Review of Razer Blade 15 Advanced 2021

I received my Razer Blade 15 Advanced on August 13th. I've been using it ever since as a gaming machine and my daily driver for my work-from-home position. Here are my thoughts on this machine.

There are far more capable people out there to evaluate the nitty-gritty game performance with test results and so forth. I'm not going to attempt to go into that level of detail These are my impressions as an average user of this tech without benchmarks. My goal is real world experience.

My configuration:

  • 11th Gen Core i7
  • RTX 3070
  • 1TB SSD
  • 32GB RAM
  • Full HD Display (1080p)
    • 360FPS Refresh Rate
Right out of the gate, for the most part, this thing seems to fly - except when it oddly doesn't.

For gaming, I've got no issues with it. The 3070 performs under load providing smooth gameplay and no dropped frames that I'm able to detect.

It runs the internal display plus two external 4k displays without pitching much of a fit.

The fans are loud when they run which, oddly, they seem to do all the time. Also, chassis is always warm. Not hot, but constantly warm to the touch when the system is running. Even if all I'm doing is word processing or light browsing for research. When I check Task Manager, the CPU is only at 1 or 2%, which makes no sense to me why it would be getting so warm.

What is surprising based on how warm it is under light load, is how cool it remains during intense gaming sessions. What I mean is that it doesn't get much warmer during heavy duty games with high FPS than when it's just sitting on my desk making my wrists sweat while I type.

The battery life is also a point of contention. I didn't buy it thinking I was going to get all day battery out of it, but I thought that I'd get close to four hours with the display at 50% and doing word processing and light browsing. As it is, I barely get 2.5 to 3 hours out of it.

Activity monitor says nothing is using excessive energy and all I've got open is Edge with 7 or 8 tabs, 1 to 3 word documents, Mail, and Calendar.

Now let's get into the weird choices that were made with this machine that make it problematic as a daily driver.

First of all, there is apparently no support for Modern Standby or Wake from Bluetooth. My Surface Go 2 has Wake for Bluetooth, and I use that as a full productivity machine for freelance assignments - hooking it up to a 4K display and Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse (Logitech, if you're curious). I punch a key on the keyboard, the Surface Go 2 wakes up.

On the Razer Blade 15 Advanced, there is no way to set my Bluetooth Keyboard or Mouse to wake the system. Apple has allowed Bluetooth Wake on their devices for more than a decade. How can they claim to be "Advanced" if they can't even wake on Bluetooth or support Modern Standby.

I'm also unclear as to why this happens, but on occasion it will simply wake from sleep when on battery power with the lid closed. I'll see the light go from white to green, indicating it's not sleeping anymore. Then the chassis will slowly start to warm up. If it's in a bag when this happens it gets downright hot. I have everything turned off that would potentially wake it during sleep, so this makes no sense to me. It's not even in the middle of the night when updates might be doing this.

In addition, I'm also seeing about 1 complete crash a day. What used to the be the BSD (and is now Green) shows up in the middle of my work day for no apparent reason. I've tried a complete reinstall of the OS as well as all the troubleshooting leading up to a full restore.

I'm honestly not at all impressed with this machine outside of it's gaming performance.

I would not recommend it, even for gamers, as I know there are different gaming laptops out there that don't get hot just existing, and provide a better overall user experience when you're doing something other than gaming.

Hey, @razerUSA please, will you take this back? I don't want it anymore.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Motorola Nightmare

I have typed in the past about my love of the Moto X and how it is the best smartphone available right now, still better than that Galaxy S6. I stand by that review of the phone - it is amazing and I have nothing bad to say about the phone. That said, Motorola has provided me with the worst customer service on the planet. The absolute worst. They are fucking terrible. I purchased a brand new Moto X through the Moto Maker. I customized it. I then paid the extra for the accidental damage coverage on the device because I have a small child and I'm a klutz. Sure enough, about three weeks after I'd purchased it, I dropped it on the pavement and the screen shattered. I called to do an Advanced Exchange (they put a hold on your credit card, send you a phone, and then you send back the old one and they don't bill your card). They said I would have the new phone within 5 days. I honestly believed I would have a tracking number within five days, but not the phone, so my exp
Read more

Frustration

Today has been really been the first time I’ve been frustrated with my decision to jump from Mac to Windows, and I’m not sure where to point the blame for it. The biggest issue I have both with Windows 8 and Android is the lack of quality apps. I know the Android lovers and Windows fans will decry me being a blind Apple Fanboy, and anybody who is that close-minded is just a waste of my time. They can live in their happy little bubble the way I used to live in my happy little Apple bubble. The fact that Apple OS X and iOS have a better selection of Apps available isn’t Apple’s fault, per se. I’m not saying that the Apple Branded Apps are better than the Windows branded apps of the same vein, I’m talking strictly 3rd party developers. I would imagine that with Android having more market share than Apple at this point there would be a better selection of Apps available for the platform and more high quality apps. The issue here is 3rd party developers. I’m not a part of any developer p
Read more

Real World Review of the Surface Laptop Studio

As somebody who had been an Apple User since the Apple IIe, I want you all to know how much weight this carries when I say this... The Surface Laptop Studio is hands down the best laptop I have ever used. Yes, part of that love comes from Windows 11, but not all of it. See my previous review of the Razer Blade 15 Advanced. But let's talk about Windows 11 briefly, because I think without it, this machine wouldn't have had a chance to succeed. What I'm about to say is going to make some people angry. I don't care about them. Fuck those people. Go be angry somewhere else. Windows 11 is the lovechild of macOS and Windows 10. It has taken all the best features of both Operating Systems and combined them into a slick, intuitive operating system that has something for everybody. I will eventually get around to writing a full review of Windows 11, but I don't want to get distracted and go plummeting down that rabbit hole. ADHD isn't a joke... I've been down rabbit h
Read more