We’ve reviewed Razer’s 4K UHD laptop models in the past and even with previous editions, have been deeply impressed by their overall performance. In fact, they rank among the top machines with 4K UHD display for performance on our laptops page. One of the main reasons we gave them this ranking is that the models we’ve reviewed so far deliver some of the best overall handling and speed despite their enormous screen resolution and that’s a less than common quality among UHD notebooks.
Now, for 2019 Razer has taken the features of their Blade laptops to whole new levels while presumably keeping the quality we already saw in the 2017 and 2018 editions. As of April 24th of 2019, there are now two new display choices available for the Razer Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop in particular. One of them offers the beauty of 4K OLED display and the other offers mere LCD display and 1080p resolution but beefs it up massively with a 240Hz refresh rate.
Both of these new machines were first shown off at CES 2019 earlier in the year and now finally join an existing 144Hz LCD model of the Blade that’s also available already. The Blade 15 Advanced in both the OLED 4K version and the insanely fast 240Hz 1080p version will come with Intel’s new Core-i7-9750H 2.6GHz processor –which can be further turbo-boosted to 4.5GHz. There’s also a WiFi card inside the machines that supports speeds of up to 2.4Gbps in case you need it for 4K movies or fast-paced high end streamed games.
The more interesting of the two laptops for gamers is without a doubt the 1080p 240Hz edition. It lacks the visual beauty of OLED or 4K resolution but since we’re talking about a 15 inch laptop display here, the native 1080p resolution provides more than enough sharpness for just about any need. Being able to render graphics at 240Hz however is a major bonus in the tradeoff for conventional resolution and the Razer Blade 15 Advanced 240Hz version renders faster than almost any other laptop on the market right now. Despite its lack of OLED or 4K it also delivers excellent display performance with support for 100% of the sRGB spectrum.
Since most PC gaming still revolves around non-2160p resolutions, the 180p Blade Advanced is a perfect option for anyone wanting to do high frame-rate gaming at regular resolution.
As for the 4K OLED edition, what it lacks in insanely high refresh is compensated for with an intensely powerful series of display performance specs and some of its own high-end graphics processing power. The 4K OLED panel comes on Blade Advanced machines with Nvidia’s powerful RTX 2080 GPUs. The 4K OLED model also comes with full DCI-P3 color space support and a fantastic 1ms response time. Another one of its rather impressive visual specs is an HDR 400 rating that means it reaches peak brightness at 400 nits, which is downright excellent by laptop standards considering that even many 4K HDR TV’s don’t pull off this kind of brightness. Razer even claims that the OLED 4K Blade Advance has blue light reduction technology and TUV certification, making its screen easy on the eyes.
On a final note, if you don’t want to spend the extra money that these two new Blade Advanced machines will cost, Razer has also introduced some heavy upgrades to its older Blade laptop models. The 15 inch version has been re-released with a new Core i7-9750H chipset, an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU and a 144Hz 1080p display (as opposed to its older 60Hz screen), and the 17 inch Pro edition has a new design that makes it 25% thinner than most other 17 inch gaming laptops, with a vapor chamber cooling system and multiple fans for additional chilling power during intense use. The Blade Pro 17 inch also now comes with a 144Hz 1080p screen update and the same new Core processor and Nvidia units that the upgraded Blade 15 offers. Additional features of the new Blade Pro 17 edition include dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports and Thunderbolt 3 capability in one of them.
These beefed up Blade Pro and Blade 15 editions aren’t as expensive as the Blade Advanced models with 4K OLED display or 240Hz 1080p screen but they do cost extra; the Blade 15 costs $1999, or $400 more than 2018’s version and the Blade Pro 17 is retailing for $2,499.
All of these new Razer laptops show an enormous amount of promise and given what we’ve seen in previous models we’ve reviewed, we expect them to at least perform extremely well. Again, Razer has so far been one of the laptop makers whose devices most consistently offer high performance even with 4K display and their 1080p editions do an even better job of handling games or other intense graphics.
For those of you interested in the new, beefed up Razer Blade Pro 17 and Blade 15 laptops that are upgrades from last year’s models, here are their deal pages. They even include free shipping:
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