The new hardware updates makes it the fastest Blade yet, but is it worth the cost?
Let’s get it straight right off the bat: the Razer Blade 15 (2022) is a powerhouse of a gaming laptop. It shrugs off the latest games with an almost unconcerned disdain, and has some of the most powerful internals to match up to any task you can put it through. But for $2,999, you would expect that as Razer continues to release laptops at the most premium end of the pricing.
However, the Blade might be in need of a design refresh. The newer model still retains the slick, almost Mac-like appearance that fans have come to love, but Razer’s ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ approach to its design might need a reconsideration as it now faces tougher competition against other brands. For one, despite the slight refresh, the keyboard leaves a lot to be desired, the battery life is poorer compared to last year’s model (and definitely worse than the competition), and the heat management during heavy load is just not up to snuff.
But let’s talk about the pricing of the new Blade 15s before we delve into the nitty gritty of the device. The basic configuration for the Razer Blade 15 will fetch you the Intel Core-i7 12800H processor, 16GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD, Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, and a QHD 240Hz G-Sync display for $2,499.
Our review unit features the same exact specifications except that it comes with an RTX 3070 Ti and a FHD 360Hz display (this config is also available with the QHD 240Hz G-sync display, as well) and costs $2,999.
Approaching the true high-end spectrum of the available configs is the one with the RTX 3080 Ti and 32GB DDR5 RAM that comes equipped with either a FHD 360Hz display, or the QHD 240Hz display, for $3,699. And if you want to pony up for the cream of the crop, the $3,999 config will get you the Intel Core-i9 12900H processor, an RTX 3080 Ti GPU, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and a 4K 144hz display.
Razer laptops are a pricey affair no doubt, but it’s also surprising that they have bumped up the pricing from last year’s models. Last year’s base model that came equipped with an RTX 3070 cost as much as this year’s base model that only comes with the RTX 3060. Even the top-range model from 2021 was priced at $3,299 and came with the RTX 3080 is lower compared to this year’s $3,999 offering. We presume the price hike is because of the worldwide chipset shortage, but it is something to keep in mind as you make your purchasing decisions.
Design
It is evident that Razer isn’t fond of changing the designs of their laptops all that much. Year over year, we have seen only minute improvements and slight changes to the overall design, and one can understand why. The Razer Blade is arguably one of the most premium-looking laptops you can buy, and Razer clearly doesn’t want to deviate from the winning formula.
The new Razer Blade 15 is as slick, stylish and compact as last year’s model, with some tiny quality of life improvements that will be appreciated from long time users. The keycaps are now larger, making it marginally better to type on, although the comfort level and the quality of the feedback still leaves a lot to be desired.
The speaker grill has also seen a visual overhaul. They haven’t changed their location, but are now machine etched into the frame of the chassis, lending it a much sleeker look compared to previous versions’ outdated mesh grill design. The speakers don’t sound any better or worse however, which may be a positive or a negative thing based on how much you liked Razer’s speakers in the first place.
The port offerings remain unchanged, but they are plentiful and should cover more than what you would usually require. On the left side, you will find 2x USB-A 3.2 ports, 1x USB-C port, the power connector, and the headphone jack. On the right side, there is the Kensington Lock, 1x HDMI 2.1 port, 1x USB-A 3.2 port, 1x Thunderbolt 4 port, and a UHS-II card reader for content creators.
The build quality is expectedly top notch. The all-black anodized aluminium chassis, and the LED Razer Logo on the lid continues to add that subtle oomph factor to the Blade laptops. The hinge is strong and smooth and can be operated with a single hand (or just two fingers, really) without disrupting the placement of the laptop. The weight of the device remains unchanged at 2kgs, which is plenty portable if you plan to lug it to work or school.
Display and Sound
The Razer Blade 15 keeps the screen dimensions unchanged at 15.6” diagonally, which is pretty much an industry standard for similarly sized laptops.
The display is available in a variety of refresh rates and resolutions, ranging from FHD/360Hz, to QHD/240Hz, and to 4K/144Hz. Our review unit came with the FHD/360Hz screen, which performed exceedingly well.
The IPS display Razer has employed provides excellent color reproduction, as it covers 100% of sRGB, 88% of AdobeRGB, and 99% of P3. The screen also gets sufficiently bright, with it hitting northwards of 430 nits of brightness at the maximum setting. All of this combined makes for a great viewing experience, no matter if you are zooming through the neon-lit streets of Cyberpunk 2077 with the ray-tracing dialled to the maximum setting, or relaxing with a high-quality movie on Netflix, the screen simply delivers beautiful colours and sharp images without compromise.
It also butter smooth at 360Hz refresh rate. We phased the screen through the standard Blur Busters test, and it aced it with smooth, ghost-free images. I also put it through a few rounds of Halo Infinite, and despite it not having G-Sync support, I could not see any sort of screen tearing. And thanks to its 2ms response time, input lag and ghosting were minimal to non-existent.
The Razer Blade 15’s speakers are a different story, however. They have received a welcome design overhaul but the sound quality remains the same – which is to say, that they are marginally passable as a basic stereo speaker. They get plenty loud, but the lack of bass and screechy trebles doesn’t make for the best audio experience. So, for music and entertainment purposes, the speakers are best neglected for a pair of headphones. However, if you want to quickly check out an audio clip, or want to keep a podcast running in the background, the speakers should do just fine.
Keyboard, Trackpad, and Webcam
The keyboard layout hasn’t changed much from previous iterations, but the keycaps have been enlarged slightly for a better typing experience. This at least shows that Razer is aware of the somewhat middling keyboard experience that the Razer Blade has, and I wish Razer went further in improving it.
It’s your standard chiclet keyboard, and the typing experience is modest at best. For writing large documents, such as this one, the keyboard works fine and is responsive enough to not cause an issue after a while, but for gaming, these keys now feel lacking. There isn’t a lot of feedback or travel time, so they feel kind of mushy when you are playing a game. In Halo Infinite, my attempts at shuffling into a better position and executing grenade throws or using my side abilities, I yearned for some sort of tactile feel to let me know that I have actually activated the keys properly. Of course, I am not suggesting to implement a full blown mechanical keyboard on the Blade, as Razer would have to considerably increase the size of the laptop, which they are clearly unwilling to do. But competitors have made considerable progress in implementing better keyboards on their equally slim laptops, and with Razer’s expertise in keyboards, I am sure a clever solution could be had.
The other thing that has irked me about the keyboard is the new placement of the power button. In previous versions of the Blade, the power button was a flat key placed above the right speaker grill. For the new version, Razer has shifted that into the keyboard itself, which looks and feels like any other key on the keyboard. It works well for all intents and purposes, but placing it right besides the delete key is a recipe for disaster. I have had to carefully navigate around the delete key so that I don’t press the power button by mistake and turn off my computer in the process. Eventually, I simply disabled the power button in Windows, but that’s not a functionality I would have liked to lose.
Also, the lack of a fingerprint scanner on the power button is a missed opportunity. For a laptop that costs $2,999, or even $3,999 if you opt for the fully decked out version, a fingerprint scanner should be a given. As such, if you want to seamlessly log into the laptop without punching out a PIN code, you will have to rely on the wonky Windows Hello to get the job done. It works, sure, but you will have to be close to the screen for it to recognize your face and I don’t think it is as secure as Apple’s FaceID that it cannot be faked to a certain extent.
Being a Razer keyboard, it naturally comes with fully customizable RGB backlighting. The illumination can be controlled from the keyboard itself, but if you want to change the lighting effects, or program the keys in any sort of way, you will have to fire up the accompanying Razer Synapse software.
The trackpad seems largely unchanged from the previous iterations. It has a large surface area and offers smooth navigation around Windows without much problem. I still preferred to use an actual mouse, but when you are out and about, the trackpad should get most jobs done with ease.
Finally, the Razer Blade 15 also sports a 1080p webcam. It isn’t the cleanest or the sharpest webcams around, but should suffice for video calls. The mic is solid and picks up your voice with good clarity, but the lack of any noise cancellation means that it will also pick up any ambient noise around you.
Performance
Before we delve into the benchmarks, we should note the different performance modes the Razer Blade 15 offers via the Synapse software. When plugged into a power outlet, you have the option of three performance profiles: Balanced, Silent and Custom. The Balanced profile strives to provide a happy medium between high frame rates and low fan noise, while the Silent profile tries to minimise the fan noise as much as possible.
The Custom profile is the most interesting one here, as it allows you to set the performance levels of the CPU and GPU separately. You have the option between Low, Medium and High, with the CPU also having a ‘Boost’ level which cranks the clock speeds up a notch.
For the benchmarks, we chose to stress the laptop to its very extreme by selecting the Custom profile and setting the CPU to Boost, and GPU to High to get a proper representation of the laptop’s full potential. The tests were conducted on the default 1080p resolution, with all settings maxed out in-game, and the Nvidia DLSS turned off whenever possible.
Game Benchmarks
Game | Avg. fps | Max. Fps |
Guardians of the Galaxy | 73fps | 94fps |
Forza Horizon 5 | 78.2fps | 91.6fps |
Horizon Zero Dawn | 97fps | 162fps |
Cyberpunk 2077 | 30.51fps | 42.49fps |
Red Dead Redemption 2 | 56.44fps | 61.48fps |
Far Cry 6 | 76fps | 91fps |
Performance Benchmarks
Benchmark Tool | Score |
3DMark Timespy | 10,277 |
3DMark Fire Strike | 22,933 |
3DMark Night Raid | 46,597 |
Geekbench CPU | 1,694 single core, 11,492 multi core |
GPU | 11,2103 |
The new Razer Blade 15 posts strong performances across the board, averaging over 60fps in most games we tried without having to compromise on the visual quality. The most impressive result was from Cyberpunk 2077. We cranked up some of the Ray-Tracing effects to the ‘Psycho’ setting, and the laptop still managed to crank out 42fps on average. We also tested the game using the Ray-Tracing Ultra preset, and the Razer Blade 15 absolutely aced it with 54.60fps average, and 84.20fps maximum.
A quick look at the performance on some of the latest games this generation, such as the Guardians of the Galaxy, Forza Horizon 5 and Far Cry 6, where the laptop easily managed to post above 60fps gives us enough confidence that it will be able to take even the most visually tasking games in the future without much problem. Performance will stagger on resolutions above 1080p, however, but we would wager that it should be able to post impressive results on the QHD display offered by Razer. Anything higher than that, and you will have to start to cut down on the visual settings to get a stable 30fps in most games.
Battery Life
With so much power under the hood, we weren’t expecting stellar battery life, but surprisingly, this year’s Razer Blade 15 underperforms even compared to last year’s model.
We tested the battery life by looping a 1080p movie with 50% volume (via the headphone jack) and the keyboard backlighting set to around 20%. The power mode was set to ‘balanced’ on default, and was the only mode available on battery.
The laptop’s battery gave up after five hours, which is far from impressive if you are considering this to be a portable companion. Last year’s model gave a few extra hours of battery life, so the new iteration is definitely suffering from high power consumption at idle and less load states (it could simply be because of the Alder Lake CPUs being more power hungry and less efficient).
Of course, you can get more juice out of the battery by turning off the keyboard backlighting and dropping the refresh rate to 60Hz, but that’s not something you should ideally want to do as the laptop’s performance suffers with regular lags and slowdowns while it’s on battery. Add to that an already choppy 60Hz refresh rate experience and it simply won’t feel like the premium device you paid for.
Heat and Fan Noise
Razer Blade 15’s tendency to flare up the fans for no apparent reason even when simply browsing on the laptop is still present, but thankfully, they are far more restrained when the performance mode is set to either the Balanced or Silent profile. On the Custom profile with the CPU Boost selected, and the GPU set to Max, the fans go expectedly wild and they are noisy enough to even drown out the integrated speakers.
As such, if you want a whisper quiet gaming experience, setting the CPU and GPU to Low should do the trick at a slight performance hit. Setting both to Medium should give you a decent balance of performance and fan noise. Of course, if you want to squeeze out the maximum performance out of the laptop, setting the CPU and GPU to their highest level will get you there but at the cost of extreme heat and fan noise.
Seriously, the heat this laptop can generate when both the CPU and GPU are running at peak performance is almost startling. Actually, the component temperatures are remarkably cool – the GPU barely went above 70C – but the chassis can be too hot to touch at times. And the heat engulfs the entire laptop, from the palm rest area, to the keyboard, and towards the top lid. I feared closing the lid of the laptop during a game in the fear that it would melt the screen (imagine explaining that to the PR, eh?).
Balanced and Silent performance profiles are your best bet if you want to keep the chassis temperature under control, but it does get uncomfortably hot after a while.
The Verdict
The Razer Blade 15 (2022) is not a perfect gaming laptop by any means, but it is an extremely powerful one. It is able to chew up even the most demanding titles without even breaking a sweat, and has enough extra power in the tank to continue to perform impressively for the next few years. But it is also a small iterative update, with very few improvements and changes that doesn’t really attempt to solve the Razer Blade’s inherent design issues. As such, with the drastic price bump this year, the laptop doesn’t really justify itself for anyone to trade-in their 2021 version. However, if you are shopping for a truly high-end gaming laptop without wanting to think about the price tag too much, there are very few laptops that even come close to what the Razer Blade 15 has to offer.