Not only that this isn't even 11th gen Intel. These "10th gen" chips are still on the 14nm lithography and still on Thunderbolt 3 which is not as robust as Thunderbolt 4 for eGPUs since the controller is built into the CPU and you get a lot less less latency. And yes, it is a MASSIVE difference. https://youtu.be/42o5tPE1uFA?t=224
I think it will be easier for these high-end brands to motivate AMD processors when AMD start adding built-in Thunderbolt support.
Though I guess that being said, I'm not sure what their excuse would be for not just adding a Thunderbolt chipset for a laptop in this kind of price range.
I'm not sure if you guys are aware but during negotiations im sure intel pays razer or charges them less than market price so that they keep intel inside* i think there was an anti competitive case against intel who did the same with dell back in the day I'm sure they still practise the same thing but indirectly
I recently purchased a Blade because you can get the 2020 models for good prices right now, but I really do agree with you regarding AMD. Definitely would have preferred to purchase it with a Ryzen CPU.
Without a price and power draw, the GPU comparison in laptops is a bit meaningless.
The power draw/performance isn't much different, and the price went up, this new generation doesn't look that great.
The more interesting stuff is the external enclosure support that some manufacturers did which if standardized can make a very compelling argument as can then allow for higher GPU power draw, swapping it when better ones come out, and maybe thinner/lighter laptops in that class.
Unless you need a webcam, I don't see a reason to purchase any other laptop for gaming other than Asus Zephyrus. Unless there is some serious bribing involved or just may be AMD is not able to scale enough to meet the market demand, I don't know why these laptop brands are not supporting AMD processors. Its funny that even if someone supports them, they are not the latest generation ones or are gimped somewhere on the spec sheet and because of this, most consumers think AMD ones are not great or don't exist at all and they avoid them. I don't have anything against Intel but this is not how competition should work and consumers are not getting the best ones out there.
Even the same "model" of GPU in two different laptops can be clocked radically differently. You basically need to check the benchmarks on a per laptop basis. The current laptop GPU situation sucks.
In terms of execution resources, it is superior to a 3060Ti.
Performance of the 3070(M) GPUs with a high TDP (~120W) is not too far off the 3060Ti. Performance of the models with a lower TDP (~80W) is around or below a desktop 3060.
As others have said, it's a minefield. The model name is basically useless and should only be considered a metric of how much Nvidia are charging you, not the performance you will get in games.
Don't forget that Nvidia changed their naming schemes for GPUs in laptops. You actually have to count the CUDA cores and look at the clock speed as the naming is not representative.
A nice and nice-looking premium laptop with an aging CPU and a premium price. And, that is assuming one can buy one at list price. However, I have this question: how much cheaper would it be if a laptop with these specs would be ~ 1 inch thicker, have a wider frame and, yes, weigh 2-3 lbs more? And wouldn't it be easier to keep it cool? I am asking because I like and want the mobility a laptop affords, but don't lug it around most days, and run it off wall power almost everywhere I use it. That whole slim and light is great for portability, but sure adds to the price. Are there any affordable laptops with a decent dGPU and CPU left out there?
(I am an owner of a 2020 Razer Blade base with a max-q 2070 and OLED screen).
I am less glowing about the battery life, in my personal use, for whatever reason, background processes etc., I never reach four hours of battery life doing standard surfing activities. It's a tradeoff I am OK with, but do wish the life was longer... the battery shouldn't be smaller than the one in the advanced. I just couldn't swing the price of the advanced package overall, although I wish I could have.
Regarding thermals - this is the most surprising topic to me. The laptop is very performant and I like it very much, but the thing gets very hot and loud. I don't have any tests performed, I don't know if it throttles or not. I don't know how many dba it is generating - but the fan noise is very annoying at full and the laptop itself gets very, very warm. After playing Call of Duty black ops for almost 2 hours, I had to stop as the laptop itself was just getting just too warm physically to the touch and was uncomfortable to use.
Packagewise, I think this is still the best product out there - the aluminum chasis is great, the OLED screen is outright amazing and the performance for such a small chasis is phenomenal. That said, if I could have swung it, I would have gotten the advanced.. bigger battery, better cooling, USB-C charging.
I have the 2020 base model with 2070 Max-Q as well. The primary contributing factor of the insane temps was the cpu turbo boost. I disabled that in the BIOS and my peak CPU temp dropped by a little over 20 degrees Celcius while gaming, made a huge difference in overall temps with very little impact to frame rates. Try disabling that and see what kind of difference it makes.
Really don't understand the use of a 360hz Display. 144Hz great, maybe 240 but anything above is useless - At least on a notebook. And then it is not even bright. Lenovo does a much better job in their Legion 7i where they offer 500 Nits HDR400 240hz display.
Anyway would wait for at least for the mid / late 2021 version of the Blade 15 that might come with TigerLake. Comet-Lake is crap and part of the reason runtimes are so bad. Also would prefer a 95Wh battery rather than the 80Wh.
Used to have a Blade 15 Advanced with a 2080 Super but returned it for above reasons. Maybe I give it a try with Alder/MeteorLake + RTX40xx Lovelace as it is on 5nm [No fan of Samsung 10/8nm. Their 7nm EUV would have been ok] and in combination with the much better CPU should provide massive increases in performance and runtime!
I wish I could post ever email I have, the entire 50 something long list that backdated this comment of absolute crap im having to put up with because their piece of crap blade 15 motherboard failed on the second day of ownership on my 2021 model. I have a 2020 advanced model I bought less than a year ago which the battery has swelled and bent the case to the point of not even being able to use the track pad. Their customer service and product in my opinion is of the lowest grade trash. This was actually purchased on a corporate account as well so guess what now the entire corporation has black balled razer good riddance. Steer absolutely clear of this POS. Yes I registered an account just to call this pos company out.
If I was looking at dropping $2200 on a laptop, I’d be comparing this to a MacBook Pro. Runs all of Windows, MacOS and Linux perfectly fine, good battery, amazing resale price making it possibly considerably cheaper than the Razer overall.
Graphics not so good but it’s for work not play.
The MacBook Pro is in a funny place right now. The current 16” model runs Windows but you get the overheating power hungry Intel chip. Later this year the new Apple Silicon model will come out and is widely expected to be a giant leap forward for power, battery life, and graphics. As yet there is no indication if it will run Windows though. A cloud-based Windows VM might be a useful backup for using the odd application, or Apple / Microsoft might work out something around Windows on ARM, it’s still unknown.
I've convinced my employer to get me a Rog G14 as my next developer laptop. I'd sell them on one of these instead if I could get one with a 8 core Ryzen processor, but no dice. I just don't see why anybody would go with hex-core i7 when you can get 5800H in the same price bracket, if not cheaper.
I will never forget the time I was playing rainbow six with my friend and his razer blade started shooting sparks out the side of the laptop. After he sent it in for repairs, they wanted about $1,800 to fix it. Once again reaffirming my opinion that razer should be avoided at all costs. They just make junk computers and peripherals and have bad after sales support. At my recommendation, my friend got an Alienware gaming laptop and is extremely happy with it. He can also rest easy knowing that while Dell support sucks, it is still a hell of a lot better and most of the Taiwanese companies. He can also have a tech sent to his house to fix his laptop and can easily extend the warranty so he doesn't end up like he did with razer.
This is clearly an advertorial. It purposefully ignores the many and glaring flaws of the product and overstates the strengths. Razer has notorious unreliability and poor quality control, the GPUs inside are severely power limited, the CPUs are ancient technology and the battery life is ridiculously low. The screen and good looks are the saving graces but in a market where a competitor like ASUS offers similar quality screens, an equally good (or better) lighter magnesium construction, better performance and battery life at nearly only 65% of the price of a razer you'd have to have been paid to write this flurry of lies about this product. How low has Anandtech fallen, it also explains why Ian has started his own schtick, it's only a matter of time before he gets pressed to sell his integrity and when that happens I very much believe he'll leave. Shame on Ryan for letting this fluff garbage be published!!!
It really isn't. Most of the criticisms I have of it (relative lack of detail in some areas, lack of appropriate comparison devices) are explicable by the general lack of notebook reviews done on this site. Advertorials don't need this many pages - and I certainly wasn't persuaded to buy anything 😅
Not sure where you are looking, but you can get the 2020 base model Blade with the 2070 Max-Q for cheaper than the Zephyrus of similar specs. I just bought a Blade last week and was looking at the Zephyrus, but it was $400 more for comparable specs. The Blade was a hair under $1500 and the Zephyrus was over $1900.
What is the contrast ratio? When picture says 871 and the orther 1001;1. And what about this nits? I’ve seen some reviews say it’s about 330. Looking for a laptop to do some photo editing and gaming.
881:1 is at max brightness. The one at 200 nits was tested with the spectrophotometer and it is not accurate at low brightness levels due to the amount of noise which is why it's not referenced. Sorry for the confusion
If your primary goal was editing, then maybe not. If you want to do that as well as gaming, it would be a decent option. The color accuracy is pretty good out of the box, and could be tightened up a bit more with a better ICC profile. You'd need to ensure your photo editing application supported the P3 D65 gamut as well, or everything you edit will be the wrong color if it is assuming sRGB.
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cknobman - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
As much as I love Razor I dont see much reason to buy one of these over a ROG Zephyrus G15 GA503.If Razor cannot start incorporating AMD processors they are going to continue to lose sales.
Alistair - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
yeah no Ryzen 5000 is a huge bummer for such a premium priced laptopNetmsm - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
totally agreequiksilvr - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Not only that this isn't even 11th gen Intel. These "10th gen" chips are still on the 14nm lithography and still on Thunderbolt 3 which is not as robust as Thunderbolt 4 for eGPUs since the controller is built into the CPU and you get a lot less less latency. And yes, it is a MASSIVE difference. https://youtu.be/42o5tPE1uFA?t=224Agent Smith - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
AgreeDolda2000 - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
I think it will be easier for these high-end brands to motivate AMD processors when AMD start adding built-in Thunderbolt support.Though I guess that being said, I'm not sure what their excuse would be for not just adding a Thunderbolt chipset for a laptop in this kind of price range.
bluefish111 - Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - link
I'm not sure if you guys are aware but during negotiations im sure intel pays razer or charges them less than market price so that they keep intel inside* i think there was an anti competitive case against intel who did the same with dell back in the day I'm sure they still practise the same thing but indirectlySpikke - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - link
I recently purchased a Blade because you can get the 2020 models for good prices right now, but I really do agree with you regarding AMD. Definitely would have preferred to purchase it with a Ryzen CPU.RSAUser - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Without a price and power draw, the GPU comparison in laptops is a bit meaningless.The power draw/performance isn't much different, and the price went up, this new generation doesn't look that great.
The more interesting stuff is the external enclosure support that some manufacturers did which if standardized can make a very compelling argument as can then allow for higher GPU power draw, swapping it when better ones come out, and maybe thinner/lighter laptops in that class.
Srikzquest - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Unless you need a webcam, I don't see a reason to purchase any other laptop for gaming other than Asus Zephyrus. Unless there is some serious bribing involved or just may be AMD is not able to scale enough to meet the market demand, I don't know why these laptop brands are not supporting AMD processors. Its funny that even if someone supports them, they are not the latest generation ones or are gimped somewhere on the spec sheet and because of this, most consumers think AMD ones are not great or don't exist at all and they avoid them. I don't have anything against Intel but this is not how competition should work and consumers are not getting the best ones out there.flyingpants265 - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Wait.. people are selling laptops without webcams? That's kind of amazing.jabber - Saturday, March 13, 2021 - link
What is more amazing is that laptop webcams are all stuck in 2004 tech!Jon Tseng - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
>The RTX 3070 in the review unit was able to roughly match the (laptop) RTX 2080 from last year,Ugh my brain too slow today. So what desktop ampere is that RTX 3070("M") equivalent to? 3060? 2070?
riccardik - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
You really can't say, it depends by the TDP, the cuda cores count, the clock. Just to make things easier, i guessFlunk - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Even the same "model" of GPU in two different laptops can be clocked radically differently. You basically need to check the benchmarks on a per laptop basis. The current laptop GPU situation sucks.shabby - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Msi's laptop 3080 mines half as much as the desktop 3080, these laptop gpus are beyond neutered.Spunjji - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
In terms of execution resources, it is superior to a 3060Ti.Performance of the 3070(M) GPUs with a high TDP (~120W) is not too far off the 3060Ti. Performance of the models with a lower TDP (~80W) is around or below a desktop 3060.
As others have said, it's a minefield. The model name is basically useless and should only be considered a metric of how much Nvidia are charging you, not the performance you will get in games.
ballsystemlord - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Don't forget that Nvidia changed their naming schemes for GPUs in laptops. You actually have to count the CUDA cores and look at the clock speed as the naming is not representative.Spunjji - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
TDP is also key.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
A nice and nice-looking premium laptop with an aging CPU and a premium price. And, that is assuming one can buy one at list price.However, I have this question: how much cheaper would it be if a laptop with these specs would be ~ 1 inch thicker, have a wider frame and, yes, weigh 2-3 lbs more? And wouldn't it be easier to keep it cool? I am asking because I like and want the mobility a laptop affords, but don't lug it around most days, and run it off wall power almost everywhere I use it. That whole slim and light is great for portability, but sure adds to the price. Are there any affordable laptops with a decent dGPU and CPU left out there?
Brett Howse - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Yes there is an entire industry of Clevo rebrands. Cheap. Powerful. Plastic. Heavy.Oxygen12 - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
This review surprised me a little bit.(I am an owner of a 2020 Razer Blade base with a max-q 2070 and OLED screen).
I am less glowing about the battery life, in my personal use, for whatever reason, background processes etc., I never reach four hours of battery life doing standard surfing activities. It's a tradeoff I am OK with, but do wish the life was longer... the battery shouldn't be smaller than the one in the advanced. I just couldn't swing the price of the advanced package overall, although I wish I could have.
Regarding thermals - this is the most surprising topic to me. The laptop is very performant and I like it very much, but the thing gets very hot and loud. I don't have any tests performed, I don't know if it throttles or not. I don't know how many dba it is generating - but the fan noise is very annoying at full and the laptop itself gets very, very warm. After playing Call of Duty black ops for almost 2 hours, I had to stop as the laptop itself was just getting just too warm physically to the touch and was uncomfortable to use.
Packagewise, I think this is still the best product out there - the aluminum chasis is great, the OLED screen is outright amazing and the performance for such a small chasis is phenomenal. That said, if I could have swung it, I would have gotten the advanced.. bigger battery, better cooling, USB-C charging.
Spikke - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - link
I have the 2020 base model with 2070 Max-Q as well. The primary contributing factor of the insane temps was the cpu turbo boost. I disabled that in the BIOS and my peak CPU temp dropped by a little over 20 degrees Celcius while gaming, made a huge difference in overall temps with very little impact to frame rates. Try disabling that and see what kind of difference it makes.Matthias B V - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
Really don't understand the use of a 360hz Display. 144Hz great, maybe 240 but anything above is useless - At least on a notebook. And then it is not even bright. Lenovo does a much better job in their Legion 7i where they offer 500 Nits HDR400 240hz display.Anyway would wait for at least for the mid / late 2021 version of the Blade 15 that might come with TigerLake. Comet-Lake is crap and part of the reason runtimes are so bad. Also would prefer a 95Wh battery rather than the 80Wh.
Used to have a Blade 15 Advanced with a 2080 Super but returned it for above reasons. Maybe I give it a try with Alder/MeteorLake + RTX40xx Lovelace as it is on 5nm [No fan of Samsung 10/8nm. Their 7nm EUV would have been ok] and in combination with the much better CPU should provide massive increases in performance and runtime!
Zensation - Thursday, March 11, 2021 - link
I wish I could post ever email I have, the entire 50 something long list that backdated this comment of absolute crap im having to put up with because their piece of crap blade 15 motherboard failed on the second day of ownership on my 2021 model. I have a 2020 advanced model I bought less than a year ago which the battery has swelled and bent the case to the point of not even being able to use the track pad. Their customer service and product in my opinion is of the lowest grade trash. This was actually purchased on a corporate account as well so guess what now the entire corporation has black balled razer good riddance. Steer absolutely clear of this POS. Yes I registered an account just to call this pos company out.Tomatotech - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
If I was looking at dropping $2200 on a laptop, I’d be comparing this to a MacBook Pro. Runs all of Windows, MacOS and Linux perfectly fine, good battery, amazing resale price making it possibly considerably cheaper than the Razer overall.Graphics not so good but it’s for work not play.
The MacBook Pro is in a funny place right now. The current 16” model runs Windows but you get the overheating power hungry Intel chip. Later this year the new Apple Silicon model will come out and is widely expected to be a giant leap forward for power, battery life, and graphics. As yet there is no indication if it will run Windows though. A cloud-based Windows VM might be a useful backup for using the odd application, or Apple / Microsoft might work out something around Windows on ARM, it’s still unknown.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
You should also compare a panasonic toughbook, since they are also in the same price range.scineram - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Not Cézanne, not interesting.ciparis - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
Intel in a laptop in 2021? I'm sorry Razer, but no sale.gijames1225 - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
I've convinced my employer to get me a Rog G14 as my next developer laptop. I'd sell them on one of these instead if I could get one with a 8 core Ryzen processor, but no dice. I just don't see why anybody would go with hex-core i7 when you can get 5800H in the same price bracket, if not cheaper.Spunjji - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
Nice! Genuinely a solid choice for the task, too bad that it'll be great for games too 😁oRAirwolf - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
I will never forget the time I was playing rainbow six with my friend and his razer blade started shooting sparks out the side of the laptop. After he sent it in for repairs, they wanted about $1,800 to fix it. Once again reaffirming my opinion that razer should be avoided at all costs. They just make junk computers and peripherals and have bad after sales support. At my recommendation, my friend got an Alienware gaming laptop and is extremely happy with it. He can also rest easy knowing that while Dell support sucks, it is still a hell of a lot better and most of the Taiwanese companies. He can also have a tech sent to his house to fix his laptop and can easily extend the warranty so he doesn't end up like he did with razer.Spunjji - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
I've not dealt with a single IT-related company with good support. Dell are, at least, consistent.Eric_WVGG - Friday, March 12, 2021 - link
and apparently quite the fingerprint magnet. Maybe wipe it off before taking photos next time?plsbugmenot - Saturday, March 13, 2021 - link
This is clearly an advertorial. It purposefully ignores the many and glaring flaws of the product and overstates the strengths. Razer has notorious unreliability and poor quality control, the GPUs inside are severely power limited, the CPUs are ancient technology and the battery life is ridiculously low. The screen and good looks are the saving graces but in a market where a competitor like ASUS offers similar quality screens, an equally good (or better) lighter magnesium construction, better performance and battery life at nearly only 65% of the price of a razer you'd have to have been paid to write this flurry of lies about this product. How low has Anandtech fallen, it also explains why Ian has started his own schtick, it's only a matter of time before he gets pressed to sell his integrity and when that happens I very much believe he'll leave. Shame on Ryan for letting this fluff garbage be published!!!Brett Howse - Saturday, March 13, 2021 - link
This was not sponsored by Razer but great try.Spunjji - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
It really isn't. Most of the criticisms I have of it (relative lack of detail in some areas, lack of appropriate comparison devices) are explicable by the general lack of notebook reviews done on this site. Advertorials don't need this many pages - and I certainly wasn't persuaded to buy anything 😅Spikke - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - link
Not sure where you are looking, but you can get the 2020 base model Blade with the 2070 Max-Q for cheaper than the Zephyrus of similar specs. I just bought a Blade last week and was looking at the Zephyrus, but it was $400 more for comparable specs. The Blade was a hair under $1500 and the Zephyrus was over $1900.Ewout - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
What is the contrast ratio? When picture says 871 and the orther 1001;1. And what about this nits? I’ve seen some reviews say it’s about 330. Looking for a laptop to do some photo editing and gaming.Brett Howse - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
881:1 is at max brightness. The one at 200 nits was tested with the spectrophotometer and it is not accurate at low brightness levels due to the amount of noise which is why it's not referenced. Sorry for the confusionEwout - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
Ah okay thanks, you think this screen is good enough for photo editing? Just looking for reviews before buying one.Brett Howse - Sunday, March 14, 2021 - link
If your primary goal was editing, then maybe not. If you want to do that as well as gaming, it would be a decent option. The color accuracy is pretty good out of the box, and could be tightened up a bit more with a better ICC profile. You'd need to ensure your photo editing application supported the P3 D65 gamut as well, or everything you edit will be the wrong color if it is assuming sRGB.ghesatcafe - Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - link
Extremely high quality articles from the desired content to the image in the future you can continue to share. Thank you for sharing with everyone, honoring you.MetaCube - Thursday, March 18, 2021 - link
Still using Skylake cores in a 1.7k+ laptop in 2021...