Review | Razer Blade 17

Review | Razer Blade 17 – Powerful gaming laptops are always impressive to see; usually very large monstrosities with lots of colors and lights, the plastic and metal parts of which wear out quickly and end up rickety in a corner. Razer thought: we are going for a premium gaming line and then as thin as possible. And as bizarre as it is, Razer knows how to cram the most powerful video cards into an incredibly thin housing. Razer has sent us a Blade 17 laptop that we can take a look at for review. We are curious what kind of a thin powerhouse the Blade 17 is and what it is like to use it in practice. For example, we looked at how portable it is, how user-friendly it is and whether the performance is in line with the price tag. In other words: is the Blade 17 worth it if you have a big fat wallet?

unbelievably thin

Razer has done something impressive with the Blade laptop. It is a gaming laptop line that has incorporated the most powerful parts of the moment with a very minimal design. The Blade 17 is not much thicker or thinner than a Macbook Pro, but contains (in this case) an RTX 3080 Ti video card. The GPU is normally a big guy for a normal desktop, but is now incorporated in a laptop no thicker than 2 centimeters (19.99mm to be exact). The Blade 17 laptop we have available is just like the rest of the line-up, with a matte black metal housing. The green Razer logo is centered on the top and shines when the screen is on.

You can find a lot of entrances on the sides of the laptop. On the left: power input, an ethernet port, 2 USB-A ports, 1 USB-C port and a mini-jack input. On the right we have an HDMI port, extra USB-A and USB-C ports and a slot to insert an SSD. You can also unscrew the Blade 17 to provide the laptop with even more PCIe (NVMe 4.0) SSDs (up to 4TB). On the keyboard you will find the speakers on the left and right side. Razer has the THX license and therefore you can use the spatial sound, although we are not very impressed with this. Nice to hear, but not what you buy the laptop for.

The specifications & price

Below is a list of the specifications of the Blade 17 model that PlaySense has reviewed:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (16GB GDDR6 VRAM)
• Intel i9-12900H processor (1.8GHz 14-core)
• 32 GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM
• 1TB SSD, PCIe Gen4 NVMe
• 17.3″ 4K 144Hz IPS screen

The Blade 17 can be called a powerhouse in this case, so that’s good. When you open the laptop, we have a 17.3” screen, with 144Hz at a resolution of 4K. Above you have a nice overview of the most important specifications. It is not the least list and this is also just fine. You also pay a lot of money for it: € 4699.99. It is a very hefty price, that is absolutely undeniable. However, you get a lot in return, but there is enough room for discussion to argue for 500 to 800 euros less. Although of course you also have to pay for the technology, so that the laptop is not unwieldy if you take it with you, among other things. Even the 17″ doesn’t feel bulky or immense due to its thinness. That’s a plus. Fact remains, it’s a lot of money.

The experience

Because yes, we are dealing here with a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the laptop. In short, the gaming experience is sublime. Think Cyberpunk 2077, which has ray tracing running at full throttle. That is a nice experience, especially if the gamer also throws DLSS on the laptop: it works like a charm. Raw, the laptop pushes the game around 70+ fps on Ultra without RT (1440p), but with DLSS and some tweaking, even more frames can be pulled out. The fact that Razer has gone for an Nvidia setup is simply the right choice in this case. The DLSS is a fantastic feature and the GPU is also a powerful card. The CPU, on the other hand, is a very hot part, but it still doesn’t manage to get too hot if you touch the bottom (the i9 is a very hot CPU anyway). With a Blade 15 you can get hold of a stove faster than with the Blade 17, so that’s a plus. Although you do have to take into account that you are stuck with a warm laptop, in general.

The screen is also very successful: colorful while it is matte enough to prevent reflections. A nice IPS screen at the bottom of the line to put it briefly. Only thing that is an incredible downside to the Blade 17 is the battery life. It is simply bad, because with barely 3 hours of normal use it is too little. We calculate this outside of gaming hours, so with gaming you are forced to plug in the power cable anyway. There could have been a lot more leeway in this, such as with normal use (internet or office work) a battery life of roughly 5 hours. Considering the price, there has been a lot of savings on the battery and that’s a shame. While the Blade 17 can shine with its performance, it is very short lived before you have to run to the power outlet.

Pros and cons of the Blade 17

In any case, Razer knows how to score when it comes to ports. We mentioned the whole list earlier, but that you have 3 USB-A ports and 2 USB-C ports is very nice. This way you can connect and use all the extra hardware, and you probably have enough left over for extra stuff. The keyboard is also very nice to use and gives good feedback when typing. The subtle LED that the keys have can be adjusted via the Razer Synapse software, so that’s okay too. We also experienced few disruptions while playing games, although one of Razer’s separate keyboards is preferred. You can also complete the setup in combination with a mouse from the brand, although the trackpad is also very nice to use for the most simple tasks. The touch functionality is responsive, while the left and right buttons at the bottom of the pad also provide good feedback.

Although, the beauty has a negative side. The black metal housing is very sensitive to fingerprints. The laptop is a few seconds out of the box at its best. Even with the cleanest fingers on the planet, you’ll get to see a lot of fingerprints on it, so you can keep swiping to keep it looking good. We hope Razer finds something on this, because such an impressive piece of hardware just doesn’t look right after using it for a while. The last few points we need to mention are the speakers. It sounds nice and nice, but lacks some fullness due to too little bass in the sound. Not that it sounds tinny, but it could all be a little better. It can be called functional and quite spacious, so you can make progress with it.