The 2016 Razer Blade ($1,999.99 as tested) is a 14-inch ultraportable gaming laptop with strong performance, a QHD+ touch display, and a best-in-class compact design. This year's iteration is an all-around upgrade from the 2015 Razer Blade ($2,079.97 at Amazon) , and though the performance improvements are slight, the price has been dropped by $400. Razer doesn't cut any features to achieve the lower cost, either, and instead adds USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 and the individually backlit keyboard we first saw on the Razer Blade Stealth . Its gaming prowess doesn't match that of large laptops or gaming desktops, but with a new Skylake processor, double the graphics card VRAM of the 2015 Blade, and its trademark super-portable design, the new Razer Blade is an easy pick as our Editors' Choice for ultraportable gaming laptops.
Design and Features
With its Blade line, Razer has consistently offered premium build quality, and the 2016 version is no exception. The entire chassis is black machined aluminum, which looks attractive and feels luxurious. There are two muscle lines on the lid, with the lime green Razer logo centered in between. The laptop measures 0.7 by 13.6 by 9.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.26 pounds, which is quite impressive for a laptop that can play serious games. These dimensions are identical to last year's Blade, but that version was slightly heavier at 4.47 pounds.
Compared with the larger 15.6- or 17-inch screens in most gaming laptops, the 14-inch display is a compromise that comes with the compact, light design. While most gaming laptops aren't designed to travel, the Blade is easy to grab and throw in a bag. If portability appeals to you, even with a smaller screen, this design can't be beat.
To drive the difference home, the 17-inch MSI GT72 Dominator Pro G-1438 ( at Amazon) measures 1.89 by 17 by 11.75 inches and weighs about 8.5 pounds—larger and roughly double the weight. The Asus ROG (G752VT-DH72) ( at Amazon) , also 17 inches, weighs even more at 8.8 pounds. The 15-inch Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro ( at Amazon) comes closest to the compact form of the Blade, at 0.94 by 15.3 by 10.1 inches and 5.3 pounds.
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At 14 inches, the display is probably as small as I'd go for gaming, but the quality is outstanding with QHD+ 3,200-by-1,800 resolution and touch capability. The 2015 Blade also included a touch display, while most other gaming laptops don't support touch input. The screen looks sharp, gets plenty bright, and boasts vibrant colors thanks to Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) technology. The QHD+ resolution is higher than many gaming laptops: the Alienware 15 ($1,199.99 at Dell) , the MSI Dominator Pro, and the Asus ROG (G752VT-DH72) all feature Full HD 1,920-by-1,080-resolution displays, as do more expensive systems like the Origin EON17-X (1,716.00 Base Configuration at ORIGIN PC) . The previous Razer Blade is one of few to match the resolution, while the Acer Nitro trumps all with a 4K screen.
It's worth noting that higher screen resolutions are strenuous on a system, making it more difficult to run 3D games at full resolution at or near max settings. Even high-end modern laptops—which are much more powerful than years past—don't typically have the specs to pull off more than Full HD on the highest settings and maintain a smooth frame rate, which is why most opt for a 1080p resolution. QHD+ and 4K look nicer, but ultimately will negatively impact performance, to the point where your games will drop below a smooth frame rate, forcing you to choose between lowering the resolution or downgrading some visual effects. That said, having a QHD+ ceiling allows you to go that high if you prefer, or when you are running a less strenuous program, and still lets you drop down to 1080p when required. The Performance section below details how the Blade was able to handle this resolution while gaming, but these guidelines generally hold true for all systems.
The keyboard is a real standout, borrowing features from the Blade Stealth that add some functionality unique to this line. Through the included Razer software, you can customize the lighting and functionality of each individual key. Some gaming laptops integrate lighting you can change across all keys at once, or discrete sections of keys that can change together, but the Stealth was the first to feature per-key backlighting, and now the full-size Blade has followed suit. You can set effects, such as a constant color cycle or color ripple for each key strike, as well as several other patterns. The keys feel good, support full anti-ghosting to prevent input jamming, and are programmable with the included software.
The touchpad is also solidly built and tracks input well. The pad itself doesn't click in to act as mouse buttons, with Razer instead opting for dedicated left and right mouse buttons below the pad, which put out very audible but satisfying clicking noises. On either side of the keyboard are speaker strips, which provide a nice rich sound and get quite loud, especially for a system this size.
For storage, there's a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) on board, which is a good amount for a system with a slim build, but it might leave you a bit short for gaming. (The system is available with a 512GB SSD for $200 more.) As games continue to creep up beyond 20 and 30 gigabyte files sizes more frequently, storage can run low pretty quickly after installing just a few titles. Larger, less portable systems usually pack in 500GB or 1TB hard drives in addition to smaller boot SSDs, giving you more room to install more of your library at once. With just 256GB, you'll have to be comfortable with keeping only your favorite games on the primary drive and rotating in whatever else you're playing at the time. The larger EON17-X, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y700-17 (80Q0001NUS) ($799.00 at Lenovo) , and MSI Dominator all have the physical space to include roomy hard drives in addition to smaller SSDs. That said, the Aspire V 15 Nitro is a pretty slim system too, and it does includes an SSD and a 1TB hard drive. Considering that, total storage capacity is a mark against the Blade.
Connectivity options are versatile, if not particularly plentiful. On the left side, yout get two USB 3.0 ports, the power jack, and the audio jack. On the right side, there's another USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, and a USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 port—a useful addition, that last year's model lacks. There's also speedy dual-band 802.11ac wireless by Killer, Bluetooth 4.1, and a TPM 2.0 security chip. Several proprietary programs such as Razer Synapse and Razer Comms are preinstalled to help manage keyboard customization and in-game communication. Razer covers the Blade with a one-year warranty.
Performance
This year's version of the Razer Blade is equipped with a 2.6GHz i7-6700HQ processor, an Nvidia GTX 970M graphics card, and 16GB of memory. The 970M is the same card found in last year's version, but Razer has doubled the VRAM from 3GB to 6GB. This isn't the most cutting-edge graphics card available, and even less so now than a year ago, but with the extra dedicated memory and other speedy components, this laptop is fast.
On the PCMark 8 Work Conventional productivity test, the Blade scored 2,819 points. This is well behind the Asus ROG (G752VT-DH72) (3,571 points), the MSI Dominator Pro (3,726 points) and the 2015 Razer Blade (2,955), which is disappointing. It fared better on the multimedia tests, scoring alongside or just behind these other systems on the Photoshop, Handbrake, and CineBench tests; the Blade is more than capable of completing complicated media projects.
The real focus is on 3D and gaming performance, though, and on these tests the 2016 Blade fares quite well, scoring 19,892 points on the 3DMark Cloud Gate test and 3,349 points on 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, just a bit higher than the 2015 Blade on both tests, but slightly behind the ROG. The Dominator Pro was far behind on CloudGate (12,825 points), but fared better on Fire Strike Extreme (4,296 points).
On the Heaven and Valley gaming tests set to Medium quality, the Blade scored 113 frames per second (fps) and 94fps, respectively. As expected, cranking the settings up to Ultra quality (which includes using the display's native 3,200-by-1,800 resolution) caused the numbers to drop significantly to 15fps on Heaven and 17fps on Valley. Turning the resolution down to 1,920-by-1,080 while set to Ultra quality resulted in much smoother frame rates, around 40fps. Real-world gaming tests reflected these test results. Playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at max settings at the native resolution was way too strenuous for a smooth frame rate, and while dialing down to High settings was better, it was still too choppy for normal play. In both cases, tuning the resolution down to 1080p was the ideal compromise between appearance and performance since, as explained above, QHD+ proves too much for the hardware on the highest settings.
The Nvidia GTX 970M wouldn't be my first recommendation at this point in the card's life cycle for a new system, but it keeps the price down, and the extra VRAM helps. For demanding 3D games, the 2016 Blade is best suited to 1080p and High settings, rather than QHD+ and maximum graphics quality. That will vary depending on which game you play, and the Blade can run older games at higher graphical fidelity, but there's definitely a sweet spot for most modern titles given the hardware. The Blade did get fairly hot during testing, and all the cooling fans are on the bottom of the laptop, which doesn't seem ideal. That said, I never experienced any problems because of it during my testing. You will certainly hear the fans working to cool the system, however.
As an ultraportable gaming system, battery life is a lot longer than with larger gaming laptops. The Blade eked out an impressive 5 hours 4 minutes on our rundown test, slightly better than the 2015 Blade (4:52), and well above the Asus ROG (2:51) and the MSI Dominator Pro (3:25). The Alienware 15 is the closest, with 4:58, and the relatively slim Nitro only lasts 2:59.
Conclusion
The new Razer Blade, like the 2015 version is a very capable gaming laptop, with a beautiful build that's a lot more portable than other game-focused machines. Performance may only be marginally improved, but the latest Blade costs $400 less than last year's model without any feature compromises. It's also slightly lighter, offers the new highly customizable Chroma keyboard. More traditional gaming laptops may offer a bit more power within the same price range, but nothing matches the design quality and portability of the Blade line. Not only does the new Blade earn our Editors' Choice award for ultraportable gaming laptops, it challenges bigger gaming machines as well.
This year's Razer Blade gaming ultraportable delivers premium design, solid performance, and high-end features all in a very slim build. It even adds a few extras over its predecessor for $400 less.
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