Razer Blade 15 (2019) Review: Ray tracing arrives on the gaming laptop king

Key Specifications
Review Price: £2849.99
1080p and 4K screen options
Nvidia GTX 1060 and RTX 2060/2070/2080 GPU options
8th Gen Intel Core i7-8750H
80Wh battery

What is the Razer Blade 15 (2019)?
The 2019 edition of the Razer Blade 15 isn’t too different to last year’s awarding-winning gaming laptop. It features the same design, same display options and even the same 8th-Gen Intel Core processor. The major difference here is the introduction of Nvidia’s new RTX graphics cards, which brings with it a meaty frame rate boost as well as ray tracing capabilities to really enhance those visuals.

This new-fangled technology comes at a cost though – £2850 to be precise, at least for the RTX 2080 edition I’m reviewing here. That’s a hell of a lot of dosh considering you can buy gaming laptops with Nvidia 10-Series cards for at least a grand cheaper.


So are the performance boost and RTX features worth the massive hike in price? Personally, I’m not convinced, despite Razer continuing its fine form of producing classy, premium gaming laptops.

Related: Best Gaming Laptops 2019

Razer Blade 15 (2019) – Design

Why alter perfection? This was clearly Razer’s thinking since it hasn’t changed a single thing about the physical appearance of this gaming laptop. It still has the same ultra-thin black aluminum chassis and iconic illuminated green logo on the lid. In fact, it’s best to think of the 2019 iteration of the Razer Blade 15 as an additional model rather than an entirely new entry to the Razer lineup.

You needn’t be concerned about this design stagnating in 2019, with the impossibly thin screen bezel remaining as trendy as Fortnite and avocados. The top bezel is still slightly bulky in comparison, but that’s to accommodate the 1-megapixel webcam – not that you’d want to use the built-in webcam since its video quality is a fuzzy, pixelated horror. 

The webcam is so poor that you really won’t want to use it for your Twitch streams

Two up-firing speakers sandwich the keyboard. As always with Razer laptops, audio quality is impressive. You can crank volume up a fair way, while the drivers have sufficient boom for all your grenade explosions. I’d still recommend some gaming headphones instead though.
The same ports make a comeback too, including Thunderbolt (Type-C), USB 3 and HDMI mini-DisplayPort. Don’t worry, there’s also a headphone jack, so you won’t be forced to make the jump to Bluetooth cans just yet.

The new Razer Blade 15 has all the trimmings needed to hook up some gaming peripherals

The only real physical difference between each model is the dimensions. The base GTX model is slightly thicker than the RTX range, with the former sizing up at 19.9mm and the latter being 17.8mm thin. The difference in size is likely due to the base model’s dual-storage SSD, giving you 1TB of more space to store your game collection.

With an untweaked design, the Advanced Model also brings back a couple of flaws, mainly the fingerprint-magnet surface. Carry the Blade 15 for a few seconds and you’ll notice fingerprint marks smudged all the casing, leaving the laptop looking grotesquely grimy. 

Razer Blade 15 (2019) – Keyboard and trackpad

A gaming laptop’s keyboard is never going to compare to the crunchy feel of a mechanical keyboard, but I still expect some sort of tactile feel when I’m spending over £2000 on a portable. Unfortunately, you don’t get that with the Razer Blade 15.

The keys could do with more travel and feedback, but they put on a pretty RGB light show

If the Razer Blade 15 was an ultrabook I could forgive its shallow keys, but as a high-end gaming laptop, I just don’t think there’s enough travel or feedback here to happily hammer the WASD keys during a first-person shooter. Razer argues you’ll probably just buy an external gaming keyboard anyway, and while that’s true, it’s not a good solution for when you’re on the go.

You can also customise the RGB keyboard lighting, which looks real snazzy without being overbearing. Thanks to Razer Synapse 3 you can even sync up the light show to your Razer peripherals, so your gaming mouse and headset can all glow in satisfying union.

Related: Best Gaming Keyboards 2019

The glass trackpad here is one of my all-time favourite in a gaming laptop

The glass touchpad makes a return. I’m a big fan of it, being super smooth and ultra responsive. You’ll likely want more accuracy for first-person shooters, so buying a gaming mouse is a good idea. But compared to rival gaming laptops, this is probably my favourite trackpad.

Related: Best Gaming Mouse

Razer Blade 15 (2019) – Display

Every RTX Blade 15 laptop is available with a Full HD display with a 144Hz refresh rate, ensuring a super-smooth experience for any game you load up. As a bonus, there’s also the option of a 4K display with a 60Hz refresh rate for the RTX 2070 model, just in case you want to fill your screen with as many eye-pleasing pixels as possible. Note that will cost you a whopping £2750.

Disappointingly, there’s no option of an RTX laptop with a Full HD 60Hz display. This would have been an incredibly useful option for those who fancy feasting their eyes on the new ray tracing technology, but aren’t prepared to cough up the extra cash for all the other premium trimmings.

The 144Hz refresh rate here ensures a super-smooth display which is vital for fast-paced shooters

Even more disappointing, not one of the RTX Blade 15 laptops have Nvidia’s G-Sync. For those unfamiliar, this technology syncs up the GPU’s frame rates to the display’s refresh rate in order to prevent screen tearing.

I noticed this ugly effect a few times in both Battlefield 5 and Metro Exodus with the Razer Blade. Significantly cheaper gaming laptops can be forgiven for not including G-Sync or FreeSync, but since we’re talking about laptops costing over £2000, this omission is a real let down.

How does the display actually look? Solid. The Razer screensaver immediately catches the eye with a rainbow-spectrum of colours, giving the impression the Blade 15 has one of the best gamut coverage in the business. That’s not true though. The sRGB score of 89.2% is high, but I expected it to be a little better considering the price.

This is still a perfectly adequate gamut coverage for gaming though, although designers should stay clear, especially if they want to edit photos and photography since the Razer Blade 15 posts low Adobe RGB and DCI P3 scores of 62% and 64.5% respectively.

The Razer has a lovely colour rich display that’s great for both gaming and Netflix

The rest of the colorimeter readings are fairly average. The best of them was screen brightness, reporting a figure of 349 nits which surpasses the 300-nit average by a respectable margin. The visual colour temperature is also impressive, with the 6883K result showing the Blade’s display is very close to neutral, edging ever so slightly into a cooler temperature.

Black levels are a little poor too at 0.37 nits, so you’re not going to get super-dark colours when creeping through caves in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Contrast is also just below average (1000:1) at 949:1.

Overall then, the Razer Blade display isn’t spectacular, but should still be decent enough for a great gaming visual experience. But at such an extravagant price, missing features such as G-Sync is really difficult to forgive.