Razer Blade 15 Base Edition (2021)

Conclusion

The Razer Blade 15 Base Edition is a interesting gaming laptop with a lot of positive sides but also things I do not like about it.

What I like

The designs of the Razer Bladet is really nice. While other companies have come out with equally thin laptops it doesn’t mean that the Razer Blade looks any less cool. I like the feel of the material and it feels very sturdy. It does though attract finger prints.

Overall performance also is good. I have not tested any other RTX3070-based laptops so I cannot tell you how good it is in relation to them but the important thing is that it can handle gaming at both 1080p and 1440p well. I played both older and newer games and with some tweaks the laptop managed to play them just fine.  The screen is also very nice. I like the higher resolution screen and 165 Hz is good enough for me at least.

The screen is also a highlight with its higher resolutions and great image quality. To me personally 165 Hz is enough and I rather have slightly higher resolution that a 1080p screen with 300 Hz refresh rate.

The laptop comes with a lot of connections and while I of course miss charging via USB-C it is nice to get Thunderbolt 3 support. I was surprised to see a  HDMI 2.1 port with support for 120 Hz.

What I do not like

As good as the screen is I do miss either G-Sync or FreeSync as it helps when the framerate dips.  The CPU also is not the old side and it is unfortunate that Razer could not get a Gen 11 Intel CPU or a Ryzen 5×00. In fact, I think a Ryzen CPU would be perfect for this form factor.

165 Hz is nice but it is not good that you loose the high refreshrate if you use the Optimus setting on the laptop. Only being able to use 60 Hz sucks when you want to take advantage of the better battery life that you get from just using the integrated graphics during non-gaming work. Since you have to reboot the machine everytime you switch it isn’t something you do everytime you want to play a game. The MSi GE96 Raider I tested did not have this issue so it seems to be something on Razers end.

I also am not completely sold on all the difference between the Razer Blade Advanced and the Base Edition. Putting just 512 GB SSD in the laptop and not having support for charging via USB-C in the Base Edition is not exactly impressive since we still are talking about a $2200 laptop.

One thing to be aware of is that some earlier Razer Blade models have had some issues with the battery swelling after a few years. I do not know how widespread this issue is though so it is hard to know if this will be an issue or not.

In the end …

With all its faults this still is a very nice laptop. It has some important strong points, like the screen and the performance but also some annoying issues and choices by Razer. It is not good enough to earn top marks but I certainly would not be dissapointed using it as my main gaming laptop. I do understand that Razer want to have a clear difference between the Razer Blade Base and the Razer Blade Advanced but I still think a $2200 laptop should support both USB-C charging and come with more than 512 GB of storage.