- If you ever wanted a Razer Blade laptop, well,
they're gonna make it a little easier for you
by bringing down the price.
This is the base model, the Razer Blade 15.
Today I'm gonna give you a quick review,
and tell you what I think.
Stay tuned.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Alright, we're back from CES 2019,
and there, Razer showed off the Blade 15 advanced model,
which is getting nVidia RTX graphics.
This version though is the base model,
and it still has GTX graphics,
specifically the GTX 1060.
So it's a bit older.
It's a little bit thicker,
but you do get an ethernet port
and some other bells and whistles too.
Starts at $1,599,
but I'm not really sure the value is completely there,
especially when you look at the competition.
Let's go through the specifications
and show you what you get.
Looking at the exterior of the base 15,
it looks just like the regular Razer Blade,
so this is the new squared off design, which I really enjoy.
I think this is just a smarter and more modern look.
You still get the snake logo on the back.
It does glow, so, nothing unique there.
You do pick up a little bit of fingerprints on the exterior.
It's not too bad, though.
Better than in previous years.
But you will have to wipe this down on occasion.
Now looking at the side here,
there's a couple of things to point out.
First of all, this is about two millimeters
thicker than the Razer Blade Advanced model.
Is two millimeters huge?
No.
You do notice it, but that's what you get here.
It's a little bit thicker.
And because of that, though,
you do get a full ethernet port,
which is actually really nice to have
in a 15-inch gaming laptop,
something you don't get in the Razer Blade Advanced.
It does get two USB type As, a headphone jack,
and a barrel charger.
This thing does use a 230 watt charger.
As far as that goes, this is actually a very compact one.
You gotta give Razer credit here.
You gotta carry around a large charger,
this is the one I would wanna carry.
Looking at the right-hand side, you get a Kensington lock,
mini display port, HDMI, USB-A
and a USB type C with Thunderbolt 3.
Looking at the bottom here, a very clean design.
Two intakes for the fans, which are very visible.
And you do have the exhaust over here on top.
Very clean design.
This does use the new vapor chamber design
for cooling the chip set and GPU,
and it seems to work pretty well.
The fans, you will hear them absolutely
when gaming or doing Windows updates,
so this isn't the most silent laptop,
but the fans are much better than previous years.
Alright, now looking at the display,
and this is where things get a little interesting.
So it's a 15.6 inch full HD display.
It is matte.
Non-touch, as Razer only has touch in a 4K model,
which is going to be the Advanced.
Now, this is a 60 Hertz panel.
That bothers me a little bit.
I get it; it's the base model.
If you want higher 144, you have to get the Advanced,
but I feel like 60 Hertz,
especially in the more premium laptops,
it's getting a little old for gaming.
But it's a very good display.
You're talking around 94% SRGB,
which is pretty good for color accuracy,
and around 72% for Adobe RGB.
It's a nice display though.
I like looking at it.
I feel like I could stare at it for hours,
which is gonna be really important
if you're gaming on this for a long time.
Brightness is very even.
And you do get those nice thin bezels
in this new modern design.
You do get a web camera on top here.
No Windows Hello built into this,
so if you've been following our CES coverage,
the new Razer Blade 15 Advanced does have
Windows Hello up here in the top.
This one does not though,
and that's kind of a letdown.
Now turning to the keyboard in the main deck here,
you do get nice large speakers that flank the keyboard.
And, you know, I really like this design.
Razer's always been pretty good with audio here.
And as far as gaming laptops go,
this is, in my opinion,
one of the better audio systems you can get.
Having said that, it's not really perfect either.
So the mids and highs are very good on this,
but there's really no subwoofer built into this,
so you don't get a lot of good lows.
And that's a shame, because at nearly 20 millimeters thick,
there is definitely room in
this chassis to put in a subwoofer
or at least use the body to help resonate audio.
I've seen this in even smaller laptops than this one.
So it's technically possible,
but Razer hasn't done it.
Now, again, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced,
they did tune the speakers
to actually fix that a little bit.
We're not getting that here though.
Very good audio.
Could be better though.
Alright, now looking at the keyboard,
and we do see some design changes here.
So overall, the look and feel of it
is very similar to an Advanced.
It's a very good keyboard.
It's one thing I've always said about Razers.
I just enjoy typing on them.
You do get the full arrow keys too.
Again, super important for gaming laptops.
I think it's a letdown when companies don't do that.
You do get a single zone lighting system here,
so if you're into the Chroma stuff,
you know, it looks great,
but you can't do individual keys.
But as a trade-off, you do get the function keys
lit up with this one, which is something that's just now
coming to the Advanced model, so really good design.
I really enjoy typing on this.
I think it's a great keyboard.
Now looking at the track pad here,
this is one of the largest you'll find on any laptop.
At least a Windows one.
Still pales compared to a Mac.
Very good track pad.
I kinda wish this track pad would just be in all laptops.
Precision, smooth, massive, good palm rejection.
I've had no problems with this track pad.
Just an excellent design.
Alright, let's talk a little bit about specifications here.
You're getting an Intel Core i7 8750 each.
It has a (murmuring) processor.
It's a little bit old,
but boy, it's a performer.
It is six core,
and it does exceptionally well in our benchmark tests.
The GTX 1060, however, is a Max-Q design.
It's still a really good GPU,
and you're gonna be able to get some really good graphics
performance here for pretty much
all the main video games out there.
Obviously a 1070 or 1080 would be better,
and even better than that,
that'll be the new 2060, 2070, 2080.
But you have to shell out a lot more money to get that one.
Now some other changes here, you do get an SSD.
Your choice, 128 or 256.
It's a very good SSD.
We're talking over 3,000 for sequential on reads,
which is exactly what you want.
In addition to that you do get a hard disk drive
with one or two terabytes.
I really appreciate having that.
While having a one terabyte SSD is really nice,
it is easy to run out of space.
Having that hard disk drive is pretty good
for storing a lot of video games,
something you can't do.
But there's a trade-off there as well,
because they gotta fit in the hard disk drive.
Well, the battery's gonna be smaller,
so instead of an 80 watt battery,
you're getting a 65 watt in this version.
That's a pretty good size.
You're not gonna get a ton of battery life out of this.
They're saying around six hours.
It's actually a little bit less
than that in real world usage.
So this is mostly gonna be something
you're gonna want to use plugged in.
When it comes to RAM, you get 16 gigabytes.
It's very good.
You can go up to 32 gigs if you want to.
It is dual channel, after all.
If, however, you wanna go to 64,
well, you're gonna have to go
with the Razer Blade 15 Advanced,
which now can take up to 64 gigs of RAM,
which is pretty awesome.
Let's talk a little bit about pricing here.
So the base model actually starts at $1,599,
although it can go up to $1,799 if you increase the storage.
Their pricing is a little bit high,
but it's not exactly crazy either.
Now, one of my favorite gaming laptops for 2018
was the MSI GS65 Stealth.
Gave it an exceptional review,
and when you compared the pricing to that for $1,849,
or about $50 more than a top version of the base model,
you can get a GTX 1070 and a 144 Hertz display,
that actually makes a huge difference
in performance for an extra $50.
Now when it comes to build quality,
that's where things differ.
If I had to choose between Razer and MSI,
I would actually always go with Razer.
There's just something about these laptops
that just look really nice.
You're going to get very good audio, really good keyboard,
and they just look cool too.
And they don't look crazy
when you can take them to a coffee store
and just use it in public,
well, it's a really nice feature to have.
The MSI GS65, you know, it looks pretty tame,
but this is gonna be a better build quality
and it feels better to use.
And that is a value to some people.
Having said that, if you really value performance,
and you're gonna be staring at a screen all day,
I do think the MSI is gonna be
a little bit better of a value.
Especially since that GTX 1070
outperforms the 1060 by quite a bit.
Okay, let's bring it all in.
So the Razer Blade 15 base, well,
it's not cheap, it's not affordable,
and it's not even the best value out there,
but you are getting that Razer Blade quality.
I think for some people, it's actually worth it.
These are kinda the gaming laptops I prefer to use.
While the MSI actually outperforms it
and it's a better value in some ways,
it's not as cool or as nice to use as the Razer Blade.
Now, two things I'd like to see Razer do to this laptop
is add Windows Hello to the base model.
At least offer the option for a 144 Hertz display.
I think it makes a huge difference in gaming.
And while the GTX 1060 here is limited
to what it can actually output,
still, having that 144 Hertz option is pretty nice.
Overall, though, if you're looking for a real premium laptop
that you don't mind taking around with you
to the coffee place, while this is a pretty solid choice,
if you want the best performance though
and best value, well,
I think there are better options out there as well.
Alright, so there's a quick look at the Razer Blade 15
base model that's now available.
If you want more information about it,
hit the description below.
We will have some links for it.
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Take care, everyone.