Razer Blade 2015 review

The new Blade is the latest and greatest gaming laptop Razer has made. That might not sound like giant achievement seeing this is only the fourth machine it's released. But thanks to a faster processor and an upgraded graphics chip, mobile 3K gaming is nearly approachable, if you manage your settings closely enough and level your expectations.

There's a lot to knock Razer about, though, including the relatively unchanged and rather derivative design. But no matter what it looks like, this is a solid laptop. Razer set out to make a device that can be your everyday notebook as well as your gaming laptop, and it has succeeded with this new machine.

We liked

Razer continues offer the Blade with one of the most stunning displays in the industry. The vibrant and impeccably sharp, 3,200 x 1,800 IGZO panel makes everything you look at better whether it's a webpage or a 4K video of some rough housing puppies.

This impressive display helps make the Blade a well rounded package with solid build quality, excellent speakers, stellar trackpad and a decent keyboard. Under the hood, there's more than enough power for your daily tasks and gaming with some careful settings management.

We disliked

There isn't anything inherently wrong with the Razer Blade - it runs beautifully while looking and feeling great. However, the biggest issue you'll run into using this laptop is the lack of support for such a high-resolution screen.

Applications can look squashed while games struggle to run at the Blade's full resolution. It's for these reasons I highly suggest you go for the 1080p model instead. You'll save money and better capitalize on that boosted performance with even longer battery life.

Final verdict

Razer's latest Blade gaming laptop is an excellent machine, but for multiple reasons, you would be much better off getting the full HD model instead. The IPS display it comes outfitted with might be less responsive and slower to refresh than the IGZO panel, but it should be just as colorful and easy on the eyes.

A QHD+ monitor simply doesn't make much sense on a gaming laptop … yet. It's absolutely lovely to gawk at for your daily driver, as I've experienced handling the Dell XPS 13 or Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. However, modern mobile GPUs are just not powerful enough (yes, still) to drive the 3,200 x 1,800 pixel count.

Of course, bumping down the screen resolution puts this laptop on equal footing with the Origin EVO15-S or Digital Storm Triton. But, even with the lack of an additional hard drive, the Razer comes out on top in my book as the smaller, more versatile and longer lasting machine.