Razer Blade 15 (Base, 2020)
A powerful specification for the price and the design is superb, but poor battery life severely dampens its appeal
SCORE
PRICE £1,750 (£2,100 inc VAT) from razer.com
We tested the fully loaded Quadro Studio Edition of the Razer Blade 15 earlier this year ( see issue 308, p56), but the Base model goes back to relative basics. The key word there being “relative”: this is still a powerful laptop, based on Intel’s six-core Core i7-10750H processor, 16GB of dual-channel 2,933MHz DDR4 memory and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics.
I ran the machine through a variety of our benchmarks and it performed brilliantly across the board; you can see precisely how it compares to the new Dell XPS 15 using the graphs on p49. It falls behind the Gigabyte Auros 15G ( pcpro. link/313gig) in the gaming tests, but that’s because the Auros uses RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics. If you want the 2070 Super, you’ll need the Advanced version of the Razer Blade 15 – and have to pay another £550.
When you can get playable frame rates in AAA games by dropping settings – for instance, reducing Super Sampling from 2x to 1x in Hitman 2’ s Mumbai benchmark doubled its average from 36fps to 72fps – you have to wonder if it’s worth the money. Without ray tracing, it hit 120fps in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and even with this enabled it managed 98fps with DLSS switched on.
The fans stay quiet most of the time, although you’ll be in no doubt when the CPU and GPU are working hard because they ramp up to maximum. That’s one consequence of such a slim machine, and this is the most attractive gaming laptop you can buy. It weighs a mere 2.1kg and measures 19.9mm thick, which isn’t much more than the equally gorgeous 16in MacBook Pro ( see issue 305, 05, p52 p52).
You should hould take note of f other differences ences between een the Base version ion of the Razer r Blade 15 and its Advanced brother. her. First up, connectivity. There are two USB-C ports on each machine, with Thunderbolt 3 on the right, USB 3.2 Gen 2 on the left. On the Base model, though, neither can be used to charge the machine, which is disappointing if you keep it connected to your monitor via USB-C all day.
These USB ports are supplemented by three further USB-A ports, all USB 3.2 Gen 1 (maximum 5Gbits/sec) – two on the right, one on the left – and a Gigabit Ethernet socket, which you don’t get on the Advanced model. There’s also a full-sized HDMI output on the right edge.
However, the Advanced variant has a better vapour-chamber cooling system than the Base model and a slightly larger battery.
“What hurts is that this is, in most other respects, a great laptop. It’s achingly gorgeous, quick, light and even reasonably good value”
That, it turns out, is a pain. The Base model’s 65Wh battery meant it only lasted 4hrs 29mins in our videorundown test, so you’ll need to lug around the meaty power adapter.
The other key difference is the screen, which jumps up to 300Hz on the Advanced Blade. The 144Hz 1080p display in the Base model is fine but not great; we’d prefer a 1440p resolution for office work, but it’s sharp at normal viewing distances and has a decent 377cd/m² peak brightness. It has a relatively limited gamut of 87.1% sRGB coverage (90.3% volume), but an average Delta E of 1.94 shows colour accuracy.
The keyboard is similarly middle of the road: it has a shallow action but is comfortable and has no annoyingly placed keys. There’s RGB backlighting too, but the Base model doesn’t have the Advanced model’s per-key customisation. You can turn the whole keyboard one colour, or have it pulse or cycle through the colours, but you can’t highlight the WASD keys in one colour and have the rest show another. The touchpad is much better: it’s enormous, measuring 130mm wide and filling the wristrest almost from top to bottom at 80mm in height.
So where does this leave the Base Razer Blade 15? It can’t be a goanywhere laptop because of its limited battery life, in which case what’s the point in having a laptop that combines power and portability so beautifully? What hurts is that this is, in most other respects, a great laptop. It’s achingly gorgeous, quick, slim, light and even reasonably good value. If its battery life had been a couple of hours longer, it might have won an award. As it is, this version of the Razer Blade 15 loses out to rivals such as the Dell XPS 15.
SPECIFICATIONS
Six-core 2.6GHz Core i7-10750H processor 16GB DDR4-2933 RAM 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics 15.6in non-touch IPS display, 1,920 x 1,080 resolution 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD 720p webcam 2x2 802.11ax Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 Thunderbolt 3 USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 2 x USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 3.5mm jack 65Wh battery Windows 10 Home 355 x 235 x 19.9mm (WDH) 2.1kg 1yr limited warranty