The Razer Blade 15 and 17 Series laptops are the best Gaming Laptops from Razer so far.
They boast of having all the best and the latest laptop technologies to give you the ultimate portable gaming station. All these while still being relatively good at productivity (color sensitive work). This is an in-depth review of the Razer Blade 15 and 17 gaming/productivity laptops.
They both come with the latest 12th Gen Intel H-Series processor. Just to give you a bit of a hype, the performance boost you’re getting this year is way more significant than the previous years.
Even more, there’s a wider range of really good options when it comes to specifications to choose from.
The Razer Blade 15 Comparison an In-Depth Review
Design
The Razer Blade 15 and 17 designs have not significantly changed. They look almost the same as previous models. It’s a super clean design – the Logo being the only thing giving the laptops a gaming vibe. The port line up and positioning is identical in both laptops. On the left hand side you have; the power connector, an RJ45, two USB ports, thunderbolt-4 port and a headphone jack. On the right you have; a HDMI 2.1 port, USB port, another thunderbolt-4 port (on the Razer Blade 17 only), and an SD Card slot.
The keys on the keyboard are bigger with less spacing between them. These makes them a lot easier to type on compared to previous models. In addition, you get Razer Chroma RGB that you can customize per key.
The speakers are razor cut on to the top deck of the chasy for a more seamless look. To make this possible they moved the power button on to the keyboard. This is standard on both laptops.
The Blade 17 speakers were also upgraded to 8 coupled with an improved sound driver to take advantage of all of them. Both laptops have 1080p webcams and they support Windows Hello Facial Recognition for quick logins.
Performance
The performance is really exciting on both models. You get the latest 12th Gen Intel H-Series processors, Fast DDR5-4800MhZ RAMs, the latest NVIDIA RTX 30 Series graphics cards, Fast MVMe SSD cards and so much more. You can check out the different configurations using the links below.
Storage
Both laptops come with at least 512GB fast MVMe SSD cards.Storage is expandable up to 2TB. However, the Blade 17 has an extra slot for expanding your storage even more.
Battery
The Blade 17 comes with an 82Watt hour battery, up from 71Watt hours from the previous model. On the other hand, the Blade 15 comes with an 80 Watt hour battery. This being said, battery life has been awful. I was only able to get an average of on 3 hours of use. The power adapter is fairly compact compared to some others like the ones from MSI.
Connectivity
Both models come with Wi-Fi 6e for the fastest speeds.
Fan Noise
Under complete over-load, the Razer Blade 15 gets 50.9db while the Blade 17 get 52.3db. This is a bit high, but much better than most of the competition.
Max Switch is Here
The Razer Blades 14, 15, and 17 all come with Max-Switch now. For the Blade 15, if you’re switching from optimus and discrete GPU, you have to restart your laptop. You can also do this in the BIOS. For the Blade 17, no restart is required.
The similarities don’t stop there. On the inside, they both have a Vapor chamber cooler. The fans arrangement is the same, with the Blade 17 having an extra fan for the battery.
Our Take
Razer has made some commendable upgrades to their flagship gaming laptop. The Blade 15 and 17 are not exactly the fastest gaming laptops on the market. There are other laptops that are way faster. However, Razer really tried to find the right balance everything; performance, heat and cooling, fan noise, portability, all that good stuff. I really wish battery life was better and hope they plan on improving it in future. Other than that, It’s an easy-to-recommend all-around gaming laptop and it probably deserves your attention and/or consideration.
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