Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2019) review: A gaming laptop that's hard not to love (except for one flaw)

The Razer Bract fifteen Advanced is a premium gaming- and creator-focused laptop that is virtually in a form of its own.

For 2022, it gets 4K OLED and full HD 244Hz screen choices. While the Blade's slightly updated internals, including 9th Gen Intel processor and Windows Hi IR camera, are welcome, the shallow keyboard can exist problematic.

I spent the last few weeks with the Bract xv with the 240Hz refresh rate. While you won't game at annihilation near 200 frames per 2nd (FPS) – even with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 270 – the added CPU boost helps brand the actress $100 price increase more endurable.

Sleek but powerful

Razer Blade xv Advanced (2019)

From $2,349

Bottom line: Razer's "Mercury White" 15-inch gaming laptop packs RTX graphics, the latest Intel processor, and a new 240Hz matte display. The laptop is a work of art with the performance to support the appearance, but its keyboard holds it back from being perfect. Notwithstanding, few laptops await or feel this expert.

Pros:

• Full Hard disk drive display with loftier refresh rate.
• Outstanding audio.
• Excellent operation and cooling.
• Premium build quality.

Cons:

• The keyboard is mediocre.
• If it's not on auction, it's expensive.
• Configuration choices are frustrating.

Razer Blade xv Advanced (2019) features, display, and specs

Arguably, Razer'southward most important laptop is the Blade 15. Information technology's the one gamers volition want, as the Bract Stealth is more Ultrabook than gaming PC, and the new 17-inch Blade Pro is likely too much for many people. Considering of that, there are many configuration options for the Blade 15. Information technology tin exist a flake puzzling and frustrating, depending on what y'all want.

Starting at the lesser is the Blade xv Base, which costs $ane,599. It's a great entry point. But you're getting mostly last yr's tech, a slightly thicker design, GTX 1060 Max-Q, and some minor tradeoffs compared to the more premium Avant-garde model.

The Blade fifteen Advanced tin can exist configured with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2070 Max-Q Design, or RTX 2080 Max-Q pattern for the GPU. Some of the lower versions of the Advanced model ship with an 8th Gen Intel i7, while the more expensive ones have the latest 9th Gen bit. Yous shouldn't focuse on this likewise much, though, as the departure is minimal in real-world usage.

For displays, in that location are choices for matte full Hard disk drive at 144Hz, matte full HD at 240 Hz (new), glossy 4K bear upon, or a glossy 4K OLED with touch (new). There is an even a choice between Razer'south traditional blackness color scheme or the newer, more professional Mercury White. Simply if you want the latter, yous are express either to the 144Hz or 240 Hz display options and cannot get the 4K OLED, which is only in black and with a GeForce RTX 2080 video card.

Category	Spec
Os	Windows ten Habitation
Processor	9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H Six cores Up to 4.50 GHz
RAM	16GB dual-channel DDR4-2667MHz Up to 64GB
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q Pattern NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q Design
Storage	256 or 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Display	15.half-dozen inches Full Hard disk drive (1920 x 1080) at 240Hz (matte) OLED 4K Bear upon at lx Hz
Ports	USB three.2 Gen 2 Type-A x3 Thunderbolt three (USB-C) HDMI 2.0B output Mini DisplayPort 1.4 output
Audio	Dual speakers Dolby Atmos Support
Wireless	Intel Wireless-AX200 (802.11a/b/yard/due north/ac/ax) Bluetooth v.0
Camera	Front-facing 720p Window Hullo IR
Biometrics	IR camera
Keyboard	Per-key RGB Razer Chroma
Touchpad	Precision
Battery	fourscore Wh
Weight	4.73 - four.87 lbs (2.15 - 2.21 kg)

The RAM options are fixed at 16GB (user-expandable upward to 64GB), with storage at either 256GB or 512GB (besides user-upgradable), with a strange omission of 1TB.

All these choices are a bit overwhelming but not unusual. Withal, if you had your heart set on a 4K OLED in Mercury White with an RTX 260 and 1TB SSD, you're out of luck.

Ports remain mostly unchanged, with 3 USB Gen two Blazon-A, Thunderbolt iii Blazon-C, HDMI ii.0B, and Mini DisplayPort. There is no SD card slot. And while the Blade 15 Base has a full Ethernet port, the thinner Blade 15 Avant-garde does not.

Other new additions for 2022 include Intel Wireless AX200, Bluetooth five, Windows Hello IR photographic camera, 2,667 MHz DDR4 RAM, and a pocket-size 80WHr battery.

For pattern, Razer finally settled on ane aesthetic for all its laptops. The Bract fifteen Advanced is perfectly symmetrical, with a solid, metal chassis, and squared edges. If you opt for the white chassis, you lose the glowing serpent logo, which is a blessing for some (the black versions tin can exist disabled, though). Between the hinge, display bezels, and overall look, Razer hands makes the best-looking gamer laptops around.

The Blade 15's weight hovers betwixt iv.73 lbs. and iv.87 lbs. (two.15 kg to 2.21 kg) depending on configuration, making this 1 of the heavier xv-inch gaming laptops. But yous can chalk that heftiness up to the premium metal chassis – this thing is built like a tank.

Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2019) keyboard, trackpad, and audio

In my recent review of the Blade Stealth, I was surprised by but how much I enjoyed using it, despite the run-of-the-manufacturing plant Ultrabooks specificationas. I don't quite feel as strongly most the Bract 15 Advanced. More specifically, I don't love the keyboard and trackpad.

The Blade 15'due south keyboard keeps me from completely loving this laptop.

In photos, the look and layout of the Blade xv's keyboard is about perfect. Fifty-fifty the per-key RGB Chroma at present lights up the office keys – an infamous oversight on previous Blades. Just in typing, the keyboard is defective. Travel is shallow, and it just doesn't accept the spring-back I want. Y'all would think that Razer would brand the Blade Stealth'south keyboard bigger for the Blade 15, but that'due south not the instance. In using the Blade 15, I yearned for the SteelSeries keyboards that MSI laptops utilise, which set the benchmark for both gamers and touch-typists.

To a lesser extent, the same goes for the trackpad. It's massive, polish, and uses Precision drivers – all expert things. But the clickiness feels slightly softer compared to the more than satisfying Blade Stealth.

The quad, summit-firing speakers are on the high-end – especially for gaming laptops, which frequently lack good speakers due to the "gamers just headphones" excuse. Dolby Atmos software is also a squeamish bear upon.

Razer Bract xv Avant-garde (2019) ability and battery

I don't want to dwell also much on the battery life of the Blade 15 Advanced. For one, information technology'due south primarily a gaming laptop with a decently sized 80WHr battery (quite a bit smaller than the Dell XPS 15's 97WHr). The battery life also depends on GPU choice, whether you're actively using that GPU, and if yous opt for total HD or one of the 4K panels. Our review unit of measurement with an RTX 2070 and full Hard disk drive 240Hz display was able to get betwixt five and half dozen hours of regular, non-gaming usage. That bombardment life falls short of productivity Ultrabooks, but it is not bad either for this class of PC.

That 240Hz display can be set for 60Hz if yous are concerned about battery life, just in my usage, I rarely saw a significant divergence in non-gaming calculating. If you lot're staring at a mostly static web page, Give-and-take document, or email, that 240Hz panel is not doing a lot of work.

In the box is a good-sized 230-watt charger with a braided cable, ensuring that even when maxing the CPU and GPU while gaming, you can still positively charge the laptop.

Razer Blade xv Avant-garde (2019) hits 240Hz ... but rarely

In that location are two primary brandish trends in 2022 for laptops: 15-inch 4K OLED panels past Samsung, and 240Hz total Hard disk. Razer offers both. Unfortunately, no one has figured out a way to combine them, and so if you opt for 4K OLED, y'all will go a basic 60Hz refresh rate.

The leap from 144Hz in 2022 to 240Hz in 2022 is significant, just if you were hoping that you tin push button 200 FPS in your favorite AAA shooter, you would be disappointed. In most titles I tried – even when going downwardly to medium graphics – games would still hit well below 140 FPS, making a 240Hz console odd. A laptop Core i7 CPU paired with a Max-Q Design RTX 2070 GPU is still not plenty ability to push newer games that high.

If you enjoy using Windows ten at 240Hz, that'due south cool, simply it's not the aim if yous're ownership this laptop. For those reasons, it seems natural to dismiss 240Hz every bit mostly a gimmick in notebooks these days. But the catch here is price. Were Razer to charge an extra $200 or $300 for the 240Hz panel, it'd exist a no brainer to skip. But Razer makes it only a $100 upgrade. You're not only getting that 240Hz panel but are as well getting a ninth Gen Cadre i7 for that extra Benjamin (the 144Hz brandish ships only with the 8th gen Intel).

The Blade xv maintains its position equally the best for first-class gaming.

That extra $100 seems justified in that sense, and in my testing, in that location were no negatives with the 240Hz panel. Information technology'southward downright glorious. The matte design is easy on the eyes, viewing angles are great, color accurateness pushes virtually 100 percentage sRGB, and effulgence goes well above 300 nits.

Choosing between the 240Hz option and the 144Hz option is no big bargain. The tougher decision is betwixt going 60Hz 4K OLED with bear upon versus matte, non-touch at full HD. I tested the 4K OLED option with affect, too, and it's very bright with punchy colors and very glossy. Those who edit video and create content will dear the near-perfect sRGB and Adobe RGB color accurateness, as well as the uncommonly broad color gamut it offers.

Razer Blade 15 Advanced (2019) functioning

A existent gaming laptop needs to perform well to be worth the cost – especially with what Razer is charging. Luckily, Razer's new vapor chamber technology with dual fans lets the Intel Core i7-9750H and RTX 2070 exercise their jobs with very little thermal throttling. In my tests, afterwards extended running, I saw about a 10 percent reduction overall in system performance with heavy gaming – that'due south quite good. The Intel Core i7-9750H is a hexa-core processor that peaks at iv.5GHz. Some may wonder why Razer does not offer an i9-9980HK processor, simply the i9 is a money-wasting gimmick, as almost no laptop has the thermal capacity to maintain that scrap's performance.

The Blade 15 is 1 of my favorite overall laptops, for gaming and video production.

While in that location is a debate well-nigh the usefulness of a GeForce RTX GPU these days (versus the older, not-raytracing GTX series), at that place are no downsides either, simply improvements. On average, RTX cards employ around 10 per centum less energy – which means less heat – than GTX ones. As game makers add raytracing to more and newer games, the Bract fifteen is there to handle information technology.

3DMark 3DMark CPU PCMark SSD

3DMark

Time Spy (College is meliorate)

Laptop	GPU	Score
Razer Blade 15	RTX 2070 Max-Q	vi,325
Lenovo Legion Y545	GTX 1660 Ti	5,482
Lenovo Legion Y7000	GTX 1060	iii,975
Lenovo Legion Y740 15	RTX 2070 Max-Q	6,406
Lenovo Legion Y740 17	RTX 2080 Max-Q	7,128
Dell G7 15 7588	GTX 1060	3,792
Lenovo Legion Y720	GTX 1060	3,469

No surprises hither, as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q falls right in line with other RTX 2070 cards in gaming laptops.

3DMark

Burn Strike (Higher is meliorate)

Laptop	GPU	Score
Razer Blade fifteen	GTX 2070 Max-Q	xiv,944
Lenovo Legion Y545	GTX 1660 Ti	12,598
Lenovo Legion Y7000	GTX 1060	x,137
Lenovo Legion Y740 15	RTX 2070 Max-Q	14.669
Lenovo Legion Y740 17	RTX 2080 Max-Q	16,303
Dell G7 xv 7588	GTX 1060	10,029
Razer Blade 15	GTX 1070	13,560

CPU

Geekbench four.0 Benchmarks (Higher is better)

Device	CPU	Single core	Multi core
Razer Blade xv	i7-9750H	v,204	twenty,764
Lenovo Legion Y545	i7-9750H	5,530	23,550
MSI PS63 Modernistic	i7-8565U	4,909	fourteen,466
Razer Blade Stealth	i7-8565U	v,139	xvi,339
Lenovo Legion Y7000	i7-8750H	5,134	22,540
Lenovo Legion Y40 15	i7-8750H	4,975	22,294
Lenovo Legion Y740 17	i7-8750H	5,067	22,578
Dell G7 xv 7588	i7-8750H	4,897	21,245
Razer Bract xv	i7-8750H	4,872	17,910

The 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H does a solid job, especially in single-cadre results, but information technology falls a bit below on multi-cadre compared to another gaming laptops. Those scores are typical for Razer, which rarely offers the fastest machines, merely they're however oft near the top.

PCMark

PCMark Home Conventional three.0

Device	Score
Razer Blade 15	5,498
Lenovo Legion Y545	4,943
Lenovo Legion Y7000	4,097
Lenovo Legion Y740 xv	4,789
Lenovo Legion Y740 17	five,102
Dell G7 xv 7588	3,853
Acer Predator Triton 700	4,205
Lenovo Legion Y720	3,599

SSD

CrystalDiskMark (Higher is ameliorate)

Device	Read	Write
Razer Bract xv	3,204 MB/s	ane,894 MB/south
Lenovo Legion Y545	1,585.ane MB/due south	321.one MB/south
Razer Blade Stealth	2,850 MB/s	1,087 MB/southward
MSI PS63 Modern	3,300 MB/s	1,875 MB/s
Lenovo Legion Y7000	3,493.5 MB/s	1,653.8 MB/southward
Lenovo Legion Y740 15	iii,395.i MB/s	1,549.7 MB/south
Lenovo Legion Y740 17	3,356.6 MB/s	1,388.i MB/s
Dell G7 fifteen 7588	521.5 MB/s	303.iv MB/southward
Razer Blade 15	2,722 MB/south	1,217 MB/s
Acer Predator Triton 700	3,353.5 MB/due south	i,859.iii MB/s

Razer likes to use the excellent Samsung PM981 SSD in its Bract 15 laptops, and the results speak for themselves. Besides having fantabulous read speeds, which is of import for gaming, Samsung SSDs tend to be very reliable.

Fan noise is perfectly fine, though if you are gaming in a warm room expect to hear them whooshing. Razer too makes it easy to control the cooling when plugged in through its Synapse software. The app gives options to ramp upward or down their speed depending on your goals: performance versus quietness. That said, the Blade 15's bottom can become very hot. As with all of the all-time gaming laptops, when yous game, you don't desire it in your lap.

Razer Blade fifteen Avant-garde (2019) bottom line

The Blade fifteen is i of my favorite overall laptops – either for gaming or video production. It's i of those PCs that successfully pulls off both categories. Razer'southward competition is increasing – companies like MSI and Acer are both taking their gaming laptops and modifying them for "creators" with more subtle design and colors. While an MSI laptop pales in build quality to a Razer, they are fun to apply, making them legit contenders.

The Bract 15, though, maintains its position as all-time for first-class gaming . The display options are excellent, functioning is however neat, sound with Dolby Atmos support is the best in this class, and that Mercury White looks hot.

The i thing that keeps me from running out and ownership a Blade xv Advanced myself is the keyboard. Information technology's OK, merely I've used too many other ones – including from Razer – to know that this 1 could be much ameliorate. The Blade 15 deserves a great keyboard. This keyboard is not 1.

The 240Hz display craze this year is disappointing, since its total potential is rarely realized, the cost crash-land (which also nabs you that 9th Gen CPU) makes it an easier sell. If that $100 makes information technology but too expensive for you lot, 144Hz console with an 8th Gen CPU is still a swell option.

Each yr Razer makes modest iterations on its Bract lines that I appreciate. Past issues like thick bezels, no Windows Hi, poor audio, lack of a Precision touchpad, function keys that don't low-cal, high-pitched fans, even quality control all have been fixed over these last few years. The Blade 15 just needs a better keyboard now. One time that happens, it will indeed be king.

Premium gaming never looked so good

Razer Blade xv Advanced (2019)

A gaming laptop that is near picture-perfect

The Bract 15 Avant-garde in Mercury White, a new 240Hz display and RTX 2070 results in one of the best looking and powerful laptops for both gamers and professional content creators. While about everything nearly the Blade fifteen Advanced is splendid, the subpar keyboard keeps us from completely falling in love.

We may earn a committee for purchases using our links. Acquire more.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/razer-blade-15-advanced-2019-review

Posted by: masonhimought.blogspot.com

Share this post