Razer Blade 17 (2021) review
Our Verdict
The Razer Blade 17 is a premium gaming laptop at a premium price. You tin can expect fantabulous functioning, a great OLED display and a sleek pattern, but also a heavy chassis and a relatively cramped keyboard.
For
- Powerful components
- Excellent performance
- Gorgeous OLED screen
Against
- Very expensive
- Cramped keyboard
- Limited battery life
Tom'south Guide Verdict
The Razer Blade 17 is a premium gaming laptop at a premium price. You tin expect excellent operation, a great OLED display and a sleek design, but as well a heavy chassis and a relatively cramped keyboard.
Pros
- +
Powerful components
- +
Excellent operation
- +
Gorgeous OLED screen
Cons
- -
Very expensive
- -
Cramped keyboard
- -
Limited bombardment life
Razer Blade 17 (2021): Specs
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 ten 10.2 x 0.8 inches
Weight: half dozen.1 pounds
The Razer Blade 17 (2021) is 1 of the most powerful gaming laptops you tin buy— and it'southward priced to friction match. The absolute cheapest model will set up you lot back $2,400, and the one we reviewed costs a whopping $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 observe an impressive 120Hz OLED brandish and a generous amount of ports. The Bract 17 could conceivably be your primary gaming and productivity machine for years to come, as information technology tin live comfortably on top of a desk, or in a hotel room, or in a tournament hall.
Still, for such an expensive machine, the Bract 17 doesn't feel every bit premium every bit it could. At more than six pounds, it'southward fairly heavy, nor is it the thinnest gaming laptop on the market. In that location's likewise the cramped membrane keyboard, which feels a little antiquated in an era of streamlined numpads and thin mechanical keys.
Still, Razer's pedigree alone makes the Blade 17 worth a look, and in terms of components, you'll definitely get what you pay for. Read on for our full Razer Blade 17 (2021) review.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Price and configurations
The Razer Bract 17 (2021) comes in seven dissimilar configurations, at seven unlike prices. At the cheapest end, there's a $2,400 model, which comes with an Intel i7-11800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16 GB RAM, a i TB SSD and a 1440p, 165 Hz screen.
The highest-cease model, which nosotros reviewed, costs $iii,700 and comes with an Intel i9-11900H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 RTX GPU, 32 GB RAM, a 1 TB SSD and a 4K OLED touchscreen with a 120 Hz refresh rate.
Information technology's worth pointing out that a few models in the middle offer 1080p, 360 Hz screens to maximize frame rate rather than resolution. The middle-of-the-road $2,800 model comes with an Intel i7-11800H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD.
The bottom line is that while the Razer Blade 17 comes in a multifariousness of configurations, they can get pretty expensive, pretty quickly.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Design
The first affair I noticed about the Razer Blade 17 is that information technology weighs a lot: 6.1 pounds. That's heavier than competing 17-inch models from MSI and Alienware, which tend to weigh between v and 5.v pounds.
At fifteen.six 10 ten.2 x 0.viii inches, information technology'south thinner than competing laptops from Alienware, but thicker than MSI and other Razer models. It fit in a standard driver backpack, albeit just barely, and it was a existent hurting to deport around for more than than about an 60 minutes at a fourth dimension.
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, save for a light-up green logo on top of the lid. The bottom of the laptop has a few ventilation ports, while yous'll detect a adequately generous choice of ports on the sides.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Ports
The Blade 17 has a generous port option. Every 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 bill of fare reader. This is a robust lineup of ports for both piece of work and play, and having both USB-C and discrete power ports gives you a lot of leeway in the cables you carry with yous.
My simply upshot here is that large USB-C dongles will block the USB-A ports. It's not a Razer-exclusive event by any means, but it's an increasingly frequent problem in gaming laptops, as peripheral manufacturers start to switch over from USB-A.
Razer Bract 17 (2021) review: Keyboard and touchpad
My 1 big complaint with the Razer Blade 17 is that the keyboard feels tiny and cramped — which it didn't have to be, considering how much space the speakers accept up on either side of it.
While larger-than-average laptop speakers tin be situationally useful, I would have much rather had a numpad, or at least a petty more than space between keys. Typos were mutual, and the one-half-sized up-and downward-pointer keys made matters even more complicated. I did appreciate that the keyboard has total RGB capability through the Razer Synapse software, though.
The touchpad, on the other hand, felt responsive, and didn't arrive the way besides often. I'd still recommend a discrete mouse if yous desire to become any serious gaming done. Bear upon typists might actually consider a wireless travel keyboard, also.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Display
The screen in our Razer Blade 17 was the primary reason why I was excited to test information technology. Subsequently running the 4K OLED touchscreen through a gauntlet of games, TV shows and productivity tools, I didn't want to become back to a standard LCD model. Granted, non every model of the Blade 17 comes with a 4K OLED screen, and our Razer Bract 15 Advanced review might give you a ameliorate idea of what Razer's more than traditional screens wait like.
Still, information technology's hard to enlarge only how deep the blacks and just how vibrant the colors await on a UHD OLED screen, and it'southward especially hit when playing games that lean heavily into a cohesive colour palette, such as Doom Eternal'southward ruby and browns, or Historic period of Empires Iv's blues and greens. We ran the numbers, which back up our observations:
| Razer Bract 17 | Maingear Vector Pro | Razer Blade xv Advanced | |
| Effulgence (nits) | 349 | 346 | 313 |
| sRGB Color Gamut (%) | 113 | 114 | 109 |
| Delta-East | 0.25 | 0.20 | 0.24 |
Compared confronting the similarly powerful Maingear Vector Pro and Razer'south other heavy hitter, the Razer Blade Advanced fifteen, the Bract 17 more than holds its own, offering the best brightness of the iii, and a meliorate coverage of the sRGB spectrum than the Blade 15.
Granted, the Bract 17 is not quite as colorful as the Vector Pro, or as color-authentic equally either machine (a lower delta-E means better color accuracy), merely there'south not a tremendous departure in benchmarks. The bigger difference is qualitative: an OLED screen just looks better nearly of the time, particularly for dark images that require subtle dissimilarity.
It's hard to overstate just how deep the blacks and but how vibrant the colors look on this 4K OLED screen.
With a 120 Hz screen, the Blade 17 is likewise perfectly poised to run games at 4K settings. While running 4K games at 120 fps sounds like a dream come truthful, gaming laptops aren't quite ready to do that yet — the accented best we got were brief bursts of Final Fantasy Fourteen at 115 fps. You won't need to worry near the machine'due south operation outstripping its refresh rate.
Razer Bract 17 (2021) review: Gaming functioning
Generally speaking, the Razer Blade 17 generally provides ameliorate operation than other gaming laptops we've tested recently. This seems fitting, since the Bract 17 is likewise much more expensive than those other laptops. Take a look at some frame rate benchmarks in common games, measured in frames per second (fps) at 1080p resolution:
| Razer Blade 17 | Maingear Vector Pro | Razer Blade 15 Advanced | |
| Assassin'south Creed Valhalla | 80 | 74 | 66 |
| Dirt 5 | 91 | 89 | 78 |
| K Theft Motorcar V | 111 | 124 | 106 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 81 | 93 | 82 |
In Assassinator's Creed Valhalla and Dirt v, the Blade 17 performed better across the board. In Grand Theft Auto Five and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, however, the Bract 17's performance was a bit more mixed, falling considerably short of the Maingear Vector Pro. This could exist due to a deviation in drivers, or it could be that the Blade 17 is simply not optimized for lower resolutions.
That brings usa to another important indicate: the Blade 17 has a full 4K screen, which is a relative rarity amongst gaming laptops. At 4K settings with the graphical options cranked up to Nvidia-recommended settings, Assassin's Creed Valhalla ran at 38 fps; Dirt 5 ran at 48 fps; Yard Theft Auto V ran at 35 fps; and Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at 33 fps. These are all comfortably to a higher place thirty fps, which is generally the minimum frame rate you'd want for a modernistic game.
Y'all tin can also toy with the settings if you'd adopt true 4K/threescore fps gaming, which I was able to achieve in a number of titles. Historic period of Empires IV, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and Terminal Fantasy XIV all ran effectually a consequent 60 fps at 4K, even during intense battle scenes. But Doom Eternal hovered around the 35 fps range — but even then, 35 fps at 4K is zero to sneeze at.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Productivity performance
In terms of productivity performance, the Razer Blade 17 wasn't the benchmarking powerhouse that I expected.
| Razer Blade 17 | Maingear Vector Pro | Razer Bract 15 Advanced | |
| Geekbench v.4 (bogus operation benchmark) | 7,010 | eight,786 | six,924 |
| Copying 25 GB from flash drive (MBps) | one,247 | 1,844 | i,796 |
| Handbrake video encoding (minutes:seconds) | 8:59 | 6:27 | 8:46 |
Using the artificial Geekbench five.iv test, which gauges a car's overall ability, the Blade 17 barbarous short of the Vector Pro, and exceeded the Blade 15 Advanced but slightly. Both the Vector Pro and the Blade 15 avant-garde outperformed the Bract 17 in the file-copying and video-encoding tests, oft past a wide margin. The Bract 17's terrific components don't ever plow in the level of performance I had expected.
On the other paw, this may not matter much from a practical standpoint. I used the Blade 17 as my everyday workstation for about a calendar week, and information technology handled everything I could throw at information technology, regardless of how many tabs I had open, how many programs I had running or how much multimedia I wanted to eat. This is probably due to its 32 GB RAM, which far exceeds what an everyday worker would need — unless, of course, your everyday work involves graphic pattern or animation.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Bombardment life and heat
The Razer Bract 17 runs hot, and has a surprisingly short bombardment life, for both productivity and gaming. Here's how it compares:
| Razer Blade 17 | Maingear Vector Pro | Razer Blade 15 Avant-garde | |
| Battery life – productivity (minutes:seconds)Valhalla | 3:52 | vi:27 | 5:23 |
| Battery life – gaming (minutes:seconds) | ane:nineteen | 1:37 | 1:35 |
| Heat – productivity (°F) | 108 | 104 | 88 |
| Heat – gaming (°F) | 123 | 129 | 123 |
Even if you apply it for productivity, the Blade 17 is too hot to comfortably go on in your lap. While y'all're gaming, you probably won't want to touch the underside at all.
At less than four hours, the battery life is also relatively unimpressive; it won't even terminal for a moderately long flight. While the Blade 17'southward gaming heat and gaming battery life are comparable to the other laptops we tested, the other systems last much longer for productivity, and the Blade 15 Advanced is cool enough to hold in your lap if you're not gaming.
Razer Blade 17 (2021) review: Verdict
The Razer Blade 17 provides excellent performance and gorgeous visuals, albeit for a lot of money. In terms of performance, information technology's like to its close competitors — although said competitors don't offer total 4K screens, so yous'll take to accept that into account.
If you're in the market for a powerful 17-inch gaming laptop, the Alienware m17 R4 is likewise worth considering, every bit is the Maingear Vector Pro. But there's something undeniably fashionable about the Razer Blade 17'south design, and you'll become proficient operation for both work and play.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/razer-blade-17-2021
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