A Look at the Razer Blade 15in (2020) Quick and frantic

 

 Razer Blade 15in

The Razer Blade 15in is a beautiful and capable laptop, but it is not without flaws.

The Razer Blade 15's understated design has some merit. (2020). Despite the trend of over-the-top features on gaming PCs, Razer has opted to keep the design of its best-selling 2020 refresh largely unchanged, instead focusing on improving the display and the most important performance-related components.

The razor blade 15in laptop (2020) may not look much different from its predecessor, but it is still a very powerful laptop.

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Important information

Compared to the more powerful Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) and the more casual ultraportable Razer Blade Stealth, this laptop falls somewhere in the middle. As such, the 15 is Razer's most cost-effective "proper gaming machine," built to run games nonstop for an extended period of time.

As was mentioned before, there hasn't been much development in terms of design this year, with the exception of a few minor adjustments that I'll discuss below. The specifications have been updated extensively.

The new Blade 15 features an optional 15.6-inch IPS display with a high refresh rate of 144Hz or 300Hz in Full HD resolution, or as a 4K, wide-gamut OLED non-touch or touchscreen display.

On the inside, you can pick between a 256GB or 512GB NVMe SSD, 16GB of system RAM, and either a six-core 2.6GHz Core i7-10750H or an eight-core 2.3GHz Core i7-10875H processor.

Depending on your budget, you can choose between the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, RTX 2070, RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2080, or RTX 2080 Super as your graphics processing unit (GPU). In other words, there is a wide range of options available for different price points.

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Competition and pricing

The Razer Blade is available in either an Advanced Model or a Base Model. The latest games will run smoothly on both, but the Advanced model offers a few additional bells and whistles and a little more processing power.

For this evaluation, I was provided with the Base model, which features a 144Hz Full HD non-touch display. An Intel Core i7-10750H processor running at 2.6 GHz, 16 GB of system memory, a 512 GB NVMe solid-state drive, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics processing unit with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory are contained therein. This model's MSRP is £2,100, however you can save a lot of money by going for the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti instead. As a result, we can offer it for for £1,700.

The newest Dell XPS 15, which we haven't examined yet, is cheaper for a similar set of features, but it's bulkier and heavier than the Blade. This is not a gaming laptop, and it does not have a high refresh rate display as an option.

The Gigabyte Aorus 15G XB, which we examined with a Core i7-10875H, 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, and 512GB of storage for £2,199 (with the ordinary RTX 2070, it's £1,999), is the closest competition we've reviewed so far. This is unmistakably a gaming rig; it sports a mechanical keyboard, outperforms the Blade in most respects, and looks less sleek and bulkier than the latter.

Pros

Fantastically effective minimalism

Fair market value for speculation

Cons

The entry-level model lacks a USB-C port for charging.

Very little battery life

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Specifications and layout

You can declare with absolute certainty that the new Razer Blade 15 is the most aesthetically pleasing gaming laptop available (just as this was true of the previous model). Some competitors offer thinner and lighter cases, but the difference is negligible. The Blade is only slightly thicker and heavier (at 2.1 kilogrammes) than the same attractive, but more expensive, 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Nonetheless, there are notable distinctions between this model and the previous 2019 Blade machine, and between the Base model and the Advanced models, not all of which are immediately obvious.

Let's start with the network. This year, the number of USB-C ports available on the Base model has been increased from one to two. One is a Thunderbolt 3 port (max 10Gbits/sec), and the other is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. Unfortunately, if you leave your laptop permanently attached to your monitor via USB-C all day, the Base model's ports cannot be utilised to power the device. That's a perk only to the Advanced version, and I think it's unnecessary.

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Display

The picture quality on the Base model's 144Hz 1080p display is fine, but it won't blow your mind. At typical viewing distances, it's razor-sharp, and it can get very bright, too.

It may be viewed outside in the shade if you want to work or play games on your patio, and indoors at a maximum of 377cd/m2. With a sRGB gamut coverage of 87.1% (out of a total of 90.3% by volume), colours are represented accurately, and there are no major issues with colour accuracy in sRGB, as the average Delta E is only 1.94. (the lower the better).

The screen isn't as good as the one on a MacBook Pro, but it also doesn't do anything wrong. While its colour reproduction isn't quite as sharp as the Gigabyte Aorus 15G's 240Hz display, its brightness more than makes up for it.

SEE ALSO : ASUS ROG ZEPHYRUS GX501 GTX 1080 MAX-Q GAMING NOTEBOOK

 A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Typewriter and mouse

The keyboard and touchpad don't bother me either. The former is more preferable over the 2019 model in terms of comfort and practicality, despite its shallow key action. The right Fn key is no longer problematic, as it was last year; it has been moved from its previous location in the far right corner to its new location between the Alt and Ctrl keys.

The keyboard, as could be expected, also features customizable RGB lighting. It's important to note that the Advanced model's per-key customization options are not available in the Base model. You can change the colour of the entire keyboard, have it pulse or cycle among colours in response to on-screen content (as in the image below), but you can't single out the WASD keys for special treatment.

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Performance

Now let's get down to brass tacks. Is the Razer Blade 15 (2020) any good? The answer is, obviously, very darn well, thanks to the inclusion of the latest 10th generation Comet Lake Intel CPUs and Nvidia's RTX graphics.

The Blade performed exceptionally well in all of the benchmarks I threw at it, ranging from our in-house media transcoding, image conversion, and multitasking tests to a battery of third-party CPU and graphics benchmarks and a selection of real-world gaming benchmarks.

So, it's a little slower computer for gaming and graphics-intensive jobs, but it's faster at CPU-bound tasks than last year's model (since it has a faster CPU). This is because the Nvidia RTX 2080 found in last year's Razer Blade 15 was replaced with the somewhat less powerful RTX 2070 in this year's model.

Since it has the lowest-spec GPU among the 10th-generation gaming laptops we've tested this year, the Razer Blade 15 from 2018 is also the slowest. While the Razer Blade Pro 17 (2020) was equipped with a more powerful RTX 2080 Super, the Gigabyte Aorus we tested only sported a smaller RTX 2070 Super.

A Look at the Razer Blade 15 (2020) Verdict

Is it worth it to purchase one? The key is in the preceding sentence or two. The Blade's short battery life is a major drawback, especially given the device's otherwise impressive portability.

While the Dell XPS 15 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro are both lighter, the difference is minimal, especially when considering the larger 86Wh battery in the touchscreen XPS.

SEE ALSO : razer blade 15 2018 h2

What good is a laptop that so elegantly blends power and portability if you don't use it whenever and wherever you like? Why not go for a bigger, uglier machine that costs less? I'm at a loss for an explanation beyond vanity.

The Razer Blade 15 is otherwise a fantastic laptop, so this is unfortunate. It's as slim and light as a laptop can be with this much power, and its aesthetics are as stunning as its performance. It's also a fair price for what you get. I would be much more optimistic if the battery life had been even a few hours longer than it is now (there is space in the chassis to do so). My current state is one of relative indecision.