Razer Blade (2017)

IS THIS MIDDLE-CHILD IN RAZER’S LAPTOP FAMILY ‘JUST RIGHT’, OR DOES SLEEKNESS COME AT TOO GREAT A COST?

IT’S HARD TO believe that Razer’s Blade line of portable gaming laptops only launched four years ago, with this main 14-inch model now in its sixth hardware refresh. What’s also a bit perplexing is that no other company has managed to match Razer’s premium unibody design, which makes the Blades about as close to a ‘gaming MacBook’ as you’ll find. The build quality is undeniable, with first-rate trackpad and keyboard and a chassis that can take a lot of punishment.

This unit is the ‘just right’ sibling in the Blade family — it’s bigger and more powerful than the 12.5-inch Stealth (thanks mostly to it having a dedicated Nvidia GPU, the GeForce GTX 1060), but it’s not as huge or outlandishly pricey as the 17.3-inch Blade Pro, which now packs a GTX 1080 and starts at $5,899 in Australia, with the top-end option costing a bracing $7,299.

Razer doesn’t offer a heap of customisability in the 2017 Blade, opting for just a single highend CPU/RAM config (a speedy quad-core i7-7700HQ paired with 16GB DDR4), with the option of either a glossy 4K-touchscreen or a matte-finish 1080p (non-touch) display, as well as three choices for SSD size (256GB, 512GB or 1TB). We tested the bottom 1080p/256GB model, which goes for a fairly reasonable $2,799.

Those specs ultimately get you a very good all-rounder of a laptop that can tackle any task you’d need, including playing most games at Ultra detail settings, as well as editing high-res images and video. It’s also relatively sedate when it comes to gaming bling — the only offensive element is the rainbow-backlit keyboard, which by default is set to a seizure-inducing colourwave. You need to sign into Razer’s Synapse software to change that.

The matte-black unibody aluminium chassis is, as always, as tough as a pair of steel-capped boots, although there are a couple of areas where the Blade design is looking a bit dated. The 14-inch display’s bezels, for example, are quite wide at around an inch on all sides, making them positively gargantuan next to the 5mm ones on Gigabyte’s Aero 15. And while we’re comparing, Razer’s slimmer design (17.9mm vs 19.4mm) means its cooling system isn’t quite as efficient as the Aero’s, with the Blade’s GPU at about 10°C hotter while gaming, reaching a peak of 90°C. The conductive nature of the Blade’s all-metal chassis means that heat spreads out and warms up the palm-rest area only to a comfortable ‘kitten on your lap’ level.

This unit get moderately loud when gaming, too. While the fans can take 5–10 minutes to really ramp up, once they kick into high-gear, though, you’ll clearly hear them, so headphones are a must if you’re gaming.

However, the overall value here isn’t quite as impressive as on other gaming laptops around this price — you get less storage and fewer expansion ports, most notably. That disparity has arguably improved since the earlier Blade models, but you’re still paying a extra for the ‘Razer’ brand name and the Blade family’s high-quality components — although as this one’s thermal numbers demonstrate, even quality parts don’t always stand up well in the face of cold hard physics.