Razer Blade 417 review
2020 is gonna be an interesting year for notebooks and I think you'll hear me say that every single time when I take a look at a brand new laptop because recently AMD announced a rise in 4000 series mobile processors and we saw it's blistering performance and then we have Intel striking back with their Tenjin Comet Lake processors which is basically a refresh of ninth generation but it's being launched in a whole new series of notebooks we also have Nvidia announcing the r-tx Super Max new graphics cards which is also supposed to expect or supposed to bring more performance to the gaming notebook space,
the reason why I bring all of this up is because it directly affects how razer is approaching their blade 15 lineup for 2020 unfortunately there are no plans for AMD processors on these new blade notebooks but they are more faster they've got a few key design updates as well as improved displays,
but I am also concerned about a few things which I'll talk about right after a quick message from our sponsor the new corsair k95 platinum RGB xt lets you program the six macro keys on the left to work beautifully with stream deck for endless customization while you stream or gain plus P V T key caps a comfy rest rest and a quality k95 body check it out below ok so what I have in front of me is the blade 15 base model,
now unfortunately I can disclose performance yet because there is a separate NDA for that and the sample that I have over here is a pre-production unit with the Tenjin CPU and in RTX 27 t now do keep in mind that the base model will not feature the r-tx super graphics cards that'll be reserved for the advanced model but until we can talk about performance let's go over some of the changes Razer has done externally and internally to the blade 15 lineup let's start with the exterior it looks pretty much the same compared to last year's model they're using the same CNC aluminum mill chassis and it's a little bit thicker compared to the advanced model but you do get a Gigabit Ethernet port it,
also weighs a bit more than the advanced models so 5 pounds versus 4.6 opening it up you're greeted with the same keyboard layout except they have separated the arrow keys from the shift key so you don't have to worry about mixing it up but I gotta say that is the longest shift key that I've ever seen on a note we've all complained about that terrible right shift key but now it's just super-sized so there's that another thing,
I need to mention is Razer is keeping the same keyboard switches as the previous generation which is very unfortunate because of one of my biggest pet peeves about the blade 15 lineup are those key switches because they don't really provide adequate amount of travel distance or good feedback compared to the competition from legion from gigabyte and of course we have ROG notebooks coming with better keyboards.
these days so I really wish the Razer improved on that part but they decided to stick with what they have the trackpad remains the same - but why change a good thing right I mean honestly this is still one of the best track pads around these new laptops feature the latest tangent age series processors,
but on the base model you are getting the six core 12 thread core i7 10 750 H CPU with 16 gigabytes of RAM in dual channel running at slightly faster speeds compared to last year's model the GPU config is pretty much the same – so it starts with a 16 60 Ti and then you can upgrade to an RT X 20 60 or an RT X 2070 these storage gets a little bit of a bump so it starts at 256 gigabytes of storage and then there's a flat toe gig option as well however they did eliminate the extra - an F inch one terabyte drive on these base models,
but they've replaced it with an additional open m2 slot so I think that is a good trade-off but what do you guys think okay so I do need to address the lack of AMD on these systems you see Razer is looking into adding AMD on their future of blade notebooks it's just that you can't magically snap your fingers and include these new processors into existing notebooks and come up with a whole new series of MV laptops because if you think about it it requires a lot of engineering design changes and most importantly a lot of money
and for a small notebook manufacturer like razer it just wasn't a feasible thing to do to include these new processors however if there is demand for these new Rison CPUs it'd be crazy for a razer to not add AMD on their future blade notebooks later down the road back to the video moving on to the display razors offering a couple of options this time so the default spec comes with a 1080p 140 Hertz matte screen that covers 100% srgb but if you are looking for a little bit more color accurate screen razor is offering a 4k OLED option that covers 100% DCI p3 the model that I have here has that 4k OLED option
and it looks incredible guides it's super bright compared to my old blade 15 advanced model with a 240 Hertz display and the colors well obviously they're vibrant with deeper blacks honestly if you're looking for a color accurate screen this is in but you are gonna be paying a pretty big premium for it now the starting price for the base model is sixteen hundred dollars and for that you get the new six court engine CQ 16 of ram at 1660 TI 256 gigs of storage and that 1080p 144 it's display when you add $300 to that you get an RT X 2060 twice a storage and if you add an extra hundred dollars they'll bump you up to an RT X 2070 and finally there's that 4k all that screen
that's right it's next for $300 so a fully kitted out blade 15 base model it's gonna set you back $2,300 to be perfectly honest with you I am NOT impressed with razors pricing strategy here because it looks like they didn't look closely at what the competition was offering I mean look over these past few years the blade 15 series has been known to offer great build quality and portability and they managed to pack some pretty impressive specs into a fairly slim chassis
but when you look at the competition especially from what AMD is offering with the rise in 4000 series on something like these Zephyrus g14 paired with in RTX 2060 you're only paying less than $1500 so paying $1600 for a 1660 ti or $1,900 for RTX 2060 idea it's just gonna be a really hard sell for razor guys but there is one possibility though performance on GPUs and CPUs are dependent on thermals so the temperatures on the right spot then clock speeds would increase which means that razor manages to cool all the components inside the hardware then the gtx 660ti model could compete against some RT x 2060 based notebooks but that's a long shot that's a really long shot we really have to evaluate it once,
we get our hands on the production Sample but we'll just wait and see moving on to the blade 15 advanced models razor is still gonna be using the same chassis the keyboard layout has been updated just like the base model with that middle finger of a shift key I do want to mention that you still get razor's chroma lighting on the advanced models versus the single zone on the base model chroma certainly takes the edge here because it's brighter and it looks a lot better than the base the biggest improvement under the hood is of course the updated tension h-series CPU but this time they opted for the core i7 10 875 h8 cord 16 thread processor instead of B 12 third processor that's really good news for creators or anyone who needs more power in a fairly thin chassis and videos Super Max Q GPUs have,
also made their way into the advanced models the storage pretty much remains the same starts at 512 but they've added a one terabyte option as well the IO has been refined a bit so they've ditched the mini displayport for a USB type-c 3.2 gen 2 port and finally finally finally Razer has included a full size UHS 3 card reader they've heard my prayers that's the one thing that I've been missing out on the blade 15 model and glad that they've included that I don't have to worry about dongle anymore.
#gaming #pcgaming #laptops #laptopscreen #desktop
The display Razer decided to offer a 300 Hertz 1080p IPS type panel now just a little history lesson on IPS technology since I think it's important so even though Razer is technically using a nhigher quality in plane switching panel they can't mark it as IPS unless if those panels are from LG and the reason for that is LG holds a trademark for IPS and they've been coming hard down on companies who use that exact same name,
so while plenty of notebook manufacturers come up with great in plane switching LCD panels they just can't mark it as IPS because of LG damn LG being super shady anyways let's quickly talk about expected performance so on these notebooks expect maybe five to ten percent improvement over last gen specifically on the base model now even though they're using the tension CPUs I don't think it shouldn't make a huge difference because they're technically the same CPUs except with higher boost frequencies however on the advanced models the inclusion with the 16 threaded processor should be a game-changer especially when paired with the new r-tx supermax cute graphics cards now I have to be perfectly transparent.
I've been using the Blaine 15 advanced primarily as my editing machine for the past year or so producing most of these videos for Hardware Canucks so I'm really looking forward to testing out the performance of these new CPUs and if I'm getting more performance for basically the same price it's a win-win the advanced model starts at $2,600 so the same price as last gen you get the new 300 Hertz 1080p display r-tx 2070 max Q 16 gigabytes of RAM 500 gigs of storage and that new 8 core Intel CPU the RT X 20 80 Super Max Kovarian goes for $3,000 but in addition to that you get twice a storage and that 4k all adoption is a whopping $3,300,
that is a lot so there's everything that you need to know about the blade 15 line up for the rest of the year I can't wait to compare these new eight core Intel processors against what AMD is offering with the rise of 9 series but yeah that's that's pretty much it let me know what you guys think about the new lineup from razer stay safe stay healthy a lot more content coming your way my new board with harbor connects thank you so much for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.
More: Top 10 gaming laptops for 2020
#gaming #pcgaming #laptops #laptopscreen #desktop
Share with your friends if you found this poet helpful.