really drive this point home. Even
if this configuration of the laptop
doesn’t come with a 4K display
attached, it can definitely drive
one via either option – or two
with both.Battery life
One of the major revelations from
this year’s Blade is its startlingly
impressive longevity – that is, by
gaming laptop standards. Sticking
with the same 80Whr lithium ion
battery as last year, Razer was
somehow able to attain an
enormous 87% increase in the
PCMark 8 Battery Life results.
Similarly, the laptop ran an even
more impressive 98% longer in our
local 1080p video playback test.
These numbers bring the Blade
much more in line with rival thin
and light gaming laptops, which
has been a long time coming.
This is, by far, Razer’s most
improved gaming laptop to date.
Both sheer graphical performance
and, unexpectedly, battery life, are
immensely improved.
Razer also took this opportunity
at a refresh to correct the glaring
omission of Windows Hello.
Though the implementation
requires some refining, we
welcome the feature – especially
at this price point.
This may be one of the most
egregiously priced gaming laptops
out there, but Razer has evidently
taken great pains to pack as much
value into the Blade as possible,
making it worth the consumers’
hard-earned cash. If you do end up
dropping the thousands required,
you know you’re getting the
complete package.Egregiously priced, but Razer has
packed much more value into its
high-power laptop than ever.for this much cash, the experience
should be impeccable.
Finally, we’re pleased to see Razer
finally bring Windows Hello facial
recognition to its Blade webcam
array. It’s not the fastest or most
sophisticated implementation of
the feature, being a little more
sluggish than other flagship laptops
we’ve reviewed and blasting a
garish red light in our faces while
scanning. However, it’s still a handy
feature to have, even if it requires
just a little more tweaking.
The Blade keeps the same display
from last year, which is not a bad
thing. With a matte coating that’s
unexpectedly effective at
deflecting glare, this screen may
only be 1080p, but it’s definitely
making the most of it.
Much of this beauty comes
courtesy of the screen’s 144Hz
refresh rate, which smooths out the
animations and motion by
outpacing the frame rates the GPU
inside is capable of. This is the
best-case scenario for Nvidia’s new
ray tracing and deep learning
supersampling (DLSS) techniques
for rendering lighting in games.
Drops in framerates due to these
intense features were rather
buoyed by this refresh rate.
Again, the 100% sRGB color
gamut makes for quite a wide
variety of colours supported at
impressive precision and vibrancy.
The screen calibration done by
Razer on the assembly line helps a
lot as well.Performance
For a laptop with such a steep
price tag, you would instinctively
anticipate excellent all-around
performance, gaming and
otherwise. And, the Razer Blade
unquestionably holds its own
in this department, with
astonishing framerates in someof the newest games. Of course,
straight processor performance
isn’t going to improve much year to
year, especially since this laptop
uses the exact same Intel processor
as before. That’s not a big deal,
since the six-core i7 processor is
more than enough horsepower to
deal with advanced workflows, like
video encoding and other intensive
tasks. And, if it isn’t adequate for
you, you can always upgrade to the
9th-gen CPU.
At this level of power, the Razer
Blade could effortlessly do double
duty as both a creative
professional’s workstation and
a hardcore gamer’s gaming
powerhouse. However, it’s the
laptop’s Thunderbolt 3 and
DisplayPort connectivity that“Razer has packed as much value into the Blade
as possible, making it worth the cash”
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Razer Blade 2019
November 2019 | |^81
Specs as reviewed
Razer Blade 2019
Supplier http://www.razer.com
CPU 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-8750H
GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
RAM 16GB
Storage 512GB SSD
Connectivity 802.11ac Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth 5.0
Weight 2.1kg