suggestions needed Razer Blade 15 or Lenovo Y740 15-inch?

[Char1es4k]

Specs:

Razer Blade 15 Mercury White Edition, i7-9750h, 240hz IPS panel, RTX 2070 max-q; 

Lenovo Y740 15-inch: i7-9750h, 144hz GSYNC panel with Dolby HDR, RTX 2080 max-q. 

 

I'm in China right now, ready to buy a laptop for Master study in Germany next year.

 

Requirements:

Study: 3D modeling with CATIA/ UG. (A must for automotive engineering)

           Matlab (Also a must, unfortunately my Surface Pro 6 with i5 CPU couldn't handle simulink quite well. SP6 will be my main note taking device then.)

           Machine learning for driveless system design (Probably, I've got an offer related with Automotive Systems as well, haven't decided yet which offer to take...)

Gaming: Casual AAA gaming and occasional Rainbow Six Siege & CSGO. 

 

Y740 is not available from local retailers and MSRP price of latest Blade 15 is higher than in Europe. Amazon China is the only option in order to get either of these two with return policy covered. As long as I can get results in amazon.cn by searching ASIN codes of merchandises from Amazon US, DE, UK, JP or AU, they'll offer international purchases with express shipping and local payment methods accepted. Interestingly the final price(with tariff included) of those two devices on amazon.cn are both 20~30 Euros cheaper than purchasing directly from amazon.de/uk (the scenario that suppose I choose to buy a laptop after I settle down in univerisity dormitory next year in Germany). Not to mention Black Friday is coming so I can expect spending less money to make purchase before going to Germany. 

 

The attached screenshots are two laptops priced in Chinese Yuan. Sadly due to trade war many US merchandises are not supported. I've done exchange rate conversion and stick the results onto each image file.

 

Long story short, I can get Y740 RTX 2080 max-q 170 euros cheaper than Razer Blade 15 Mercury White Edition(RTX 2070 max-q). Not being an active tech enthusiast I fail to collect enough opinions on quality control of both devices. I'll just list key factors or selling points that I can think of down below.

 

Razer Blade 15 Mercury White Edition:

Probably the best build quality among all windows gaming laptops; 

240hz IPS panel (a little bit overkill but only 100 dollars more than 144hz panel so I'm fine with it)

Decent camera location with windows hello integrated (Convenient, but I can live without this feature)

Good for both professional and gaming usage (Exactly why I consider this model in the first place)

Undervolted by 100mV out of the factory, thus better thermal performance out of the box (I do appreciate it but I will undervolt the cpu to the limit anyway, even underclock CPU frequency to 3.6GHz if that's helpful to keep the temperature down)

Long battery life (Not sure if I need it since I already possess a Surface Pro 6 for light load and note taking. )

Keyboard was good (Mediocre right now coz ASUS and Alienware have risen the level of keyboard in thin and light gaming laptop this year)

 

Lenovo Y740 15-inch: 

Better value for money (Totally agree with that. Razer tax is a bit high tbh)

Quite sturdy metal chassis (Not as premium as RB15 tho)

One of the best thermal performce of all thin and light gaming laptops (I do love gaming but I'm not sure if I'll still have that much time to play games. German as a secondary foreign language can give me a heavy burden during Master studies)

GSYNC(Not sure if I need it)

Dolby HDR(definitely a bonus. However back light bleeding seems more severe than the panel from Razer Blade 15. So in dark scenes of a video HDR might make it look worse)

Low fan noise(That's another important factor for me to consider. But these two don't have much difference regarding fan noise.)

Multiple storage slots(Sounds tempting. I have a Samsung 970 pro 1TB nvme ssd ready to swap the stock storage no matter which laptop I choose to buy eventually. My current desktop has a 2TB HDD and I 've only used 1.3T with 10+ AAA games installed, most of which never played once. So single or multiple storage slots shouldn't be a key factor to me.)

 

Feel free to give any suggestions to my choice between these two laptops and point out key factors that I might've overlooked. Thank you  

[5x5]

The Blades have many issues from heat, to dying batteries, to failing trackpad, to melting power adapters. I would strongly suggest NOT buying a Blade

[Char1es4k]

Any sources if I may ask? I did some research. All those negative reviews and question posts in here, Amazon, notebookreview or reddit r/razer seems to be concerned with previous iterations. The only issue I can find regarding this Mercury White edition is BSOD. 

[Wellingtonzed]

well whichever you go for, keep in mind size. The Y740 is a thicker device and may be a bit unweildly. That being said, if you had to pick from the two id choose the Lenovo just because you are going to be relying on this device for a long time and while there may not be any reliability problems with the 2019 version, historically Razer's reliability when it comes to laptops has been sketchy so thats not to say there wont be any in the future. 

 

That being said you might wanna take a look at the Zephyrus S or G too if its worth anything to you. 

 

 

[Char1es4k]

12 hours ago, Wellingtonzed said:

well whichever you go for, keep in mind size. The Y740 is a thicker device and may be a bit unweildly. That being said, if you had to pick from the two id choose the Lenovo just because you are going to be relying on this device for a long time and while there may not be any reliability problems with the 2019 version, historically Razer's reliability when it comes to laptops has been sketchy so thats not to say there wont be any in the future. 

 

That being said you might wanna take a look at the Zephyrus S or G too if its worth anything to you. 

 

 

Thx! Well Zephyrus laptops have a gaming vibe which I'm not quite fond of. Besides they're true "gaming" laptops with extremely loud fan noise. I don't think I can get accustomed to that. 

 

I love aesthetics of Razer Blade 15 so much. But I have to admit Y740 seems a more reliable choice. The downsides are keyboard and potential severe black light bleeding IPS panel. Typing experience is quite bad according to some reviewers. Screen should be fine conventionally. On Y740 however with Dolby HDR supported contrast ratio and brightness would rise to another level. BLB would become even more visible under the circumstances. According to some comparison reviews, Blade 15 has an overall better screen quality in terms of BLB. Honestly I never knew Razer can outperform anything with respect to quality control lol. 

 

Right now I desperately need any user of Razer Blade 15 Mercury White edition to share their experience on the usage of this device. By now I've only seen one review related to BSOD. That guy solved the problem by reinstalling a pure windows 10 home and install firmware and softwares from Razer website afterwards. If some annoying problems exist, I won't hesitate to go purchase Y740 then. 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Char1es4k

[Wellingtonzed]

i disagree. the Zephyrus G or S has a waaay less gamery vibe than either of those. Hell they dont even have RGB and are in a typical black color. the 740 has an rgb logo, is thicker, has LEGION written on the back.... But yes, believe me i know the razer is very appealing but as a student, i cant take such risks and neither should you.

[Char1es4k]

On 9/10/2019 at 10:50 PM, Wellingtonzed said:

i disagree. the Zephyrus G or S has a waaay less gamery vibe than either of those. Hell they dont even have RGB and are in a typical black color. the 740 has an rgb logo, is thicker, has LEGION written on the back.... But yes, believe me i know the razer is very appealing but as a student, i cant take such risks and neither should you.

Personally if the laptop design is not with those futuristic curves and meshes, I'd consider it ok to use in professional occasions. As for which logo has more gamery vibe let's agree to disagree. Lighting however is a different story. RGB lighting of front lid logo can be disabled regarding blade 15 and y740, while ASUS ROG logo lighting is generated by backside of IPS panel rather than individual transistors, meaning if you open your laptop the logo will light up inevitably. That's why HIDevolution even offers "stealth" service to block light from shining through the front lid logo on ASUS Zephyrus models. 

In the end it comes down to how I would define the use cases of my Surface Pro 6. Requirements of the next laptop I want to run heavy tasks on will be clear then. If Razer's QC is literally that bad, I gues y740 is the solution.