Razer Blade Pro 17 review

The combination of specs and high price means we expected the Razer Blade Pro 17 to be an excellent performer, and we were right. The RTX 2080 is the best gaming GPU you can find in a gaming laptop right now, with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and Nvidia’s latest Turing graphics technology – which features advanced graphical effects like ray tracing for more realistic lighting, modern games perform and look amazing.

As the screen is ‘just’ 1080p and doesn’t support HDR, it means that the RTX 2080 inside the Blade Pro 17 (in the version we got in for review) has plenty of headroom.

So, you can whack the graphical settings to max on pretty much any game and still get fantastic performance. The fact that the screen offers 144Hz refresh rate means that RTX 2080 does get a decent workout when playing games at ultra-high frame rates, and even without 4K and HDR, recent games like Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider look astounding, and play great thanks to those high frame rates.

Of course, if you want to make use of the RTX 2080’s firepower more effectively, you can always hook the Razer Blade Pro 17 up to an external monitor or TV.

If you think the RTX 2080 is overkill, there’s at least options for the slightly more sensible RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 cards, which will save you a bit of money while also offering excellent gaming performance.

During our time with the Razer Blade Pro 17, we played several games, and all ran brilliantly on the laptop. In fact, right now there’s not a PC game out there that the Blade Pro 17 would really struggle with.

That makes it a pretty future-proof laptop, which is just as well as after spending this sort of money, you don’t want to even think about buying a new laptop for many years.

The Razer Blade Pro 17 (2019) also offers an extra M.2 slot for additional SSD storage, and easily-upgradable RAM up to 64GB, which further helps future proof the device. You don’t usually consider laptops as upgradable, so it’s nice that Razer has included that option, and it’s another plus for anyone buying this laptop as a workstation.

As you can see from our benchmarks, the new Razer Blade Pro is a very capable laptop. However, there’s no option for Intel’s highest-end processors, so if you wanted the absolute cutting edge, you won’t get it here. But, that’s a bit of a losing battle – you’d only be paying for hardware that will get outdated anyway.

Instead, what you get here is a supremely powerful and capable gaming laptop that has plenty of juice to run heavy-duty computing tasks as well. If you want even more power, you can connect an external GPU (like the Razer Core X) via the Thunderbolt 3 port for a second graphics card to help with rendering.

Now, fitting all of these powerful components into such a slim design does mean that the Razer Blade Pro 17 does get very hot. It includes a vapor chamber cooling feature to keep the device from getting too hot, but when you’re playing games, the fans do start up and they can be distractingly loud.

Battery life

Gaming laptops, especially very powerful ones like the Razer Blade Pro 17, are notorious for having short battery lives. Afterall, if you pack a laptop with power-hungry components, you’ve got to expect batteries to drain quickly.

However, even by gaming laptop standards, the battery life of the Razer Blade Pro 17 is extremely short. In our battery benchmark, which runs a looped video, the battery lasted just four hours and 44 minutes.

If that seems low, bear in mind that running a looped video off a hard drive is not that strenuous. When using the Razer Blade Pro 17 for anything more intensive, like browsing the web, video calling or playing games, the battery life plummets further. Just take a look at the PC Mark 8 battery life score. This benchmark replicates more power-hungry (though not excessively so) tasks, like word processing and video calls, and it saw the battery run out in just two hours and 41 minutes.

Needless to say, this is a laptop that you’re not going to be able to use without it being plugged into a power socket. For many people, that misses the point of a laptop.

Verdict

As with previous versions of the Razer Blade Pro 17, this year’s model has a lot to love about it, but there’s also certain aspects that will put people off.

First, the positives: it comes with a stylish design that’s thin and light (for a gaming laptop), while not being over the top. There’s also some of the best mobile gaming components included, making this a brilliant performer when it comes to playing the latest games – as well as being a solid mobile workstation as well.

The performance and build quality of the Razer Blade 17 (2019) go some way to justifying the high asking price.

However, that asking price is incredibly high, and while you do get a slimline gaming laptop with performance that not many of its competitors can match, most people will simply be unable to justify spending so much money.

Battery life is also incredibly short, even for a gaming laptop, which means that no matter how thin and light this laptop is, you’re still not going to be able to use it for much while out and about, as you’ll pretty much always need it to be plugged in.

But, if you have the money for it, you’ll get a sublime gaming laptop that’s easily one of the best on the market right now. It’s also future-proof enough that if you do buy it, you at least won’t have to worry about buying a new gaming laptop for a long time.

If you’re looking for a powerful mobile workstation that can handle strenuous tasks, such as video editing and rendering, then the Razer Blade Pro 17 offers better value. Placing it side-by-side with other professional workstations, Razer’s laptop looks far more stylish and modern, while its restrained design means you won’t be embarrassed to take it out at meetings or in the office. And, if you fancy a bit of gaming between jobs, then the Blade Pro 17 is even better.

However, for gamers on a budget, there are many laptops out there which provide more affordable alternatives. Sure, they won’t quite compete when it comes to style and power, but you should still get great gaming performance without having to take out a loan. Think of all the games the money you could save can buy.