Razer Blade 15 is your best bet if you’re looking for the best combination of style, design, and performance. The Razer Blade 15 has the hardware to beat its competitors (CPU, GPU) but falters in terms of aesthetics. While it provides virtually everything users might want from a VR-ready gaming laptop, it fails to be an attractive piece of tech. The glossy all-black look is always nice on paper, but it gets dirty quickly and does not fit well with the all-black interior, which tends to show dust very easily. The double bevel border around the screen gives this laptop a unique aesthetic that separates it from other laptops on the market.
On the right side of the laptop, you’ll find a Kensington lock slot, Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0 output, two USB 3.1 ports, and a headphone/microphone jack. On the left side is another USB 3.1 port and an SD card reader.
The Razer Blade 15 starts at $1000 but can quickly jump up depending on which hardware upgrades are selected. The starting price offers users 16GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM running in dual-channel mode, 256GB PCIe SSD with NVMe support for storage, Intel Core i7-8750H processor with six cores (up to 4GHz), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q 6GB GDDR5 VRAM graphics card and 100W AC adapter.
The other hardware options, such as 32GB of RAM and a GTX 1070 Max-Q 8GB VRAM card, will make the base model Blade 15 quickly jump up to $1500 or more.
After doing its magic to completely drain the battery, we found that we had achieved only five hours and 45 minutes of power on time with Razer’s default “Balanced” power setting (Razer Power Saver defaults at 20% brightness). This result is not great at all, but it gets worse when you consider that gaming laptops need to be plugged into the wall 90% of the time.
Inexplicably Razer decided against using an ethernet jack on this laptop which immediately makes me question their commitment to being a serious gaming laptop. This is a mistake for a few reasons, one of which is that Wi-Fi sucks. It’s always going to be an added layer of cost and complexity when compared with just putting in a simple ethernet port. Find more here https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade
This laptop has plenty of ports which include two 3.1 USB, HDMI 2.0, MiniDisplay, headphone/mic jack, and power in. There is also an SD card reader conveniently located on the left side of the computer next to the trackpad.
The touchpad feels great. It’s smooth and responsive, with its surface resembling that of a MacBook. Both the trackpad buttons are clicky and not too stiff. The feeling you get when clicking them is satisfying.
The keyboard is excellent as well, with deep travel per keystroke, giving it a good tactile feel along with nice feedback upon hitting the actuation point on each keystroke. Razer claims to have used “mechanical key switches” in this laptop, but I’m now convinced they’re using some kind of superior scissor-switch that only feels like a mechanical keyboard because it’s so damn good.
With six cores under its hood, our benchmark results show that Intel Core i7-8750H has enough power for just about any tasks you might throw at it.
The GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q chip is a nice piece of hardware that provides solid performance for all kinds of games, even in high definition, with most detail levels cranked to the max.
Glancing at the numbers from our review unit both on CPU and GPU fronts, it’s clear Razer Blade 15 ticks off all the boxes you’d want from a good gaming laptop. As I’ve been saying throughout this review, though, there are some things that need improvement (durability and battery life) which should be considered before buying this laptop for $1500 or more.
