Razer Blade
A conundrum thanks to Nvidia’s new mobile Pascal chip
It’s always hard to recommend products when a new technology has just been released. Take the new Razer Blade for example. It’s packing Nvidia’s excellent GeForce GTX 970M GPU, but we know that the mobile version of Pascal is just around the corner, which delivers up to 40% better performance, and an even better VR experience. If the mobile Pascal wasn’t around the corner, it’d be easy to recommend the Blade for those with fat wallets, but we’re faced with a dilemma – should we wait a couple of months for the inevitable Pascal-equipped version?
Sadly we don’t have a crystal ball to see whether or not to wait, so this review is going to focus on the new Blade as is. And what a machine it is. It’s very impressive to see Razer tuck so much grunt into such a small package, which helps explain that rather high price tag. Measuring just 18mm thick by 345mm wide and 235mm deep, it’s built around a 14-inch display, which has an insane resolution of 3200 x 1800; way too high for gaming at this resolution, but beautiful when using the desktop and other apps. It’s also a multi-touch display, and the rock hard hinges means it doesn’t bounce around when you actually bother to use this feature. We can’t overstate how important this is – other laptops with bouncy screens actually discourage the use of the touch functionality, but not here. Like the new Razer Stealth, the display’s also an absolute stunner, with some of the richest colours we’ve seen on a laptop. The only thing it’s missing is G-Sync or high refresh rates, but they’re luxuries we don’t mind doing without.
The entire unit is built from CNC aluminium, and it’s finished in a gorgeous matte black. The lines of are very sleek and minimal, foregoing the angular stealth-fighter look favoured by other gaming companies. It’s the kind of laptop you can whip out at a gaming LAN or a business meeting with your company’s CEO. A glowing green Razer logo on the top is the only sign that this thing is built from the ground up for gaming.
Despite the small size, it’s a little heavy, tipping the scales at 1.93kg. That’s still mighty impressive for such a powerful machine though, especially when compared to the 4kg+ monsters that usually run this level of hardware. Even the power pack is nice and small, unlike the 1kg bricks that mega-gaming machines require. When it comes to I/O options, there’s a nice range of ports to connect all your extras. HDMI is of the 1.4b variety, which is a shame
Is Razer going to release a Pascal equipped version in the next two months, making the 970M version obsolete?
considering this thing could power a 4K TV for movies, and it’s next to a USB 3.0 Type A connector. Next to that is the obligatory USB 3.0 Type-C/ Thunderbolt 3 connector, meaning this machine is compatible with Razer’s external graphics accelerator, which you’ll most definitely need if you want to run the super-high res display at native resolution. On the other side are another two USB 3.0 Type A connectors, along with a single 3.5mm stereo headphone output/microphone input. You’ll definitely want to use the headphone jack; like most thin laptops, the audio output is weak and tinny. A nice touch is the array microphone, necessary to get the best out of Windows 10’s Cortana.
Networking is wireless only, with no Ethernet port. Instead you’ll have to make do with 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1. The Wi-Fi comes courtesy of Killer’s Wireless AC 1535 chipset, which has been proven to do an excellent job.
Enough of the externals – what makes this machine tick? The same CPU found in nearly every gaming laptop is at play here, in the form of Intel’s I7-6700HQ, which is a quad-core HyperThreaded CPU with a maximum Turbo speed of 3.6GHz. In other words, there’s more than enough CPU grunt here for all but the most demanding sims. A tasty 16GB of DDR4 2133MHz provides ample high-speed memory, but the long-term storage option isn’t quite as impressive. The default version comes with a 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD, though you can pay extra for the 512GB version. A backup mechanical drive would have been nice at this price, though god knows how Razer would have been able to squeeze one in.
The highlight and most contentious component is Nvidia’s excellent GTX 970M. We’ve seen in the past that this is fast enough to run most modern games at medium to high settings at 1080p with a 60fps minimum, but it’s here that we have to question whether or not to buy the Blade. Is Razer going to release a Pascal equipped version in the next two months, making the 970M version obsolete? We put the question out to Razer, but unfortunately they weren’t able to comment.
As the benchies show, this thing can run most of our benchmarks at close to 60fps, an excellent result for such a small machine. It’s up there with other 970M laptops, but we did notice one massive issue – fan noise. At 60dB, this is quite possibly the noisiest gaming laptop we’ve ever used, which will prove to be super annoying unless you’re wearing headphones. Once again, this is a gaming laptop that would be paired perfectly with a set of noise-cancelling cans.
We’re rather stuck on whether to recommend this laptop or not. It’s certainly not cheap, so is only suitable for those in the market who want mobility without compromising gaming performance. Yet with the brand new mobile Pascal hitting shelves this month, its performance is likely to look pretty darn average in the very near future. As a result, we’d probably recommend going for one of the new Pascal equipped laptops, depending on whether they’re ridiculously priced.