The Razer Blade 15 Advanced model is a premium gaming laptop, but there are some important
things you need to know before you consider it, let’s discuss.
The Blade 15 is available in either the base model, or the advanced model which has higher
specs, and that’s what we’re looking at here.
The specs in my unit are at the higher end of what’s available, but you can check out
others and updated prices linked in the description.
Like many others from Razer, the Blade 15 advanced is a solid aluminium unibody design
with a clean matte black finish.
The build quality feels excellent, though the edges along the front could feel a little
sharp depending on the angle I rub up against them.
Razer lists the weight as 4.7 to 4.9 pounds, or 2.14 to 2.2kg, and mine was on the lower
side of that range, I suspect the optional glass OLED panel weighs more.
It’s definitely on the thinner side for a 15 inch gaming laptop with these specs inside,
the overall footprint is quite portable, and this results in 7mm thin screen bezels on
the sides.
Mine has a 15.6” 1080p 300Hz display, but it’s also available with a 4K OLED option.
Unfortunately there’s no G-Sync, however we do have the option of disabling Optimus
after a reboot for increased gaming performance, but there’s no advanced optimus here.
I measured the screens average grey-to-grey response time at 3.8ms, there’s a link in
the description if you need an explanation on these numbers.
This is a great result when we compare it against other gaming laptops, just a little
behind the ideal 3.33ms needed for a 300Hz panel.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 98% of sRGB, 70% of NTSC, 76% of AdobeRGB
and 76% of DCI-P3.
At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 278 nits in the center and with a 740:1 contrast
ratio, so decent colour gamut but not quite as bright as I’d like.
Backlight bleed was minor in this worst case, I wasn’t able to notice the glow spots when
viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptops and panels.
There was some flex to the screen, but it was on the lower side owing to the metal lid.
There was also some flex to the keyboard when pushing down hard, but no issues at all during
normal use, overall it felt fairly solid due to the metal unibody design.
There’s a 720p camera above the display in the middle, and it’s got IR for Windows
Hello support which I found to work well.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like on the Razer Blade 15 Advanced,
so yeah not great compared to most others I’ve recently used.
The keyboard has per key RGB backlighting which illuminates all keys and secondary key
functions.
Effects and customizations can be made through the included Razer Synapse software.
It seems to have about 16 levels of key brightness, and this can be controlled by holding function
and pressing the F10 and F11 keys.
Typing took me a little getting used to, and I’m not really sure why, but it felt fine
after a bit of use, the only thing I didn’t like was the small up and down arrow keys.
Here’s how typing sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
There are front facing speakers on either side of the keyboard, and although they look
impressive compared to others I didn’t think they were that amazing, perhaps a little above
average with some bass.
They sounded quite loud at max volume despite measurements not really reflecting this, which
I suppose is simply due to their placement, and the latencymon results were looking alright.
The power button is found towards the top of the right speaker, which I preferred compared
to others that have it as part of the keyboard, so far less chance of mispressing it.
The glass precision touchpad clicks down anywhere and is one of the best I’ve used.
It’s quite large and makes use of the available space well, and it just feels extremely smooth
and nice to press.
The black matte finish makes the Blade quite the fingerprint magnet, even light touches
show up easily.
It’s not too hard to clean as a smooth surface, but occasionally I had to give it some extra
elbow grease.
On the left from the back there’s the power input, two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, USB
3.2 Gen2 Type-C port and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
Hardware Canucks noted in their review that the power cable can cover the USB slot, but
like if that’s an issue just don’t plug it in that way.
I liked the right angled design as it gets the cable running straight out the back and
out of my way.
On the right from the front there’s a full size UHS-III SD card slot, I’m glad to see
that here, a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C port, third USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port, HDMI 2.0b output
and Kensington lock.
The blade can also be charged with either Type-C port, and both also offer DisplayPort
support.
Both Type-C ports along with HDMI connect directly to the Nvidia GPU, bypassing the
Intel iGPU, no surprise there as we can disable optimus.
The back appears clean, until we look underneath, we can see the air exhaust vents are hidden
back here, meanwhile the front is clean with just a status LED on the right and a gap to
get your finger in to open the lid.
The razer logo on the lid lights up green, it’s separate to the screen's backlight
so it stays on when the lid is closed, and I didn’t see a way of modifying it through
software.
Underneath is also pretty clean, just some air intake vents towards the back directly
above the fans and rubber feet down the front and bottom which did a fair job of preventing
sliding around when in use.
Getting inside was easy enough after removing 10 screws with a TR5 bit, and the 4 down the
front are shorter than the others.
Inside we’ve got the battery along the front, a single M.2 storage slot above it on the
left, two memory slots in the middle, WiFi 6 card towards the right, and the vapor chamber
cooler up the back.
Unlike some others with this same CPU like the Lenovo 7i, Razer is running the memory
at DDR4-2933 rather than 3200 speed, and I wasn’t able to change this in the BIOS.
The advanced model of blade 15 is powered by a 80Wh battery, and I’ve tested it with
the keyboard lighting off, background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness.
The results seem reasonable for a laptop of this spec, lasting for just over 7 hours in
my YouTube playback test.
I’ve also tested it but with Optimus disabled, and it was now lasting for about half as long,
3 and a half hours in the same test as the Nvidia graphics uses more battery.
Let’s check out thermals next.
I’ve got a whole video covering this topic in depth linked in the description, I’ll
just summarise the important parts here.
The Razer Synapse software has a default mode called balanced, but you can also select custom
which lets you modify the CPU and GPU performance independently of each other.
The CPU can be toggled between four levels, low, medium, high and boost, while the GPU
has three modes, low, medium, and high.
It doesn’t seem that we get fan control in custom mode, though we can change it a
little in the default balanced mode if we set it to manual.
None of these modes applied any overclocks to the GPU, however the Blade does make use
of Nvidia’s new Max-Q dynamic boost, but that said I never saw it boost above 90 watts
with a GPU only load running.
I haven’t tested undervolting, as I’m using the latest 1.04 BIOS at the time of
testing which has apparently disabled this.
I didn’t test the older BIOS, but could at least confirm that it’s disabled in the
current verison with no option in the BIOS to enable it.
The idle temperatures were ok with a 21 degree Celsius room, stress tests were done with
Heaven and Aida64, while gaming was done with Watch Dogs 2.
Temperatures increase in the higher performance modes, and there was some thermal throttling
with the CPU Boost mode in use.
We can see how the power limits are modified with these different modes here, so never
above 90 watts on the 2080 Super Max-Q which was hit with the GPU set to high, and around
mid 50s for the CPU best case.
These are the clock speeds seen from these same tests, pretty similar to the Lenovo 7i
with the same processor best case not counting its undervolted results.
CPU only performance was where I noticed an issue.
With a CPU only stress test running and the GPU now idle, we’re seeing 55 watts being
hit in the best case boost mode, pretty similar to what was possible with the GPU active in
the results we just looked at.
This does mean that it’s not getting hot when we’re smashing the processor though,
but this comes at the expense of less performance, we’re only just hitting 3.2GHz over all
8 cores in this test which is honestly quite weak.
This becomes clear when we look at how the Blade compares against other laptops.
Keep in mind that this is an 8 core laptop, but the multicore result is more in line with
what we’re seeing from 6 core options.
The single core result is at least better than those 6 core options, but when compared
to most of the other 8 core laptops above it’s still not anything special.
Most other laptops will boost the processor higher when the GPU isn’t using power and
creating heat, but that’s not the case here.
The keyboard area never felt hot, though the wrist rest was warmer than many other laptops
when under load, which is likely due to the metal unibody design which conducts the heat.
It did feel quite hot right up the back under the screen, but you don’t need to touch
there so it shouldn’t be an issue, let’s have a listen to fan noise.
It was just audible when idling, but even worst case it’s not as loud when compared
to many other laptops that I’ve tested.
Now let’s check out how well this higher end configuration performs in games and compare
it with some other laptops.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the Blade highlighted in red.
The average frame rate was quite decent when compared against others, it’s the highest
result I’ve got from a 90 watt GPU so far, and this is likely due to the option of being
able to disable optimus.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This time the Acer Triton 500 with last gen CPU and GPU was a little ahead, though this
test is more processor intensive and the last gen Triton 500 has a CPU undervolt applied
by default out of the box, and I suspect this is what’s giving it the edge.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset.
This time the lower wattage 2080 Super Max-Q in the GS66 was 1 FPS ahead, though it does
have a higher tier i9 processor with higher power limit, either way not too different
all things considered.
I’ve tested the blade 15 advanced in 20 games at all setting levels, check out the
card in the top right corner or link in the video description if you want to see results
in more games.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K, and the blade
15 wasn’t doing as well as expected, my older Y540 with 6 core i7 and 1660 Ti is doing
better here.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark which also accounts for
things like live playback rather than just export times.
Again the blade wasn’t as good when compared to others with higher specs, the exception
being the MSI Creator 17 which has a lower result too.
In Adobe Photoshop the blade is now scoring quite poorly, and this is because this is
a processor intensive test.
As discussed earlier, processor performance is lower compared to alternatives, and that’s
being reflected here.
In a workload that’s more GPU heavy like DaVinci resolve though, the blade is scoring
much better and is closer to the top of the graph as the processor seems to matter less
here comparatively.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used the OpenVR benchmark to test the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, and the Blade was doing
alright, near many other 2080 and 2080 Super machines, a little ahead of MSI’s GS66,
likely as that one has a lower 80 watt power limit, regardless no issues running VR on
this hardware.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, and the results were decent,
not super amazing for the writes though but pretty good.
The SD card slot is basically maxing out my V90 card, which is great to see, and the card
clicks in and sits most of the way into the machine.
For updated prices, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US the configuration I’ve tested here goes for $2800 USD, but
there are also much cheaper options depending on the specs you’re after.
Meanwhile here in Australia we’re looking at around $6000 AUD for the top end spec,
so quite an expensive option.
With all of that in mind let’s conclude by summarising the good and bad aspects of
the Razer Blade 15 advanced model to help you decide if it’s worthwhile.
Razer still has one of the most premium looking and feeling gaming laptops on the market,
the all metal body and clean matte black finish is iconic for them at this point.
The gaming performance is quite impressive when you consider that it’s just 0.7”
thick, and the fans don’t get as loud as many alternative options, but this combination
comes along with some compromises.
The first is that there’s just one M.2 slot available inside for storage, making the upgrade
process more challenging compared to just installing another SSD.
The next is the performance, despite having Nvidia’s Max-Q dynamic boost I wasn’t
seeing much boosting.
Performance in processor intensive workloads was also lower compared to most others, as
Razer is limiting CPU performance to the same levels regardless of whether or not the GPU
is active, despite there being thermal headroom available.
Technically they could change this in a future BIOS update, and I hope they do as it would
greatly improve performance in many tasks such as rendering and editing, though given
undervolting was removed in a recent BIOS update perhaps it’s wishful thinking to
hope for changes that improve performance.
The screen was decent in terms of response time and colour gamut, though a little lower
in terms of brightness and contrast, but there is the OLED option for creators.
It’s good that we’ve got the option of disabling optimus to boost performance, but
next time I hope we see advanced optimus added so we can avoid rebooting, and G-Sync would
have been a nice bonus at this price.
The camera was pretty bad, granted that’s kind of par for the course with most gaming
laptops.
The touchpad was excellent, keyboard good, and speakers alright.
The blade 15 isn’t the most powerful, but was nice to use as a laptop during my testing,
and as mentioned I think there’s some room for future improvements.
If you work on processor heavy tasks you’ll want to consider looking elsewhere, but as
far as gaming goes, if you can get by without G-Sync it does run games well.
Let me know what you thought about Razer’s Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop down in the
comments, and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future laptop reviews and
tech videos like this one.