Razer Blade 2015 QHD+ Review

[FusionBlitzx]

Hey guys this is my first ever review on the LTT forums and I'm here to give a review on my Razer Blade 2015 QHD+ 256GB laptop. I will break down this review into the following sections: Chassis/Design, Ports, Keyboard, Track pad, Screen, Performance, Heat and Noise, price/value and overall usage experience. Do note that I bought this laptop in Australia for 2,999 so this will impact some parts of the review due to my own perspective coming from Australia.

 

Chassis/Design

The Blade is pretty much a black macbook pro in terms of design. The hinge mechanism is especially similar but everything from the keyboard and the screen resembles that of the macbook pro. Now this is by no means a bad thing as the macbook pro is a very nice laptop in terms of build quality and the Blade pretty much matches this quality which is a very good thing. My only criticism would be the Razer logo on the lid; I find the logo to be a little bit too eye catching and I prefer something a little more subdued but I will attempt to rectify this with my own custom vinyl decal. The chassis is well built and beautiful and the design is not over the top and looks like it it packing some serious power which it definitely does so I have no issues here.

 

Ports

The Blade offers very few ports and this one area where improvements could definitely be made. The Blade has 3 USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI out and a combo mic and speaker jack and that's it. The USB 3.0 ports are a nice green colour and function at max speeds so there are no problems here but I would prefer display port over HDMI and separate mic and speaker jacks as well. Things that could be added would be an SD card reader and an RJ45 connector for lan and with these inclusions the Blade goes from a gaming machine to a productivity machine that games. But at least Razer covered the basics but I would like to see my issues addressed in a future revision.

 

Keyboard

This keyboard is definitely one of the best keyboards you will find on a laptop. The keys have decent travel considering their slim profile and they have a fast rebound speed with some nice tactile feedback. It's comparable to a macbooks keyboard but I would say the Blade has a tiny advantage over the macbooks keyboard just because of personal preference. The layout is very good with the exception of the arrow keys which are squished together thus making the up and down keys smaller than the left and right keys. The backlight is a bright green with 20 levels of brightness levels and the only complaint here is that I would have preferred an RGB backlight.

 

Trackpad

The trackpad here is again comparable to a macbooks with the only key difference being dedicated buttons for left and right click. The trackpad has a nice smooth surface with accurate tracking and the cursor doesn't jump around so this probably the best trackpad I've used on a windows laptop. The left and right click buttons however were rattly and felt cheap compared to the rest of the laptop but they're functional nevertheless.

 

Screen

The screen on the Blade is 3200x1800 IGZO ten point touch display at 14 inches big. The resolution of 1800p is questionable on such a small screen but I can't deny that it looks gorgeous. Everything is nice and sharp while displaying good contrast and viewing angles. Touch on a laptop might seem stupid but in practice it is very useful in conjunction with Windows 8.1. The screen is also glossy with results in vibrant colours but  has the downside of being very reflective. Simply put the screen is just fantastic on the Blade especially considering that windows scaling has come a long way and is actually usable now.

 

Performance

This laptop is very powerful. It packs an i7 a 970m and 16GB of RAM. Gaming on this laptop is a treat but you will have to turn down your resolution to 1600x900 (half of 3200x1800) to max out your settings. The good news is that at 900p games still look fantastic considering how small the screen is. This thing can also edit videos and render as well so it's a good fit for a mobile workstation as well as a gaming rig. There are more powerful laptops than the Blade but none can match it's power in this form factor which I feel is thee main appeal of this laptop.

 

Heat and Noise

The downside of cramming such powerful hardware in a small chassis like this is heat and noise. During light loads the laptop is nice and cool with the fans practically silent but during games or any other intensive application the Blade gets real hot and real loud. The keyboard are get's really hot but is still usable but the noise pretty much means you need headphones unless fan noise doesn't bother you. I wasn't satisfied with this so I actually undervolted the CPU by an offset of 70mV and limited the turbo clockspeed to 3GHz. This made a massive difference in heat and noise and now is actually quite bearable under high loads. High temps and noise are to be expected in such a thin laptop but since the thing never even throttled under load Razer has done a pretty good job with the cooling so I'm happy here. For reference after undervolting I would get CPU temps of around 82C and GPU temps of around 74C during routine gaming.

 

Price/Value

This is probably the greatest downside to this  laptop; it is very expensive. In Australia the thing cost 3700 for the base 128GB model and I only got it for 2999 because of some generous discounts. For most people this price is too high but this is a luxury item so I see why it is so expensive.

 

Overall Experience

This laptop is just a joy to use. I can use it for web browsing and watching videos and the next second I can be editing clips for youtube and animating a complex scene is 3ds max. It is great all round machine and does more than just gaming and it is for this reason I bought the blade. I will mention battery life here and it's very good considering the hardware and size of the laptop; I get round 7 hours just browsing and watching videos and just over two hours when under heavy load.

 

This concludes my review of the Razer Blade if you have any questions feel free to ask and please excuse my english as it is not my first language. Thanks for reading guys.

[Nonco]

Whats the equivalent on the market for this atm which would be significantly cheaper do you think?

[Castdeath97]

Pictures M8

[FusionBlitzx]

Whats the equivalent on the market for this atm which would be significantly cheaper do you think?

The closest would be the Aourus X3+ but that laptop is thicker and has worse build quality and lacks a touch display but it's a bit cheaper.

[FusionBlitzx]

Pictures M8

Im sorry I don't have an adequate enough camera to take pictures at his time. I will however do a video review when I get hold of a decent camera.

[Lord_Karango17]

Hey,

 

Nice review

 

Also I was just wondering how you managed to under volt the cpu, as I have the 2014 model, and the cpu isnt exactly cool, and tends to make the top of the keyboard really warm, somewhat randomly (while watching videos/ casually browsing the web) 

[FusionBlitzx]

Hey,

 

Nice review

 

Also I was just wondering how you managed to under volt the cpu 

I used Intel XTU to undervolt the CPU. It's a really good piece of software has graphs stress tests and benchmarks so I definitely recommend it.

[EpIcPoNaGe]

Does undervolting actually help? I've got the 2013 version and if it does help, I may give it a try.

[Swndlr]

I feel the Razer Blade Club luv

 

[FusionBlitzx]

Does undervolting actually help? I've got the 2013 version and if it does help, I may give it a try.

Sorry for the late response but yeah undervolting does help quite a bit. I used Intel XTU and with stock settings stress testing gave me 88-89C on the CPU while undervolting by 70mV resulted in temps around 76-78C so at least 10C less so go go for it.

[EpIcPoNaGe]

Sorry for the late response but yeah undervolting does help quite a bit. I used Intel XTU and with stock settings stress testing gave me 88-89C on the CPU while undervolting by 70mV resulted in temps around 76-78C so at least 10C less so go go for it.

OK I'll give it a try then. Thanks!