Razer Blade 15 reviewed
An absolute KILLER laptop
One of the premier gaming laptops to hit the streets, the Razer Blade 15 has made a name for itself rocking the best mobile hardware inside its elegant exterior. That brilliant combination has, in fact, led some folks to call it the “MacBook Pro of gaming laptops”.
For 2020, the Razer Blade 15 carries on its legacy, this time around boasting the best Intel Comet Lake-H processors and RTX Super graphics chips under its classy hood. It sports the same aluminum unibody design that the laptop line is known for and is very much reminiscent of a MacBook Pro. It also has two large speaker grilles at the top of the laptop, alongside a trackpad that is, without a doubt, one of the best on any Windows laptop.
Design
While we’re busy comparing Razer to Apple, the Razer Blade 15 kind of serves as a “what would the MacBook Pro look like with diverse ports and no Touch Bar?” On either side of the keyboard you have these giant speakers – which is already a point in the Razer Blade 15’s favor.
This isn’t, like, a new thing for the Razer Blade, but we just have to reiterate that it does wonders for audio quality. The Razer Blade speakers are still nowhere near as good as a MacBook Pro 16’s but they do manage to sound listenable for when you just want to put on some tunes while getting some work done.
We also have to praise just how many ports remain on the Razer Blade 15. You get two Thunderbolt 3 ports, three USB-A ports, a dedicated charging port that’s
reverse-able, and a dedicated HDMI. Razer is obviously in the business of selling peripherals, and we’re happy to report that you won’t need to live that #donglelife to use any of them. You can easily plug in a gaming headset, mouse and a keyboard.
Not that you’ll even need a keyboard. Don’t get us wrong, there’s nothing quite like playing the best PC games on a mechanical keyboard, but the chiclet keys on the Razer Blade 15 feel amazing. Key travel is more than deep enough, and the spacing is basically perfect, even for keys on the periphery of the keyboard. We would like to see bigger up and down arrow keys, but that’s such a minor complaint that we’re willing to look past it.
The touchpad is similarly fantastic – spacious, sensitive and actually feels good to click down. Touchpads on Windows 10 devices are starting to be good, but the Razer Blade is still the best example of a touchpad on a Windows 10 device.
Tying all of this together is the premium unibody design of the Razer Blade 15. Completely built of aluminum, the chassis feels excellent, and despite its thinness, manages to have a display with very little flex. Plus, even when you’re typing or gaming vigorously, there is absolutely no flex in either the keyboard deck or the area around the trackpad. The Razer Blade 15 definitely feels like a premium device which kind of dulls the pain of shelling out so much cash. Now, if only more gaming laptop manufacturers could put as much love into their design as Razer does here.
At 300 nits of brightness and hitting 111% of the sRGB color gamut, the Razer Blade 15 display is perfect for some PC gaming, especially when you take that fast refresh rate into consideration. Plus, with the Core i7 processor and RTX 2080 Super, you’ll
Even one of the hardest games to run right now, Metro Exodus, managed to hit more than 60 fps with ray tracing turned off and everything else at max.
definitely actually be able to hit that 300 fps on pretty much any major esports title.
Performance
Because the Razer Blade 15 is equipped with the Intel Core i7-10875H and an RTX 2080 Super, it has no problem absolutely chewing through all the latest and best PC games at max settings.
Even one of the hardest games to run right now, Metro Exodus, managed to hit more than 60 fps with ray tracing turned off and everything else at max. But, even with ray tracing enabled, the laptop was easily able to manage 50 fps, which is more than playable, even if it isn’t at the golden 60 fps standard.
Even in raw 3DMark benchmarks, the laptop holds its own against laptops that are way thicker, even if it falls behind something like the Gigabyte Aorus 17X – extra portability does come with some sacrifices.
A PCMark 10 score of 5,227 serves to illustrate why these laptops are so popular with folks that don’t play a lot of games, too. Tasks like photo and video editing, and even straight-up spreadsheet work, goes a lot faster when you have this level of hardware at your disposal.
Battery life
It probably won’t come as too big a surprise that the Razer Blade 15 doesn’t exactly last all day on battery power. With the level of hardware on offer, not to mention the super-fast display, there’s a lot of stress being put on the battery at any time.
And, in the PCMark 10 battery test, which simulates a wide variety of everyday tasks, this is reflected in the paltry 5 hours and 3 minutes of battery life. It is enough to get some work done away from your charger, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to work on the Razer Blade 15 all day without also packing your charger.
Video playback fares slightly better, with the laptop lasting 7 hours and 31 minutes looping a locally stored 1080p video. That number will go down a bit if you’re streaming through Netflix or something, but it does mean you can sit and binge for a little while before the Razer Blade dies on you. The Razer Blade 15 (2020), while expensive, is more than capable of annihilating any PC game you throw at it, all the while being stylish and well-built enough to actually justify that extra expense for anyone looking for a luxurious gaming product.