When it comes to gaming laptops there are 3 main categories.
The meh. Those uninspiring posers that promise you heaven on earth while giving you a hellish gaming experience that results in you throwing it to the wall.
The ok. These are gaming laptops that deliver on their promises. Gaming rigs that actually transport you into otherworldly realms for unimaginable adventures.
When you’ve had your fill of these gaming laptops, there’s one more category every serious gamer must get into, or at least dreams of.
I know what you are thinking. This is a gaming laptop brand and model, not a category.
You are right.
But the Razer Blade Pro is too legendary of a gaming laptop to fit in a category with other laptops.
In short, there are gaming laptops, and then there’s the Razer Blade Pro.
I can guess you are not convinced. That’s why I came prepared with a Razer Blade Pro review. And I know if you can stick around for the next few minutes, you’ll get to know this legendary gaming rig for what it really is – larger than life.
When Razer joined the gaming hardware foray in 2005, little did anyone know that this new kid on the block would become one of the best gaming laptop makers in the world.
And it comes with a price tag to match.
Today, the Razer Blade Pro sits enthroned as king of the gaming laptops, and that for very good reasons. Let’s take a look at its specifications before we do anything else. Brace yourself for a jaw-dropping experience.
Razer Blade Pro Specifications
- Operating System: Windows 10 Home
- Weight: 7.7 pounds
- Size: 16.7 x 11 x 0.88 inches
- CPU: 2.9-GHz Intel Core i7-7820HK processor
- Hard Drive Type: M.2 PCIe SSD
- Display Size: 17.3
- Highest Available Resolution: 3840 x 2160
- Video Memory: 8GB
- Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU
- Audio: THX Certified
- Hard Drive Size: Dual 256GB
- Secondary Hard Drive Size: 1TB
- Secondary Hard Drive Speed: 7200
- Secondary Hard Drive Type: HDD
- 99WH Battery
- Run Time (Up To): 6 hours 11 minutes
- Wi-Fi: 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
- Wi-Fi Model: Killer Wireless-n/a/ac-1535
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1
- Ports (excluding USB): microSD
- Ports (excluding USB): Proprietary
- Ports (excluding USB): Security lock slot
- Ports (excluding USB): USB 3.0
- Ports (excluding USB): Thunderbolt 3
- Ports (excluding USB): Gigabit Ethernet
- Ports (excluding USB): HDMI 2.0
- Ports (excluding USB): Headset
- USB Ports: 4
- Card Slots: 3-1 card reader
If this were a bomb, it would probably be a nuclear bomb. The power packed in this gaming laptop is nothing but amazing – especially considering the size of the chassis it has been packed in.
Let get straight into our Razer Blade Pro review and see exactly what you will be getting with this titan of a laptop.
If there’s one thing Razer has been doing very well over the years (and there are many), it’s making good looking gaming laptops. Gaming laptops have been known to be huge machines treading the thin line between laptop and desktop replacement computer – and we all know how big and ugly those things are. The Razer Blade Pro is a slim stunner. Comparing it to other gaming laptops would be like pitting Beyonce against a gorilla in a beauty pageant – it just won’t be fair.
Looking at the Razer Blade Pro, you can’t help but admire the matte black aluminum exterior that is disrupted by the glowing emerald 3 headed snake that has become a status symbol in the gaming world. Add to that the matching matte black interior, the glossy 4K screen, the keyboard backlights that come to life when you lift the lid, and the unibody construction and you can’t help but gasp in awe and amazement at such beauty – especially coming from a gaming laptop.
This is luxury at its best
The keyboard itself is a first for portable computers – a mechanical keyboard that feels perfect when clicking away as you type or pounding it as you fire away some nukes at some alien invaders. The tactile response is definitely something to write home about.
While you are still writing home, you can also include the marvelous Chroma lighting that lights the keyboard and the trackpad. You won’t find such beautiful and fully customizable backlighting anywhere soon.
When it comes to dimensions, the Razer Blade Pro is an engineering marvel.
Coming in at 7.7 pounds and measuring 16.7 x 11 x 0.89-inches, the Razer Blade Pro is the slimmest and lightest gaming laptop on the market – in the 17-inch category that is. The closest rival, when it comes to weight and slimness, is the Asus ROG G701VI coming in at 7.9 pounds and measuring 16.9 x 12.2 x 1.3-inches. Weighing in at 9.6 pounds and measuring 16.7 x 13.1 x 1.2 inches, the Alienware 17 is also no match for the Razer Blade Pro.
If you don’t mind downgrading the display to a 1080p, you can get the Razer Blade Pro at an even more amazing weight of 6.1 pounds. If you travel around with your gaming laptop that might just be the better configuration for you.
Because of its slim profile, the Razer Blade Pro doesn’t come with as many ports as other gaming laptops have, but it has enough to give you the best you need for a great gaming experience, and a bit more.
On the right side, you’ll find a USB 3.0 port, Thunderbolt 3, a card reader, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a Kensington security lock slot. The left-hand side features 2 more USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a headset jack, and a proprietary power jack.
The Razer Blade Pro was built to impress, and one way it does that is the powerful graphics sponsored by the 4K display and Nvidia’s G Sync technology. The clarity and brightness you will get from this panel is nothing short of being transported into the world of combat, adventure, and zombies. That’s just how clear the display is. In the color test, the Razer Blade Pro did exceptionally well, managing to reproduce 178 percent of the sRGB color gamut, well above the mainstream average of 123 percent.
It performed better than the Alienware 17 and the Asus ROG G701VI’s 113 percent. However, the HP Predator 17X managed to give a more vivid display, reproducing 182 percent.
Even the Razer Blade Pro’s 1080p screen is better than most, managing to reproduce 126 percent of the sRGB color gamut.
When it comes to screen brightness, you’ll definitely enjoy starring at this screen in any environment as both the 4K and 1080p displays scored high marks of 320 nits and 334 nits of brightness respectively. This is way better than the mainstream average of 291 nits.
Even the Razer Blade Pro’s competitors were easily cut by its brightness, with the HP Predator 17X scoring 318 nits, the Asus ROG G701VI scoring 277 nits. The only gaming laptop that managed to outshine the Razer Blade Pro is the Alienware 17 with its out of this world brightness of 340 nits.
The final test was the Delta-E accuracy where the Razer Blade Pro scored an impressive 0.3, with zero being the perfect score. The mainstream average is 1.3. Again, the Razer Blade Pro proved that it definitely isn’t your average gaming laptop. In comparison, the Alienware 17 scored 0.5, the Asus ROG G701VI a poor 1.6 while the HP Predator 17X and Origin’s Eon 17-X proved to be more accurate panels with 0.18 and 0.14 respectively.
Gaming, Graphics, Audio, and VR Experience
One mistake many people make when they set eyeballs on the Razer Blade Pro is relegating it to a puny gaming laptop that only offers a “meh” experience.
Despite its extremely slim profile, the Razer Blade Pro is powered by the most powerful GPU you can get in a portable PC – the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU with 8GB of VRAM.
Put to the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark, the 4K iteration of the Razer Blade Pro managed a frame rate of 73 fps at 1080p on very high settings, beating the mainstream average of 53-fps by far.
The Razer Blade Pro also managed to outplay the other GTX 1080 GPU kitted machines in its category, namely the Alienware 17 (62 fps), HP’s Predator 17X (66 fps), and Origin’s Eon 17-X (66 fps). The 1080p version of the Razer Blade Pro (GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB VRAM) managed a frame rate of 35 fps.
And with VR gaming taking over the gaming world, there’s no better gaming laptop to enjoy your VR titles than the Razer Blade Pro. Whether you have the HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift, the Razer Blade Pro will take you straight into the action. Put to the StreamVR Performance test, the Razer Blade Pro maxed out the test, getting the highest score possible – 11.
And when it comes to gaming, the experience is not complete without a great sound system.
The Razer Blade Pro does not disappoint in this aspect. If anything, it actually impresses as it is the first laptop to gain THX certification. What this simply means is that 3.5mm jack on the side of the laptop is now able to handle high-performance headphones.
THX certification aside, the Razer Blade Pro also has some of the best speakers you’ll find on any laptop as they can easily fill any room without some explosive sounds.
Sporting a powerful overclocked 2.9-GHz Intel Core i7-7820HK CPU with 32GB of RAM, the Razer Blade Pro is one beast of a machine when it comes to performance. Even the less powerful 1080p iteration will give you superior performance with its 2.8-GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor with 16GB of RAM. Lag is not in any of these 2 machines dictionaries as they handle multitasking with ease – even with multiple streaming, multiple Google tabs open, and all the while running full-system scan in the background.
Put to the task of matching 20,000 names and addresses in a spreadsheet, the Razer Blade Pro beat the mainstream average time of 3 minutes 25 seconds to do it in 3 minutes and 16 seconds. The HP Predator 17X came trailing behind at 3:41 and the Eon 17X came in last with a time of 3:47.
The Razer Blade Pro was, however, slower than the Asus ROG G701VI’s 2 minutes 59 seconds and the Alienware 17’s astounding 1 minute 47 seconds.
As for file transfer rates, the Razer Blade Pro managed to copy 5GB worth of files in an amazing 15 seconds, translating to 339 MBps. Great as this is, it still failed to beat the mainstream average of 540.3 MBps.
But it was still better than the Alienware 17’s 228 MBps.
However, in this round, the Razer Blade Pro was trounced by the Asus ROG G701VI (512GB m.2 PCIe SSDs) and HP Predator 17’s (dual 256GB SSDs) 1,272 MBps.
Whether you are gaming or doing some serious work, the Razer Blade Pro is more than capable of giving more than adequate power and performance.
But all this power and performance comes at a price in a laptop, and for the Razer Blade Pro, that price is battery life. Shocking as it may sound, the Razer Blade Pro only manages a runtime of just shy of 2 hours on a single charge. Yep! Don’t forget to carry your charger if you are ever to throw this beast in a backpack. And if your commute is long, forget about doing much.
If you plan on doing a lot of commuting with your rig, you’d better settle for the 1080p iteration as it has the best battery life in the category, managing to go an astounding 6 hours and 11 minutes, shaming every other system in the category.
The Razer Blade Pro – Beauty, Brawns, and Bragging Rights
All things considered, the Razer Blade Pro is one heck of a gaming laptop that will give you superb performance and power, while making you look good too.
With this gaming rig in your possession, you definitely deserve bragging rights – after all, not everyone can afford to upgrade to monster machines of this caliber, not just in price, but in performance.
Ready for some cutting-edge gaming?
If so, then the Razer Blade Pro is also ready for you.