Review | Razer Blade 15

LifeisXbox’s Razer Blade 15 review | For someone who games a lot, and who also uses her laptop quite often to play her PC games, it’s silly that I’ve never owned an actual real deal gaming laptop before. Lucky for me, I got the opportunity to try out their newest laptop in the Razer Blade series. Yes, we will be talking about the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model in this particular review! Razer claims that the Blade series laptops are ‘still the best gaming laptops’, so let’s see about that, shall we?

Everyone in the gaming world knows the name Razer, so we know that Razer delivers high-end gaming gear for optimal gaming pleasure. With their newest addition to the collection, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced is said to be the perfect gaming laptop on the go.

TECH SPECS

First impressions

When receiving a new product in your mailbox, I always get super excited. Safe to say that when the Razer Blade 15 came in the mail, I was twice as excited as I usually am. Let’s start with the box in which our brand new laptop arrived. It’s a nice slim but strong paper box, just plain black with the Razer logo on top of it. When you open this box, you’re immediately met with some important text on the inside of the cover. This reads as follows:

#GoGreenwithRazer
Razer’s commitment to sustainability
We believe that giving gamers the unfair advantage shouldn’t come at a cost to the planet, and our switch to greener packaging is just one of the many steps we’ve taken. Going great is a team game – let’s all play our part in changing our habits to help Earth.

Since all know that going greener is important for this planet, and humanity itself, I loved that Razer included this message. I really do hope that they are working hard to make their promises a reality. Anyway, a lot of gamers probably skip over this part, but I do believe this to be quite important as more and more people seek out green organizations to support rather than wasteful ones.

Onto the next part of our first impression experience, shall we? The time has come to actually remove the plastic and behold the beauty of the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced laptop in all its glory.

A fine looking laptop

When my eyes first had the pleasure to see this laptop, I was in awe. The Razer Blade 15 is actually beautiful to look at. It’s a very simple-looking laptop that has a sleek design, black matte colors, and the Razer logo on top of it. I absolutely adored the corners of the Razer Blade 15, and considering what a beast this laptop is, it’s not extremely heavy. You will have to live with fingerprints on that beautiful matte design, and this bothered me a little. Getting used to opening the laptop may take a few tries. It’s not an easy-to-open laptop like those lightweight laptops are. But in all honesty, this does not take away any of its charms as it’s just something you have to get used to.

An absolutely beautiful laptop put into a slim design that reflects the power held inside.

– Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model

The keyboard follows the sleek and simple design without introducing anything groundbreaking in the Razer series. It’s smooth and does what it needs to do. As usual, the keys lights up in your favorite ways and are customizable to enhance your gaming experience. The RGB leds are a must for every gaming keyboard for years, and Razer doesn’t disappoint here. The trackpad works splendidly and is very easy to use. I’m a big fan of touchpads and this one felt extremely smooth.

The main thing: performance

I mentioned it above, but the Razer Blade 15 (Advanced) laptop is a real beast. With its processor, graphical aspects, and storage we have one fine laptop to behold. From your most basic games to the most high-end games, this Razer laptop will run just about everything perfectly, and this on maximum settings. Performance-wise, this model is definitely one of the better choices out there.

The Razer Blade 15 model that we tested had an i7-10875H, an 8-core processor based on the Comet Lake architecture (the next gen of Intel after Comet Coffee). It’s safe to say that this processor ensured smooth gameplay and overall workings of the laptop.

With an RTX 3080 graphics card, you are getting the best gaming CPU out there right now, and definitely explains part of the high price marks for the Razer Blade 15. No wonder playing games on the Razer Blade 15 looks so beautiful and surely raises the bar. Rumors about the RTX 4080 have recently come to the surface, so we’re definitely expecting this newest CPU in the next Razer laptop as well. Display ranges from 144Hz Full HD to 60Hz OLED 4K Touch, depending on what you’re willing to pay.

With fans installed inside the laptop on the left and right sides, you can expect some noise coming from these. At times, this noise was rather loud, while it remained reasonable at other times. Either way, I think it’s safe to say that we would like the fans to be a little less loud, especially the times when it was overwhelming without really having a heavy game on.

Battery

Something I was personally really curious about was the battery life. The main reason to buy a gaming laptop rather than a complete at-home setup, is, of course, portability. So a long-lasting battery life is one of the most important aspects here. The outcome that I came to, left me a bit torn though. After completely charging the laptop, I could use it for about an hour, two at most (but this barely happened, I usually had to charge after one hour). Now, note that this was always during playing games. When doing other things like watching videos or just using social media, of course, your laptop will last a few hours, even though I didn’t reach the seven promised hours. Either way, we’re still talking about a very expensive gaming laptop here, so it will be used for that purpose most of the time. I was thus a bit disappointed by the short run time of the battery.

Still, we have to remain realistic here. The Razer Blade 15 (Advanced) is a very heavy and beasty laptop that can run about any game. It does make sense for the battery to drain rather quickly when you’re performing such heavy tasks. So, the battery life left me a bit conflicted.

I also seemed to be experiencing some problems with glitching when the laptop was charging and I was using it when the charger was plugged in. I didn’t have to look far to see that other people have had similar problems with the flickering of the screen. Taking into account that you can only game for a little over an hour without cable, my gaming sessions were cut rather short every time I used this laptop. I played for an hour, had to charge, wait for it to be done, and then continue. And by that time, I was no longer in the mood to game and just quit gaming for the day most of the time. This doesn’t seem to be a problem with most people purchasing the Razer Blade 15 model, so I’m sure Razer will look at a quick fix for this bug.

Plug it in

I’m happy to report that the Razer Blade 15 (Advanced) model has plenty of ports for you to plug in whatever you need to optimize your gaming experience. In case you missed it in the tech specs, let me refresh it for you. This laptop offers one Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C), which supports 20V USB-C chargers with PD 3.0, has three USB 3.2 Gen 2 (USB-A), a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (supports 20V USB-C chargers with PD 3.0), and has an SD Card Reader, UHS-III and HDMI 2.1 output (Up to 8K 60Hz or 4K 120Hz). Whatever you need plugged in, Razer got you covered on all occasions.

Well, almost. As is with a lot of laptops these days, there is no disc drive present on the side of the laptop. I might be old school to mention this, but I do still appreciate a disc drive in a laptop, and I usually look for a new laptop with one. I know you can buy separate ones nowadays but in my opinion, it’s still worth mentioning. Sometimes you go to fairs or whatever and you pick up an older game on a disc, and you cannot use it because your laptop doesn’t have the drive for it. Again, I do totally understand the decision of Razer to cut the disc driver, this is more of a personal thing :).

It’s getting hot in here

It’s usually my boyfriend who burns easily, but hot damn, this laptop is insanely hot! I honestly ended up playing with a controller as often as I could because the keyboard was so incredibly hot. Just a fair warning that it’s especially the middle part that could easily work as a barbecue since you do feel the ventilators doing their work in the left and right parts of the keyboard. Still, I feel like this cannot be very good for the laptop itself since I have never experienced such an intense heat coming from a laptop before. My work laptop actually gets pretty hot when it’s charging and when I’m using programs like PhotoShop and InDesign, but even this was nothing compared to the flaming warmth the Razer Blade 15 produced. This heath was actually a sharp contrast with the cold metallic feeling that the design of the laptop was giving off, and which I loved so much.

Price

The Razer Blade 15 series starts at € 1899,99. The Advanced model we got to test sets you back € 3,099.99 (Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model – Full HD 360Hz – GeForce RTX 3080 – Black). If you want to go above and beyond, an advanced model with OLED 4K is also available for € 3699,99. These are steep prices, to say the least. However, if you are a gamer that prefers a laptop over an entire setup, you can definitely justify the prices being asked for the Razer Blade 15 models. Now, totally honest here. Personally, I use my boyfriend’s setup, and my own (non-gaming specified) laptop for gaming, and I could not just afford the prices mentioned above. So even though I do believe the price can be justified, because we know Razer delivers quality and gives you a more than decent laptop with the 15 series, it’s definitely not for everyone.

Closing remarks

I was skeptic about the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced model given its very high price, but let’s be honest: you get more than a decent laptop that will handle anything you throw at it with ease. The slim design is absolutely stunning, the GPU is the best one out there, you get a bomb ass processor, and there are plenty of ports available. Given that Razer works on the two biggest issues (the glitching during charging and the keyboard that easily overheats), the Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model is definitely worth it and we can grant it a solid 8.5 out of 10.