Razer Blade 17 Review, Price, Specs, Design, Battery
Razer Blade 17 Best Gaming Laptop Right Now. The Razer Blade 17 is a powerful gaming laptop with a gorgeous screen
The Razer Blade 17 is a premium gaming laptop at a premium price. You can also expect excellent performance, a great OLED display, and a sleek design, but also a bulky chassis and a relatively cramped keyboard.
Pros
- Amazing Performance
- Powerful components
- Gorgeous OLED screen
- 32GB RAM, 17″ screen
- Amazing 360Hz refresh rate
Cons
- Very expensive
- Limited battery life
- Cramped keyboard
Razer Blade 17 Review
The Razer Blade 17 (2022) is one of the most powerful gaming laptops you can buy—and it's priced to match. The cheapest model will set you back $2,400, and the one we reviewed costs $3,700.
The latest version of the Blade 17 has a lot going for it, including an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. You'll also find an impressive 120Hz OLED display and a huge amount of ports. The Blade 17 may be your primary gaming and productivity machine for years to come, as it can live comfortably on top of a desk, or in a hotel room, or tournament hall.
Still, for such an expensive machine, the Blade 17 doesn't feel as premium as it could. At over six pounds, it's heavy enough, nor is it the thinnest gaming laptop on the market. There's also the cramped membrane keyboard, which feels a bit archaic in an era of streamlined number pads and thin mechanical keys.
Still, Razer's pedigree alone makes the Blade 17 worth a look, and in terms of components, you'll get what you pay for. Read on for our full Razer Blade 17 (2022) review.
| RAZER BLADE 17 Specification | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i9-11900H |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Display | 17.3", 4K OLED, 120 Hz |
| RAM | 32 GB |
| Storage | 1 TB SSD |
| Dimensions | 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches |
| Weight | 6.1 pounds |
Razer Blade 17 Price and configurations
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Razer Blade 17 Laptop
Razer Blade Pro 17 Gaming Laptop 2021: Intel Core i7-10875H 8-Core, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, 17.3" 4K 120Hz, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD - Chroma RGB - Thunderbolt 3 - SD Card Reader
Buy on AmazonThe Razer Blade 17 (2021) comes in seven different configurations, at seven different prices. On the cheap end, there's the $2,400 model, which comes with an Intel i7-11800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB SSD, and a 1440p, 165 Hz screen.
The highest-end model, which we reviewed, costs $3,700 and comes with an Intel i9-11900H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 RTX GPU, 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB SSD, and a 4K OLED touchscreen with 120 Hz is the refresh rate. ,
It's worth pointing out that some models in the middle offer 1080p, 360Hz screens to maximize frame rate rather than resolution. The middle $2,800 model comes with an Intel i7-11800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD.
The bottom line is that while the Razer Blade 17 comes in a variety of configurations, they can get very expensive, very quickly.
Razer Blade 17 Design
The first thing I noticed about the Razer Blade 17 was its heft: 6.1 pounds. That's heavier than competing 17-inch models from MSI and Alienware, which weigh between 5 and 5.5 pounds.
At 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches, it's thinner than competing laptops from Alienware but thicker than MSI and other Razer models. It fits into a standard commuter backpack, though barely, and it was a real pain to carry around for over an hour at a time.
In terms of aesthetics, the Blade 17 has a sleek and straightforward design, much like Razer's other laptops. The chassis is almost all black metal, except for a light green logo on top of the lid. There are a few ventilation ports on the bottom of the laptop, while you'll find a fairly generous selection of ports on the sides.
Razer Blade 17 Ports
The Blade 17 has a generous port selection. Each model of the Blade 17 comes with three USB-A ports, two Thunderbolt USB-C ports, an Ethernet port, a power port, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader. It's got a strong lineup of ports for both work and play, and having both USB-C and discrete power ports gives you plenty of leeway in the cables you take with you.
My only issue here is that the large USB-C dongle will block the USB-A port. This isn't a Razer-exclusive issue by any means, but it's an ever-increasing problem in gaming laptops, as peripheral manufacturers begin to switch from USB-A.
Razer Blade 17 Keyboard and touchpad
One of my major complaints with the Razer Blade 17 is that the keyboard feels small and cramped—which it shouldn't, considering how much space the speakers on either side of it take up.
While larger-than-average laptop speakers may have been useful situationally, I would have had a Numpad or at least a little more space between keys. Typos were common, and the half-size up and down arrow keys complicated matters even more. I did appreciate that the keyboard has full RGB capability via the Razer Synapse software, though.
The touchpad, on the other hand, felt responsive and often didn't get in the way. I would still recommend a discrete mouse if you want to get into some serious gaming. Touch typists may also consider a wireless travel keyboard.
Razer Blade 17 Display
The screen in our Razer Blade 17 was the primary reason I was excited to test it out. After driving the 4K OLED touchscreen through games, TV shows, and productivity tools, I didn't want to go back to a standard LCD model. Granted, not every model of the Blade 17 comes with a 4K OLED screen, and our Razer Blade 15 Advanced review can give you a better idea of what Razer's more traditional screens look like.
Still, it's hard to get over how deep and how vibrant blacks look on a UHD OLED screen, and it's especially striking when playing games that lean heavily into a consistent color palette, such as Doom. The reds and browns of Eternal, or the blues and greens of Age of Empires IV.
Compared to the equally powerful Maingear Vector Pro and Razer's other heavy hitters, the Razer Blade Advanced 15, the Blade 17 is higher than its own, offering the best brightness of the three, and compared to the Blade 15 in the sRGB spectrum. Provides better coverage of
Granted, the Blade 17 isn't quite as colorful as the Vector Pro, or as color-accurate as either machine (lower delta-E means better color accuracy), but there's no tremendous difference in benchmarks. The big difference is qualitative: An OLED screen looks better most of the time, especially for darker images that require subtle contrast.
It's hard to get over how deep and how vibrant the blacks look on this 4K OLED screen.
With a 120Hz screen, the Blade 17 is also fully equipped to run games at 4K settings. Running 4K games at 120 fps sounds like a dream come true, gaming laptops aren't quite ready to do that just yet—the best we got was Final Fantasy XIV's brief bursts at 115 fps. You won't need to worry about the performance of the machine going beyond its refresh rate.
Razer Blade 17 Gaming performance
Generally speaking, the Razer Blade 17 generally offers better performance than other gaming laptops we've tested recently. This seems reasonable as the Blade 17 is also a lot more expensive than other laptops. See some frame rate benchmarks in common games, which are measured in frames per second (fps) at 1080p resolution.
In Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Dirt 5, Blade 17 performed better across the board. In Grand Theft Auto V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, however, the Blade 17's performance was a bit more mixed, falling well short of the Maingear Vector Pro. This could be due to differences in drivers, or it could be that the Blade 17 simply isn't optimized for lower resolutions.
This brings us to another important point: The Blade 17 has a full 4K screen, a relative rarity among gaming laptops. With graphical options in 4K settings cranked up to Nvidia-recommended settings, Assassin's Creed Valhalla ran at 38 fps; Dirt 5 ran at 48 fps; Grand Theft Auto V ran at 35 fps, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at 33 fps. These are all comfortably above 30 fps, which is generally the minimum frame rate you want for a modern game.
If you like true 4K/60 fps gaming, you can mess around with the settings, which I was able to achieve in many titles. Age of Empires IV, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, and Final Fantasy XIV all consistently ran around 60 fps at 4K, even during intense battle scenes. Only Doom Eternal hovers around the 35 fps range—but even so, 35 fps at 4K is nothing to sneeze at.
Razer Blade 17 Productivity performance
In terms of productivity performance, the Razer Blade 17 wasn't the benchmarking powerhouse I expected.
Using the artificial Geekbench 5.4 test, which estimates the machine's overall power, the Blade 17 fell short of the Vector Pro and only slightly outperformed the Blade 15 Advanced. The Vector Pro and Blade 15 Advanced both outperformed the Blade 17 in file-copy and video-encoding tests, often by a wide margin. The Blade 17's great components don't always deliver at the level of performance I expected.
On the other hand, it doesn't matter much from a practical point of view. I used the Blade 17 as my daily workstation for about a week, and it handled everything I could throw at it, no matter how many tabs I had open, how many programs I had running, or how much I had. Wanted to consume multimedia. This is probably due to its 32GB of RAM, which is far more than a daily worker would need – unless, of course, your everyday work involves graphic design or animation.
Razer Blade 17 Battery life and heat
Even if you use it for productivity, the Blade 17 is too hot to comfortably hold on your lap. When you're gaming, you probably won't want to touch the bottom at all.
At less than four hours, battery life is also relatively unimpressive; It won't last even for a moderately long flight. While the Blade 17's gaming heat and gaming battery life are comparable to other laptops we tested, other systems last too long for productivity, and the Blade 15 Advanced is good enough to keep on your lap if you're gaming. are not.
Razer Blade 17 Decision
The Razer Blade 17 delivers excellent performance and gorgeous visuals, albeit for a lot of money. In terms of performance, it's on par with its close competitors - though that said competitors don't offer a full 4K screen, so you'll have to keep that in mind.
If you're in the market for a powerful 17-inch gaming laptop, the Alienware m17 R4 is also worth considering, as is the Maingear Vector Pro. But there's something undeniably stylish about the Razer Blade 17's design, and you'll get decent performance for both work and play.