Gadgetory

- So, your Apple sticker's still on my laptop. Just gonna take this off now. (beeping) Hey guys, this is Austin! When it comes to gaming systems, Razer is almost always on the expensive side of things. That doesn't mean that they don't make really nice stuff, but value is not really going to be the strong suit here. For the money though, this delivers some of the best build quality around, but with the brand new 2019 Razer Blade 15, is this the new king of the hill or is it straight up not worth it? Inside you'll find the latest RTX Cards. The advanced version starts with an RTX 2060, but you can spec it up to a RTX 2070 Max-Q or a 2080 Max-Q, which is what my review unit is rocking. There's no doubt that it's powerful. The Blade can handle pretty much any game maxed out at 1080p. Pretty decent frame-rates. This includes Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Black Ops 4, you name it. It can't quite hang with the 17 inch ROG Zephyrus S with it's crazy over the top cooling, but as far as performance goes, the Razer Blade lines right up with what you would expect out of a standard 2080 Max-Q design. A lot of the other specs are basically identical across all of the Razer Blade models. You're getting the same six core i7-8750H, You're getting 16 gigs of RAM, really the main choices beside your SSD size and your screen is the 2060, 2070 or 2080. But there is a huge price difference between the three. Just going from the 2070 to the 2080 adds a full $400 to the price of the Blade. Okay, so let's just take a second and talk a little bit about price. Now of course the Razer Blade has always been a premiumly priced laptop, if that's a word, which I think it might be, but on top of that, RTX has inflated the price of pretty much every gaming laptop it's gone into and this is absolutely no exception. At a full $3000 for the 2080 version I have here, and $2600 for the 2070 version, it's just difficult to justify that kind of price when other options such as the 15 inch Zephyrus S come in with very similar specs for about $2000. The Razer also has a couple of key features that the Zephyrus is missing. Mainly Thunderbolt 3. Now I get that this is not going to be a deal breaker for everyone, but for me, I actually do use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and monitor pretty much everyday so that's a big feature that I want included in pretty much any kind of gaming laptop or, well really, any laptop I buy at this point. Now you can't talk about the Razer Blade without mentioning the design. Now as far as I'm concerned, this is about one of the nicest pieces of laptop hardware out there, right up with MacBooks and the MacBook Pros of the world. It's all CNC aluminum, I know it's a very expensive process to pull off, especially with this anodization, and put simply it's a very solid, very sturdy, very nice feeling piece of technology. You're paying more, but at least some of that cost is definitely in the actual build quality and some of the design work that they've done here. You also get the generally solid Razer keyboard with the per-key RGB backlighting, you get the nice large touchpad, the good speakers, you even have Windows Hello facial recognition and there's a lot of good stuff here, but does it justify that $3000 price tag? I will definitely admit, I have had issues with quality on some Razer laptops in the past, but as far as I can tell, they basically nailed it this generation. I mean, hardware wise, there's not a lot to complain about which is always a good thing when you're spending this much money on a laptop. Is it getting old? I'm complaining about the price of the laptop? It's a big issue, it legitimately is. It's a very very expensive piece of tech, and you're paying a lot of extra money and I think pretty much everyone expects to get something when they pay that. And you're getting some stuff, like hardware wise it's a little bit nicer, but performance wise you can get a lot more performance or basically the same performance for a lot less. Which I think is a compelling argument for almost everyone. As a surprise to basically no one you're getting a very solid display. Now this model has the 1080p 144Hz panel, but there is an optional 4K unit as well. Now it's solid, but it's really nothing all that exciting. I mean, basically every other gaming laptop in this class has a very very similar panel. What is a little bit more exciting, are some of the new options that are coming for the Blade a little bit later this year. At CES I got to take a look at two of these new options. One of which is a 240Hz panel, which, let's be real, I don't know if all that many people can tell the difference, but for some people it might be nice, specifically people who are playing very very high frame rate games, but more importantly than that, for me is a 4K OLED panel. Now I know I mentioned earlier that there was already a 4K option that you can get for the Blade, but it's still a standard panel, I mean it looks nice, but the OLED panel I was able to take a look at in the Razer booth was incredible, I mean the contrast, the brightness, it was such a massive, massive step up. Now it doesn't support those higher frame rates, but as far as I'm concerned, I want OLED all up in my Razer Blade. And well basically, everywhere else in fact just everywhere. The 2019 Razer Blade delivers a rock solid build and good performance, but it comes at a steep cost. Now if this was sort of a no price comparison where I just pick the absolute favorite piece of hardware on the market, I actually might go with the Blade. But when you look at that Zephyrus S, for a significantly cheaper price, you're getting that better performance, you're getting a little bit of an unusual design, but I think for most people, it is totally worth the trade off. So, is the Razer Blade worth it? Well for some people, yes, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm holding out for that OLED panel. That, that is what's going to get the money and oh, I just realized, think about how expensive the OLED's gonna be. Oh no, I was all excited about getting a new Razer Blade with OLED. Oh no...