Razer Blade 14 review: Unruffled Razer’s most versatile gaming laptop

Mark When Reviewed

2699.99

Most efficient Prices At this time: Razer Blade 14

The Razer Blade 14 laptops I if reality be told possess reviewed within the previous possess consistently punched above their size showing efficiency a lot like greater gaming laptops. The 2024 model is not any varied. Whereas the laptop’s exquisite QHD+ 240Hz show remains almost about the identical as final year, upgrades to its CPU and GPU attend carry about reputable efficiency boosts and a few AI advantages. Read on to search out out extra.

Attempting to search out extra choices? Study out PCWorld’s roundup of the most efficient gaming laptops on hand appropriate now.

Razer Blade 14: Specs

Razer’s smallest and most compact gaming laptop comes with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU and a QHD+ (2560×1600) show with 1TB of SSD storage this year. On high of that, potentialities are you’ll per chance well also pick your GPU poison – either Nvidia’s highly efficient mid-fluctuate GeForce RTX 4070 GPU or the extra entry-diploma RTX 4060 GPU.

Razer’s web region moreover helps you to pick your color desire and your sequence of RAM. For color, Gloomy or Mercury are the two choices on hand and to boot they every compare very classy. Razer has canceled charging the $400 additional you had to pay final year for the Mercury choice in contrast with the Gloomy, which is welcome news. The Blade 14’s RAM comes in either 16GB or 32GB flavors but is upgradable to a whopping 96GB. My review unit’s specs are as follows:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS
RAM: 32GB DDR5 / 5600MHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
Designate: 14-go, QHD+ (2560×1600) resolution, 240Hz refresh price, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, anti-glare with matte enact, AMD Free Sync Top price, Calman verified
Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
Ports: 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 2 x USB4 Form-C (with Energy Offer and Designate Port 1.4), HDMI 2.1 port
Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Webcam: 1080p Dwelling windows Hey IR camera
Weight: 4.05 kilos (1.84kg)
Dimensions: 0.70 x 8.97 x 12.23 inches
Battery skill: 68.1 Watt-hour
Mark: $2,699.99

Razer’s web region shows a snide designate of $2,199.99 for a Blade 14 model with an RTX 4060 GPU and 16GB of RAM. But flipping the specs to the head-of-the-line model with an RTX 4070 GPU and 32GB of RAM and you’ll prefer to pay a groovy $2,699.99. That final designate designate is steeper than some 14-go opponents with similar specs.

As an instance, a 2024 Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 with the identical AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, at the 2nd charges real $2,199.99. To be pleasing, even supposing, the Blade 14 is priced extra competitively than final year. A designate designate of $2,699.99 knocks $100 off the designate off the head-line model I reviewed in 2023, so kudos to Razer for making that happen.

Razer Blade 14: Accept and Accept

Steady and trendy are the most efficient adjectives for the 2024 Razer Blade 14’s chassis that demonstrates the identical stress and premium compare that Razer Blade laptops was well known for. Razer’s packed with life manufacturing job is yet again why, it CNC-mills the laptop chassis from a stable block of aluminum.

Yet for the total aluminum it sports, the 2024 Razer Blade 14 is over yet again moderately transportable. It weighs real 4.05 kilos, that diagram potentialities are you’ll per chance well also protect it up with one hand and quiet carry your morning coffee within the other. Its pint-sized chassis measures 0.70 x 8.97 x 12.23, so real love its 2023 forebear, this most contemporary model simply fits real into a backpack or satchel. A commended mixture of USBC4 and USB-A ports, a HDMI 2.1 port and 3.5mm audio jack diagram potentialities are you’ll per chance well also conveniently accommodate a damaged-down list of gaming peripherals.

Surprisingly, even supposing, it doesn’t ranking the award for the smallest or lightest 14-go gaming laptop in 2024. For me, no longer lower than from the laptops I’m at the 2nd reviewing, the 2024 Asus Zephyrus G14 takes the cake for portability. It weighs real 3.31 kilos and measures 0.63 of an go thick.

Unruffled, the Blade 14 is exceptionally well made. Taking a behold around the chassis and Razer has left a premium worth on real about every part. The hinge incorporates a stable metal bar that’s tuned so as that potentialities are you’ll per chance well also rob the lid with real one finger. You seemingly can casually prop it up, but it with out a doubt’ll cease attach precisely and obtained’t shut with angry play.

Two other principal aspects impressed me. One is the laptop’s tender matte anodized enact, which dulled my fingerprints to real invisible smudges. The different is the laser-cut upward facing speaker grilles that are moderately discreet. Indeed, if laptops had been made precisely to my desire, the 2024 Razer Blade 14 is precisely how I’d consistently desire mine to compare and if reality be told feel.

Razer Blade 14: Keyboard and trackpad

Upon booting it up, the 2024 Razer Blade 14 lit up with a mesmerizing blue gentle show, thereby filling my thoughts with the total potentialities for per-key personalization on the Razer RGB Chroma keyboard.

The keys possess the identical low profile and nonetheless if reality be told feel as within the 2023 Razer Blade 14. As to the keyboard format, it’s almost about a lot like the 2023 Razer Blade 14. Dwelling is at a premium, but Razer balances the foremost decision out well, so nothing feels puny. You even ranking the plush of left and appropriate Shift and Adjust keys for your ancillary commands.

The Razer Blade’s Precision Glass trackpad feels ultra tender to the touch but no longer too slippery. It let me spin my finger all the diagram thru it rapid but stop with pinpoint accuracy.

Razer Blade 14: Designate and audio and webcam

The Razer Blade 14’s show is the identical as within the 2023 model, that diagram it too is exquisite and exceptionally tender.

To refresh about a of its most efficient parts, the QHD+ (2560x1600p) panel is framed up by ultra-skinny bezels and in a extensive 16:10 part ratio. It moreover aspects a swiftly 240Hz refresh price. That final characteristic used to be love having an extravagant fifth gear for my games in that I did behold a marked discount in show cowl cowl tearing and glitching in games that I recurrently possess concerns with love Elden Ring.

The colors within the DCI-P3 panel are moreover wealthy varied and the part is amazingly crisp at 2560×1600. The panel is moreover very sparkling. I measured a height brightness of 445 nits, which along with the show’s anti-glare coating allowed for decent visibility shut to sunlit home windows.

The Razer Blade 14’s stereo speakers ranking clear and sparkling mid-fluctuate and treble frequency audio. Sound is moreover projected well from the upward facing speakers. Even even supposing, it will quiet be acknowledged, the laptop’s bass isn’t something else to cellular phone home about. But that’s to be expected in this form of small laptop.

I was moreover happy with the laptop’s 1080p webcam, which produced clear shots with natural-having a behold gentle in conferences.

Razer Blade 14: Gaming efficiency

AMD’s Ryzen 9 8945HS replaces final year’s Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU within the Blade 14. This original CPU, which moreover belongs to AMD’s Ryzen 9 series, makes use of AMD’s Hawk Point architecture. It aspects eight Zen four cores and 16 threads.

Poke-rapid-witted, this CPU operates from a snide frequency of 4GHz up to a lightning rapid maximum turbo frequency of 5.2GHz. The chip integrates 2nd generation Ryzen AI skills within the invent of an built-in NPU, which can per chance well be a extensive drawcard for creators having a behold to harness extra AI generative vitality in apps love DaVinci Unravel. It moreover enables Dwelling windows Studio Outcomes on the laptop, a lot like background blurring and webcam computerized framing.

Right here, even supposing, I was extra taken with checking out how well the CPU would arise for triple-A gaming, for which I ran a bunch of benchmarks.

Laptops in my comparisons had been gaming laptops wearing similarly highly efficient CPUs. The comparison self-discipline included the 2023 Razer Blade 14, which makes a commended level of reference for year-on-year efficiency improvements.

In Maxon’s Cinebench Multi-Threaded benchmark, which fires the total cores of the laptop’s CPU, the Razer Blade 14 turned in a accumulate of 6,878. Whereas some greater extra highly efficient laptops outclassed the Razer Blade 14 on this test, its accumulate quiet infers stable efficiency in CPU-intensive projects love encoding or triple-A gaming.

The HandBrake test projects the laptop to encode a 30GB MKV file to an MP4 the usage of the Android Pill preset, with a shorter length to enact notion of as a better result. Right here, the Razer Blade 14 performed in 884 seconds. All yet again, that’s a middle of the self-discipline result, but it with out a doubt’s an improvement over the 2023 model’s HandBrake result.

Now on to the graphical benchmark. After I ran the 3DMark Time Undercover agent 1.2 benchmark, the Razer Blade 14 punched well above its chassis size to negate third in our efficiency chart. This result proves its RTX 4070 is amazingly adept at 3D graphical projects love 3D rendering for gaming – even when pitted towards RTX 40 Sequence GPUs in greater laptops love the Razer Blade 16.

In the end, in every of the gaming benchmarks the Razer Blade 14 impressed me with its excessive frame per 2nd output.

To be obvious that, this bides well for hitting framerates above 120 fps within the most contemporary games; the Razer Blade 14 will attain that conveniently.

Razer Blade 14: Battery efficiency

To test the battery life, I charged the laptop’s 68.1 watt-hour battery to stout skill. The sound used to be switched to 50 percent and a low-designate pair of headphones plugged in decrease noise. I moreover switched the laptop to airplane mode and turned off the keyboard lighting. Lastly, I position a 4K Hollywood movie to repeat and timed how prolonged the laptop took to enter standby mode.

The Razer Blade 14 lasted 595 minutes (nine hours and 55 minutes), which is a really glowing result for a gaming laptop. It’s price noting, nonetheless, that our PCWorld battery test is no longer in particular a swiftly vitality drainer. In an exact-life gaming scenario, potentialities are you’ll per chance well quiz about half of that battery life (approximately four and a half of hours), so you’ll quiet prefer to retain the Razer Blade 14’s adapter to hand even as you diagram to play uninterrupted all day prolonged.

Razer Blade 14: Whenever you happen to aquire it?

Even even supposing it’s dear, the Razer Blade 14 2024 has commendable efficiency and exquisite fluid visuals for its size. For me, that’s what makes the Razer Blade 14 this form of extensive choice – I if reality be told survey every part I would desire in a laptop right here. A stable sturdy frame, sizable efficiency, and unbelievable visuals and all in a compact transportable unit. While potentialities are you’ll per chance well also afford one and are tempted, you must quiet fully make the leap.

Most efficient Prices At this time: Razer Blade 14