laptop manufacturers. It’s not my style, and I’d prefer something a little smaller, but it works well enough. It doesn’t support Windows 10 Precision gestures, however, which more and more laptops are starting to do.
Another problem that resurfaces from the Blade Stealth is the surface, or at least the lower half. The matte surface is a magnet for fingerprints, and I haven’t been using the 4K model with a touchscreen. Speaking of the screen, the bezel around the Blade’s screen is unnecessarily massive. Laptop screens have come a long way, and hopefully in the next refresh Razer moves with the times a little.
Should You Buy It?
If you’re after a gaming laptop at the cheapest price possible, there are better choices. If you want the thinnest gaming laptop, you can find smaller. But if you want a good middle ground machine that’s under $3000, one you can comfortably use on the couch or at the pub without looking like you just pulled a noisy encyclopedia out of your bag, the Blade is a good pick.
It’s starting to show its age, having largely kept the same design for the last four years. But while competition is a lot fiercer than it was, the Blade achieves its main objective well: it takes the power of a mid-range PC and puts it into a chassis that doesn’t strain your knees or look overly garish. The pricing is pretty reasonable for the whole package on offer, although those bothered more by budget than size, weight or form would do well to shop around.
Comments
13 responses to “Razer Blade 2017: The Kotaku Review”
Would be keen to see a follow up after your Blades have a couple months regular usage on them to see if the hardware is durable. 2016 version has 31% 1 stars on Amazon for various build issues (both DOA and slow failures).
I’d be extremely wary about buying one of these in Australia until they have some form of local warranty support.
Can’t unfortunately. We usually return the laptops (and almost all hardware) to their local distributor/PR after review, as they often get used for other events and handed out to other outlets/content creators or for sponsorship purposes.
Oh well, I guess caveat emptor then!
The blade has local warranty support. I’ve got a 2015 blade, it developed some dead pixels, contacted Razer who arranged to send it to a repair shop in NSW, who fitted a new panel (complete replacement of screen section/housing). Turn around was just over a week (from WA).
I did have an issue at first, as the replacement screen had dead pixels (including comments written on the still in place screen protector noting the dead pixels!) but razer just authorised a second new screen. This is the fault of the repair centre (who clearly tested and saw the new screen was defective, just didn’t re-repair), not razer themselves though… the second screen was perfect and still going strong.
Given how some companies won’t even replace screens with a few dead pixels, overall I was pretty happy.
Good to hear, thanks for chiming in with the counter point. 🙂
Would love to see an article covering a number of good value laptops at different pricepoints, I myself am looking to get a gaming capable laptop in the near future but doesn’t need to be ridiculous, and not looking to spend more than $2000-2500 at most. Any suggestions or articles worth reading?
I keep seeing “or 4K screen” on reviews but am yet to see this as an option on the AU store. Am I missing something here?
There are two models of the Blade: one with a 1080p display and the 4K touchscreen, the latter of which isn’t available in Australia.
It seems like the Blade is asking for just a touch more than it’s actually worth. I’d tolerate being loud if it was a GTX 1070/1080 model, and I’d tolerate a GTX 1060 if it’s quiet and cool-ish, but “loud GTX 1060 laptop” doesn’t scream “great” to me. No g-sync is also one hell of a caveat for a self-described premium gaming laptop. Small and portable is great, but it seems like there’s just a few too many devils in the details.
I’m all for a device that’s built like a Mac with a Windows environment and a gaming focus, but it doesn’t sound like it’s quite there yet, which is a shame.
You say that 2800 is the cheapest option. I just went on their site and the 256gb option is 1899. Actually cheaper than I bought my base 2014 config at.
Are you looking at the Australian store, or the US one? Even the cheapest Blade available (the V5) still costs $2500 in Australian dollars, although it’s out of stock.
How are gaming laptops for video editing and photoshop? I want a thin and light a laptop as I can get, but one with as much power. Mainly so on the road I can edit some video and do some photoshop, as well as game. I have a dell xps 13 that’s two years old and it sucked for video editing, it also sucked at gaming. Video editing was all gopro stuff and high res, but it was literally useless and if I didn’t know what I was doing it was completely useless. It was video editing with out a smooth preview.
Something with a discrete GPU will help a lot more re. video editing, but you should be able to handle any rudimentary Photoshop with any laptop that has a good i7/Ryzen CPU.
I believe the 4K version hasn’t been released anywhere yet, scheduled for Q2 which just began. Looks like the only place in Aus where you can purchase this is the Razer store. Any word from the supplier on whether other stores in Aus will stock it (e.g Microsoft Store)?