Razer has finally made the move over to AMD’s new Ryzen processors with their new Blade
14 gaming laptop.
My Blade 14 is in the mail and should be here very soon, and I plan on comparing it against
the ASUS Zephyrus G14 to find out who does the best 14” gaming laptop, so make sure
you’re subscribed for that comparison as well as my Blade 14 review.
As you can probably tell by its name, the Blade 14 is a 14” laptop, however on paper
the specs are kind of overkill.
It’s got an 8 core Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, yes you heard correctly, HX rather than the lower
powered HS versions we typically see in smaller machines, as well as up to Nvidia RTX 3080
graphics, making this the most powerful 14” laptop I’m aware of.
Now obviously in a smaller 14” laptop like this we are expecting lower power limits,
so I asked Razer about what we would expect, and I was told that the GPU would have a 100
watt power limit.
Although that’s with dynamic boost, so probably 80 or 85 watts as a base plus 15 or 20 watts
for 100 total, so definitely not the full 150 plus watt RTX 3080.
The minimum for a 3080 according to Nvidia’s spec sheet is 80 watts, so absolute worst
case that’s what I’d be expecting here.
It’s not just that 3080 option though, the Blade 14 will also have RTX 3060 and 3070
options too, and that 3080 is with the 8 gig VRAM rather than the 16 gig VRAM option that’s
available.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the CPU power limits of that Ryzen 9 5900HX, but I
was told that it should significantly exceed the 45 watt TDP in a CPU only workload.
From my understanding, Razer only plan on selling it with the Ryzen 9 5900HX.
I don’t think there’s going to be a cheaper Ryzen 7 5800H model.
I’m not sure exactly why or if this will change, because they could probably offer
most of the performance with the 5800H for less money.
As I’ve shown in this video here, there HX is a better binned part and it can perform
better with the same amount of power, so it might just be that Razer want the best power
possible in that 14” form factor - but again we’ll see just how well that machine actually
performs when it arrives here for review.
I also asked if the Blade 14 was stuck with optimus or if we would get a MUX switch to
turn it off, and I was told that it was optimus only, however Razer did confirm that the display
outputs will connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, meaning an external screen should
give a performance boost in games, so I’ll definitely test that out too once the laptop
arrives.
For screen options there are 1080p 144Hz as well as 1440p 165Hz options.
Both panels come color calibrated and somehow they’re using AMD’s FreeSync premium despite
it using Nvidia graphics, so I’m not too sure how that would work, as up until this
point we’ve only seen FreeSync premium in the Radeon graphics options.
In typical Razer style the Blade 14 uses a vapor chamber cooler.
Inside there’s one M.2 slot for storage, one slot for the Wi-Fi card, and unfortunately
RAM is soldered to the motherboard, presumably as it just uses less space.
Now while that kind of sucks for upgradeability I do get it, but what I don’t really get
is they’re limiting it to a 16 gig configuration.
I don’t think there’s a 32 gig option at the moment.
I don’t know, I guess I’m just more fine not having the option of upgrading the memory
if I can at least buy my laptop with a higher amount if I’m going to be stuck with it.
Like Razer’s other gaming laptops, the Blade 14 has an all aluminum chassis with matte
black anodized finish, and it’s also smaller than the ASUS Zephyrus G14 in every dimension.
The Blade 14 has two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports which can be used for charging, two USB 3.2
Gen2 Type-A ports, HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The keyboard has per key RGB backlighting as well as front facing speakers on either
side of it, and unlike the Zephyrus G14 competition, there’s a 720p camera above the screen with
IR for Windows Hello.
Perhaps one of the reasons that it’s taken Razer so long to move over to AMD is that
there’s a lack of Thunderbolt support.
Razer do also sell their Core X external graphics enclosure, and given there’s no Thunderbolt
with the Blade 14 as it’s an AMD design it would mean that anyone that’s already
bought into the eGPU ecosystem won’t be able to use it with the Blade 14.
Personally I’m very interested to see how this goes.
I know a lot of people wanted to see a Ryzen based Blade 15, but hey, Blade 14 is a nice
start.
I think the ASUS Zephyrus G14 is the only real competition at the 14” size at the
moment, at least in terms of gaming laptops, and from what I’m hearing so far it sounds
like the Blade 14 is offering a lot of features that the G14 does not have.
Here’s what we’re looking at in terms of pricing for the new Blade 14 in the US,
so on the higher end for a laptop with these specs, which is to be expected given the smaller
size.
Small size plus higher end specs generally equals more dollars, so this isn’t all that
surprising.
I can’t wait to both compare the Blade 14 against the Zephyrus G14 and also just generally
review the new Blade 14.
Again it’s in the mail and should be here very soon, so if you’re new to the channel
make sure you’re subscribed for that upcoming content.
Come and join me in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, and check out some of my other videos over here while you wait, I’ll see
you over in one of those next!