Razer Balde Pro 17 Honest Review - 4K 120 hz, RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, i7-10875 = Worth $3799??
Intro - Razer Blade Pro 17 Review
The Razer Blade Pro 17 is touted as the ultimate slim and powerful 17” laptop, but is it really? The standout features are the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q GPU, 8 Core i7-10875 processor, and the 4k 120 hz display, but can an RTX 2080 Super Max-Q Actually push out good enough frame rates to hit 120hz at 4k resolution? Today, we’re going find out if its worth the HEFTY $3700, and just what kind of performance you can eek out if you push it to its limit. Here we go!
PRO: The INCREDIBLE 4K 120 hz Display
My first impression of the 4K display was downright terrible. I ran into 4K scaling issues with it right away in Black Desert Online with everything rendering super tiny or super fuzzy if I switched it back to 1080p. I eventually found a solid middle ground at 1440P resolution. At 1440P, I was getting solid 120 FPS + the text and overall sharpness of the image is still great on this 17” display.
Look at how tiny the text on the lower left side is at 4K! You have to be so close to read anything…
After that initial bad experience, I assumed scaling was going to be pretty common issue, but that wasn’t really the case. I tested nine other games and Black Desert Online was the only one that had menu scaling issues, and once I figured out the right resolution for each game, the game remembered the resolution and settings I ran it on, and the 4K display scaling became a non-issue. But this will vary. If you use older software or play a lot of older titles, you likely will want to run them at 1440P so the menus scale properly.
After using the Razer Blade Pro 17 for a while, I switched back to my Alienware Area 51M’s 1080p display, and I suddenly realized how much better the Razer Blade Pro 17 display truly is. Not only is day to day use noticeably sharper with the 4K Resolution, but also the increased color range and massive jump in nits brightness. Razer rates the display as 400 nits and 100% AdobeRGB.
I tested the display with my Spyder 5 Elite at 98% sRGB, 94% Adobe, and 438 nits brightness in the center. While the color range I recorded was slightly less than Razer’s rating, the brightness exceeded theirs by as much as 10%--which was very unexpected. This display is a truly excellent one for gamers, and easily the best looking high refresh rate gaming display I’ve ever used.
This is the first time I’ve ever used a 4K high refresh rate display to game, and it was shockingly great. I do not know the precise response times, but there was minimal to no ghosting on the display, even while playing 4k games at 120hz—which made playing competitive first person shooters at 4K resolution actually viable for the first time. I played quite a bit of Valorant 4k Ultra settings and performance extremely smooth and enjoyable.
Minimal ghosting as long as games consistently hit 120 FPS. The display provides a solid FPS shooting experience.
PRO: Top Notch GPU Performance
When I bought this machine, I expected it to utterly fail to actually play most games at 4K resolution—I was totally wrong. The vast majority of modern titles will play at 60-120+ FPS at 4k resolution with max settings. This will obviously vary from title to title, but you can see that many games will play very smoothly at the full 4k resolution and max settings, and if you want increased frame rates many titles will be able to hit the 4K 120 FPS target by reducing some of the settings.
Alternatively, if you really want to maintain the 120 hz target, you can always drop the resolution to 1440P and still experience a very crisp resolution and a perfectly smooth gaming experience. The fact that this laptop can actually game at 4K on ultra settings in lots of games is mind blowing.
CON: Windows Hello Wouldn’t Recognize My Dog’s Face.
This is an egregious oversight as I really wanted to be able to hold my dog up to the laptop to unlock it. If only I could use my pupper to unlock my laptop, it would be the ultimate in computer security! Imagine it. Robbers try to get me to unlock the laptop—they will never know it’s really my puppers face they need to get my data! Muahaha.. But in all seriousness…
PRO: Windows Hello Works Extremely Well
But for real, Windows Hello picked up my face extremely consistently and quickly. Love this feature overall. It was very reliable and worked perfectly, even in dim light.
Now Windows Hello uses IR sensors, so it is more secure than just using a webcam as facial recognition, but a quick google search revealed that it can still be spoofed with a printed infrared photo of the owner. But overall, I think this feature is worth using unless you store really sensitive data.
PRO: Great Temps, But Razer Heavily Limits User Freedom
First, let’s go over the software options in Razer Synapse. There’s two main settings with some subsets.
Balanced Profile – Allows automatic fan ramping. Moderate power limits. The one standout feature here is the manual control of the fans, so you can choose to keep the fans quiet or alternatively blast the fans if you want to keep the chassis cool in your lap.
Manual Performance Settings - This allows you to set the CPU and GPU to a low/med/high setting independently. As best I can tell, the Balanced Profile is similar to the Med/Med setting.
The main thing to take note is that if you want higher CPU clock speeds setting the CPU to the high setting is crucial during heavy workloads or you’ll see significant performance reduction.
Let’s take a look at the stress test’s average temperatures and clocks speeds. It will be interesting to see how well the vapor chamber cooling solution works in this 17” chassis!
We had some excellent temps and reasonable performance in our benchmark (see graphs). I fiddled with the various performance levels of the machine, and I got a wide range of results. Probably the most interesting thing is that when I set the CPU to LOW performance and the GPU to HIGH performance, the laptop ramped up the GPU power limit to 100W, which in turn bumped the average clock speed of the GPU by quite a bit. Depending on the game, this could translate to a slight increase in performance in GPU bound games.
Razer Limits the GPU to 90W and CPU to 55W under most long term conditions. While these limits are high enough to get solid performance from the components, it certainly doesn’t max out the thermal capability of the components. Both of the components can handle consistently higher amounts of power safely and still operate within reasonable temperatures.
Look at the Handbrake benchmark. We average just 3.45 ghz while only using 55W of power and maintaining 70C on average. If I could, I would let the processor boost higher with a higher power limit, but Razer locks down the power limit, so this hinders performance. This is very disappointing because other manufacturers allow for higher power limits with this same processor.
CON: CPU Performance is not so Pro
While the i7-10875 8 core CPU performance is a massive jump over the six core 9th gen chips, the simple fact is the Intel CPUs are put to shame by the new 7 nano meter offerings from AMD. See my review of the Asus Zephyrus G14 for a perfect example of what I’m talking about. That device weighs 3.7 lbs, yet it put up nearly identical CPU performance this much more expensive and larger machine.
On top of that, despite Razer calling this machine a PRO device, the CPU really isn’t a top performer. Don’t get me wrong. This CPU will allow users to perform all kinds of professional work with good temperatures and adequate performance, but professionals typically don’t just want adequate performance. Time is money for a professional, literally, so raw performance is key because shorter render times translates directly to more money earned.
In my mind, there are three options on this front. 1) You can be satisfied with the solid performance in the Razer Blade Pro 17 for its size. In this case, you’re focusing on the overall features that outweigh the reduced performance. 2) You opt to get much better CPU performance in similarly thin Alienware, Asus, MSI with the unlocked 10980HK processor. 3) If you really need the most raw performance, you could go for a thicker laptop with better thermals and higher power limits.
CON: Performance Per Dollar Sucks
There’s no way to sugar coat this. This laptop gets terrible performance per dollar for both CPU and GPU. Period. But the thing you have to keep in mind is that performance per dollar isn’t why you buy this laptop. This laptop is expensive in many areas that other laptops skimp, and that’s why there’s an increased price. Things like the 4k 120hz display, unibody construction, vapor chamber cooling, vibrant keyboard backlighting, etc. The real question is whether you have the budget for those extra features.
PRO: Performance Per LB is Incredible
From a GPU perspective, this laptop is nearly as powerful as my Alienware Area 51M, which is a much thicker laptop with a higher wattage RTX 2080 desktop version. The fact that this laptop can even be in the same ballpark is incredible considering it weighs a little over 6 lbs and is so thin. I’m very impressed with the gaming performance this machine packs in such a small profile.
PRO: Quiet Gamer. Low Fan Noise, High Performance
Even when gaming with the CPU and GPU in the LOW/LOW setting, the laptop still hit great frame rates in many games (think about 15% dip in performance, 99 FPS in Farcry 5, vs 115 FPS). This provides for a relatively quiet and cool gaming experience. This allows you to take advantage of the high quality speakers for a great headphoneless gaming experience. I can’t say this about many other laptops, but I can about this one—and I love it.
CON: Optimus Power Saving Requires Restart
This was something that really annoyed me a LOT when I first started reviewing the laptop. If you frequently spend 3-4 hours away from a wall outlet, you’ll find yourself restarting the machine quite frequently or just permanently keeping the machine in Optimus enabled mode. But the downside is that you lose 120 hz on the display, so that’s a trade off a lot of people won’t be willing to make all the time.
Whenever you unplugged from the wall, you’ll have to ask yourself: will I need to use the battery longer than 1.5 hours? If yes, restart the machine. If no, just use the battery with 120hz mode since it lasts for 2 hours easily without restarting.
PRO: Battery Life is Solid
The good news is that the battery life here is solid as long as you switch to Optimus mode. If you do switch though, you can expect the times I’ve listed below:
Netflix - 3.5-5
Web browsing 5-7
Gaming .75-1.25
Airplane Mode (low brightness) 6-8
Aside from restarting into Optimus mode to bypass the RTX 2080 Super, the main thing is how bright you decide to set the screen. Since it can get so bright, it can also really drain the battery quickly so reduce brightness if you want to extend the battery.
PRO: The Flawless Touchpad
The touchpad on this machine is huge, glides smoothly, tracks precisely, and clickable over its entire surface, though the very top does get harder to press—overall, its probably tied for the best trackpad I’ve ever used on a Windows laptop.
PRO: Excellent Port Selection
This laptop has every port I want on a laptop. Literally. The perfect port selection. Is it missing an important port that you need? Let me know in the comments down below.
On the left side, we have a headphone/mic combo, USB-C, two USB 3.2 Type A, ethernet, and power port.
On the right side, we have a UHS-III SD card slot, USB-C/Thunderbolt 3, a 3rd USB 3.2 Type A, and an HDMI 2.0b.
CON: Some Upgradability, but not a Lot
You are limited to 2 M.2 NVMe SSD slots for storage and 2 RAM slots. The default 16 GB of DDR4 2666 mhz can be upgraded to a max of 64 GB of DDR4 3200 Mhz.
PRO: The Keyboard has Excellent Backlighting and Feel
I really enjoy the feel of this keyboard, though it doesn’t have deep key travel. It’s something you get used to. I also absolutely love the backlighting, which is one of the brightness backlights I’ve ever seen. It certainly helps make this laptop stand out in a big way.
CON: The Keyboard is Cramped for 17” Laptop
This laptop has a wide birth and yet Razer thought it was a good idea to cut costs and just use the Razer Blade 15 keyboard, which is cramped in a number of ways. First, the thin up and down arrows are infuriating. They are hard to find blindly and difficult to press without accidentally hitting the nearby keys. My other gripe with the keyboard is that the Control key is also much smaller than many other laptops. Overall, I hope the next version has an improved keyboard layout.
PRO: Excellent Speakers
The speakers have okay bass, great clarity, and get pretty loud—but they still fall short of the best speakers out there. I’d give them a solid 8.5/10, but there is still noticeable room for improvement in terms of bass and total volume.
Conclusion
Yes, this laptop is expensive, but this laptop is premium. So if you have the budget and care about the premium features, the increased price is a worthwhile investment in my book. Not only are you getting a machine with superb build quality, excellent thermals, incredible 4k display, and great GPU performance, but you’re also getting it in a package that is portable and classy. The main weakness to this machine lies in the raw CPU performance lagging behind other high-end options with similar hardware. Overall, this is a great example of a premium laptop with a premium price tag that is actually worth it for users who crave a superior experience.
