Razer have made some nice improvements to their
Blade gaming laptop lineup this year, let’s find out what’s new!
Starting out strong, Razer has added a MUX switch to the Blade 14.
The Blade 14 is still a relatively new model and only launched last year, and was my personal
favorite 14” gaming laptop from 2021, and this welcome change should allow us to get a speed
boost in games by disabling optimus, and that’s before we even consider the new specs inside.
This year, the Blade 14 has been upgraded to the latest that AMD and Nvidia have to offer.
For CPU we’re getting AMD’s new Ryzen 9 6900HX 8 core processor, and for graphics we’ve still got
Nvidia’s RTX 3060, while the 3070 and 3080 options have been refreshed to the new Ti versions,
so both more CPU and GPU power this year, two things I can always get behind.
The storage will be faster this year too, as AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 processors give
us PCIe Gen 4 support, something Ryzen 5000 didn’t have last year,
and the Blade 14 ships with a 1TB Gen 4 SSD, though it’s upgradeable to 2TB.
Memory is still soldered to the motherboard unfortunately, I guess that’s just the way for
a smaller design like this, but it has been upgraded to the latest DDR5-4800.
The biggest issue I’ve got with it is that it’s still only available with a 16 gigabyte
configuration. Now while I still think 16 gigs is perfectly fine for most games today,
it’s kind of hard to justify buying a laptop today that’s stuck to 16 gigs when we have no
idea how games will perform years from now. And of course there is also this mystical world outside
of gaming where people do need more memory than 16 gigs. I had plenty of comments on my original
Blade 14 review saying that people weren’t going to buy it simply due to the 16 gig of
memory limitation. So I know that’s still going to prevent a lot of people buying it this year,
especially when we consider that Alienware’s new x14 gaming laptop is available with up to
32 gigs and ASUS’s Zephyrus G14 can technically go up to that as well.
The screen options seem to be the same as last year, at least in terms of specs on paper,
maybe these will be newer panels with faster response times, we won’t know
until I get them in for testing, so make sure you’re subscribed for that.
Now the screen specs only seem to list FreeSync rather than G-Sync and
that’s interesting with the addition of the MUX switch, because in order to actually use
FreeSync you need the Radeon integrated graphics as part of the processor. But
if you use the MUX switch to turn that off well presumably you just don’t get FreeSync anymore,
so it sounds like it’s going to be a bit of a tradeoff. Either you get FreeSync
for tear-free gaming or you get the speed boost with the iGPU disabled, it’s one or the other.
The camera above the screen also gets an upgrade, from 720p last year to 1080p this year,
and it still has IR for Windows Hello face unlock.
The port layout is the same as last gen, and the battery size is the same too.
It may still be possible that battery life ends up being better with this year’s Blade 14 over last
year’s if AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 processors actually end up being more power efficient. Now this year’s
Blade 14 will start out at $2000 USD and will be available for pre-order from February 10th.
I guess now we’ll make our way up from smallest to largest, so let’s get into the Blade 15 next.
It’s been refreshed with Intel’s new 12th gen i7-12800H processor, a 14 core 20 thread part,
so more multi threaded performance than ever
before thanks to the new hybrid architecture of P and E cores.
This also means we’ve got DDR5-4800 memory,
and unlike the Blade 14 this is not soldered and can be upgraded up to 64 gigs.
The GPU options are the same as the smaller Blade 14, RTX 3060 like last year,
while the 3070 and 3080 options have also been refreshed to the new higher Ti options.
Power limits haven’t been specified,
but I’d have to assume that they’re going to be higher than the smaller Blade 14.
These GPUs power either the 1080p 360Hz or 1440p 240Hz display,
though only the latter has G-Sync and advanced optimus,
which also confirms the presence of a MUX switch here as well, as G-Sync doesn't work with optimus.
Now in the meeting I had with Razer they mentioned a 4K 144Hz option, but I’m not seeing that
on the spec sheet for the Blade 15 here, so perhaps that was as mix-up with the Blade 17.
In terms of just overall look and design, I’d forgive you for thinking the newer Blade 15
was the same as last year based on these images because the differences are subtle. Razer says
that the keyboard and keycaps are slightly larger, so some fine tuning to make it less
cramped feeling. The speaker grills are also laser cut and finer, and there’s a refined hinge design.
The early 2022 Blade 15 will be available some time in Q1, so between now and the start of April,
with the following prices for these different configurations. So yeah,
definitely not cheap budget friendly stuff as we’ve come to expect from Razer. This
shouldn’t really come as a surprise as they do position themselves as a more premium option.
Now next up is the larger Blade 17, which also gets a nice spec refresh.
Again we’re looking at a 14 core 20 thread Intel processors here. i7-12800H in most instances,
but also overclockable i9-12900HK for the highest specced configuration.
The Blade 17 has upgradeable DDR5 memory, and again the GPU options start at RTX 3060 and go
up. Razer is also using the newer 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti here too.
The blade 17 has four available 17.3” screen options,
including 4K 144Hz, 1440p 165Hz, 1440p 240Hz or 1080p 360Hz, though only that
240Hz option offers G-Sync, but again the presence of this confirms a MUX switch,
which I’d have to imagine is still available regardless of panel choice.
The other changes I mentioned to the Blade 15 with the bigger keycaps,
laser cut speaker grills and improved hinge also apply here too.
Apparently the Blade 17 now has 8 speakers, up from the previous 4,
though I can’t find them all just based on the provided renders.
A welcome change is the increase in battery capacity, up from 70Wh to 82Wh,
so hopefully more battery run time, though that will of course depend on how power hungry the new
CPUs and GPUs are. Again make sure you’re subscribed for all my upcoming testing!
All new Blades this year also come with an extended 2 year warranty on the battery,
so it sounds like Razer have been made aware of those battery issues that users have been
reporting. Whether or not they’ve actually done anything to improve the battery thought,
I’m not sure, but I suppose a 2 year warranty dedicated to the battery isn’t nothing.
Availability of the Blade 17 is also just listed as Q1 2022,
so sometime before April, and the prices get super expensive
depending on the configuration you’re after. For the maxed out version with
Intel i9 processor and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti graphics you’re looking at $4300 USD - Yikes!
All things considered, I think these are some reasonable improvements to
Razer’s Blade lineup. No complete redesigns or new models this year,
just some decent improvements to the Blade 14, Blade 15 and Blade 17.
You’ll definitely want to make sure you’re subscribed for when I get these laptops in
for testing, but for now you can check out the rest of the laptops coming out
this year in my CES 2022 coverage, so I’ll see you over in another video next.