The Razer Blade 15 (2021) Review: Amped Up With Ampere
by Brett Howse on March 11, 2021 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Gaming
- Razer
- Razer Blade
- Ampere
Final Thoughts
It has been a few generations since we’ve taken a look at a Razer Blade, and what once started as a single notebook for the peripheral company has become an entire lineup of devices, hitting various performance levels and price points, while all offering a unified vision and design.
The Razer Blade 15 is the successor to the original Razer Blade, which was a 14-inch notebook. As part of the move to thinner display bezels, Razer redesigned it to fit a 15-inch display in a chassis that was about the same size, and the new design feels fresh and modern. It does not lose its heritage though, and picking up the Razer Blade 15 brought back immediate memories of the original Razer Blade. The company has tweaked the design, but through and through, this is clearly a Razer laptop.
As with any market, there are various price levels, and with premium offerings you expect a refined experience, something where Razer definitely delivers. Although the fundamental look and feel of the Razer Blade 15 is not much different than the original Razer Blade, it is still a well-built, beautiful design, that seems like it is ageless. Razer’s CNC milled aluminum body is strong, feels great in the hand, and the green touches such as the backlit Razer logo on the lid all work well together. Razer occasionally offers choices other than the black anodized finish, and while that is not the case at the moment, hopefully they will offer some additional finishes in the future. The black looks great, but it is a real chore to keep clean.
A premium gaming laptop must also offer high-performance components under the hood, and Razer delivers here as well. Although Intel’s Comet Lake platform is definitely showing its age, the hex-core processor still delivers good performance. Intel has not yet released the 45-Watt Tiger Lake products, so for now, the 10th generation Intel Core is what is available. For gaming, the GPU is the primary focus, and Razer offers the entire range of RTX 30-Series laptop GPUs with the Razer Blade 15, with RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 options. The RTX 3070 in the review unit was able to roughly match the (laptop) RTX 2080 from last year, with less power draw, and a cheaper price. And it's a good fit for the QHD display.
Razer’s display choices are vast as well, with high-refresh IPS models, as well as a UHD OLED option. The QHD model in the review unit offers P3 D65 gamut support, as well as a 165 Hz maximum refresh rate; and while the gamut is not ideal, Razer’s included ICC profile did do a reasonable job with accuracy in the wider gamut. It is hard to harp on companies that are trying to offer wide-gamut support, but Windows 10 just handles them very poorly, which is a real shame. Razer also only offers G-SYNC support (which is also required for Advanced Optimus) on just a single display panel. That is a shame, as G-SYNC is a great feature on any gaming notebook.
If the Razer Blade had a weakness, it would be battery life. Despite the laptop supporting NVIDIA Optimus, which allows the dGPU to be powered down when unneeded, the relatively small battery only provided about five hours of battery life. Several years ago, five hours out of a gaming system would be amazing, but it is definitely not enough to use this untethered for any significant amount of time. Most gaming laptops are still designed to be plugged in for the majority of their usage, and despite the Blade 15 being a relatively thin and light design, it still falls into that camp.
There is a lot to like with the Razer Blade, and there really always has been. It is still one of the nicest Windows laptops around, offering plenty of performance in a sleek and elegant design. Some gaming notebooks are very heavily styled, but Razer has always been much more subtle with the touches, and other than the Razer green logo and USB ports, the Blade 15 is very understated.
None of the Razer Blade 15 models are inexpensive, with the most basic model starting at $1700. There are far less expensive gaming notebooks, especially the Clevo rebrands, which may offer more performance per dollar. But as with any premium device, the other components are where the Razer Blade shines. The build. The styling. The looks. The Razer Blade 15 offers all of that, plus the performance of a RTX 30-Series. Who could ask for more?
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Brett Howse - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Yes there is an entire industry of Clevo rebrands. Cheap. Powerful. Plastic. Heavy.Oxygen12 - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
This review surprised me a little bit.(I am an owner of a 2020 Razer Blade base with a max-q 2070 and OLED screen).
I am less glowing about the battery life, in my personal use, for whatever reason, background processes etc., I never reach four hours of battery life doing standard surfing activities. It's a tradeoff I am OK with, but do wish the life was longer... the battery shouldn't be smaller than the one in the advanced. I just couldn't swing the price of the advanced package overall, although I wish I could have.
Regarding thermals - this is the most surprising topic to me. The laptop is very performant and I like it very much, but the thing gets very hot and loud. I don't have any tests performed, I don't know if it throttles or not. I don't know how many dba it is generating - but the fan noise is very annoying at full and the laptop itself gets very, very warm. After playing Call of Duty black ops for almost 2 hours, I had to stop as the laptop itself was just getting just too warm physically to the touch and was uncomfortable to use.
Packagewise, I think this is still the best product out there - the aluminum chasis is great, the OLED screen is outright amazing and the performance for such a small chasis is phenomenal. That said, if I could have swung it, I would have gotten the advanced.. bigger battery, better cooling, USB-C charging.
Spikke - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - link
I have the 2020 base model with 2070 Max-Q as well. The primary contributing factor of the insane temps was the cpu turbo boost. I disabled that in the BIOS and my peak CPU temp dropped by a little over 20 degrees Celcius while gaming, made a huge difference in overall temps with very little impact to frame rates. Try disabling that and see what kind of difference it makes.Matthias B V - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Really don't understand the use of a 360hz Display. 144Hz great, maybe 240 but anything above is useless - At least on a notebook. And then it is not even bright. Lenovo does a much better job in their Legion 7i where they offer 500 Nits HDR400 240hz display.Anyway would wait for at least for the mid / late 2021 version of the Blade 15 that might come with TigerLake. Comet-Lake is crap and part of the reason runtimes are so bad. Also would prefer a 95Wh battery rather than the 80Wh.
Used to have a Blade 15 Advanced with a 2080 Super but returned it for above reasons. Maybe I give it a try with Alder/MeteorLake + RTX40xx Lovelace as it is on 5nm [No fan of Samsung 10/8nm. Their 7nm EUV would have been ok] and in combination with the much better CPU should provide massive increases in performance and runtime!
Zensation - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
I wish I could post ever email I have, the entire 50 something long list that backdated this comment of absolute crap im having to put up with because their piece of crap blade 15 motherboard failed on the second day of ownership on my 2021 model. I have a 2020 advanced model I bought less than a year ago which the battery has swelled and bent the case to the point of not even being able to use the track pad. Their customer service and product in my opinion is of the lowest grade trash. This was actually purchased on a corporate account as well so guess what now the entire corporation has black balled razer good riddance. Steer absolutely clear of this POS. Yes I registered an account just to call this pos company out.Tomatotech - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
If I was looking at dropping $2200 on a laptop, I’d be comparing this to a MacBook Pro. Runs all of Windows, MacOS and Linux perfectly fine, good battery, amazing resale price making it possibly considerably cheaper than the Razer overall.Graphics not so good but it’s for work not play.
The MacBook Pro is in a funny place right now. The current 16” model runs Windows but you get the overheating power hungry Intel chip. Later this year the new Apple Silicon model will come out and is widely expected to be a giant leap forward for power, battery life, and graphics. As yet there is no indication if it will run Windows though. A cloud-based Windows VM might be a useful backup for using the odd application, or Apple / Microsoft might work out something around Windows on ARM, it’s still unknown.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
You should also compare a panasonic toughbook, since they are also in the same price range.scineram - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Not Cézanne, not interesting.ciparis - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Intel in a laptop in 2021? I'm sorry Razer, but no sale.gijames1225 - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
I've convinced my employer to get me a Rog G14 as my next developer laptop. I'd sell them on one of these instead if I could get one with a 8 core Ryzen processor, but no dice. I just don't see why anybody would go with hex-core i7 when you can get 5800H in the same price bracket, if not cheaper.