Last year, I crowned the new 15-inch Razer Blade as being one of the best selling laptops you can get in that premium segment. It has been updated this year with some new RTX hardware, with other nice features. Older generations of Razer Blades have often had issues with thermals because the company is very focused on making the devices really thin and really nice looking, and when you do that, it’s very difficult to cool these devices properly.
Issues of the past
Because of the thermal issues of the past, I was worried that this new GPU, like the new RTX GPUs, will run a little bit hotter. But, it actually doesn’t. Even their top of the line 2080 Max-Q runs at acceptable temperatures. It’s clearly not the coolest laptop on the gaming market, but it doesn’t throttle while gaming. If you are running this in a very ambiently warm area, then you’ll probably have a slightly higher operating temperatures.
Performance
Performance on this GPU is great. It pushes out incredibly high frame rates, especially for a thin and light laptop. When it comes to pricing or value and bang for your buck, I don’t feel most people should be getting the top of the line 2080 Max-Q specs. However, when it comes to video production, the 2080 Max-Q doesn’t give much performance increase over the 1070. As it currently stands, I wouldn’t pick up the RTX devices just for video productions. They are definitely more gaming-oriented.
There are a few other differences between the 2019 and the 2018 models. The 2019 model is fractionally thicker, but it’s pretty much imperceptible. Build quality still remains really good, and you can get a black or a silvery white finish that they call Mercury. I prefer the Mercury partially because it’s doesn’t have the glowing green logo upfront, but if you like the green snakes, then you have to go with the black version. The webcam up at the top now supports Windows Hello. It has an infrared camera, so you can log in to your computer with facial recognition, which is nice. The keyboard has had a little bit of a tweak too.
Keyboard
Previously, the Razer Chroma Lighting did not light up for the secondary function or functions keys. So, we’re talking about the volume control, brightness control keys that you couldn’t see in the dark. It was a little annoying if you wanted to adjust any of those things in a completely dark room, but now you can see all of those function keys.
The trackpad remains unchanged. The shift on the keyboard also remains unchanged. As we’ve mentioned before in other entries, the right shift key is in a weird spot relative to the arrow keys and question mark key. You may find yourself hitting the shift+up instead of the shift+?. I guess people that know how to properly type don’t use the right shift at all.
The rest of the device hasn’t changed much physically. The speakers are still pretty good, and the internals still remains the same. You still have access to the WiFi card, RAM, and the SSD. The 80-watt-hour battery also remains the same. It’s still getting around 5.5 hours of battery life with the screen at 250 nits.
Now, the question that I think is the most important with this entry is whether or not you should get a new 2019 Razer Blade. A couple of days ago we, more or less, suggested not buying a new RTX gaming laptop just yet. That was based on the idea that for most of us in the market just aren’t going to get a good value compared the 10-series devices from 2018 that are not as expensive. That same basic message holds true for the Razer Blade, there’s a little bit of an adjustment that comes with this particular device.
Configurations
The configurations of the Razer Blade are currently quite expensive, particularly the 2080 Max-Q. That is their top of the line flagship device, but the RTX 2060 device is not bad. At the very least it has the best value of the bunch for most gamers. I say this because that 2060 for most gamers have pretty decent performance even compared to the 20670 Max-Q. From a personal opinion, I think for most gamers play their games at lower quality graphics in order to see better and higher frame rates. It’s more important to see the actual action of the game and the locations of other players in real time than it is for me to see the beautiful coloration and showing of a tree in the background.
In our current market of 1080p screens and games not really taking massive advantage of RTX ray tracing technology and capabilities, for most people they shouldn’t be picking up a 2070 and 2080 Max-Q devices for this new Razer Blade because the 2060 is still a super solid option, if you want to go the Razer Blade route. Also, last year’s model, the 1070 Max-Q is still a really good pick up.
Selling and buying your personal computers and laptops will forever be a thing. We are always going to have newer, faster, and better devices emerging almost daily it seems like. And with that continual advancement in technology that means that you are going to need extra money to try and keep up with the Joneses. you can sell your laptop computer to SellBroke.com in minutes and be on your way to picking up a few extra bucks for a device that you probably wouldn’t have sold on a peer-to-peer market. Just keep that in mind the next time you’re looking for some extra scratch for your billfold.
