Workstation or Gaming Kickoff?

I've worked with a number of dedicated gaming notebooks likewise equally my off-white share of business-oriented laptops. Each category comes with its own ready of requirements that manufacturers must address to fill the needs of the intended audition. Razer is pitching the Blade Pro equally a jack of all trades, designed for play and piece of work, and while I believe they got close to that sweet spot, I can't help but feel that Razer compromised and fell short on the GPU side.

The speedy CPU, loads of RAM, separate SSD / HDD storage as well every bit the large screen are corking for gaming and productivity. Only the GTX 960M will get out serious gamers looking for more than.

Although information technology's not unreasonable to expect the larger Blade Pro model would exist the college-end gaming organisation, the fact of the thing is that this is less of a gaming powerhouse and more of a svelte workstation laptop that's decent at playing games while retaining Razer's aggressive chops and cool looks. Nosotros are dissapointed Razer didn't opt for the GTX 980M, or even the GTX 970M every bit it did with the 14-inch Bract.

Our gripes about the 1080p panel are less of a concern when you consider in that location are no other 17" 3k/4k laptops in the marketplace and when it comes to it, not fifty-fifty a desktop GPU can comfortably handle these resolutions for gaming nonetheless. We'll just accept to wait for GPUs to catch upward some more.

The Razer Blade Pro (2015) starts at $2,299 for the model with a 128GB SSD + 500GB HDD. The model we tested is the acme of the line version which is identical but upgrades storage to a 512GB SSD and 1TB HDD for an additional $500 which is definitely on the steep side.

If gaming is your principal concern but like what you see here, and so spending a similar amount of coin for the high-end xiv-inch Razer Blade is probably your best bet.

If you can deal with a slightly chunkier and heavier notebook, the Asus ROG G751 packs a GTX 980M and 24GB of RAM for $two,300 although you do get one-half the SSD storage and, of course, yous lose the Switchblade UI. The Alienware 15 is another absurd system that can also be had with a GTX 980M and a 4K screen starting at around $2,200. If you must have a 17" organisation though, the Blade Pro is a niche item considering how well it's been built, the closest competitor we could find is the MSI GS70 Stealth Pro that we reviewed final yr, though it's since been updated with a faster GPU.

The Razer Bract Pro is a solid all-around desktop replacement laptop, information technology has 1 of the virtually interesting designs out there and the Switchblade UI is not a gimmick. Merely if you're after the best gaming performance for the buck so nosotros recommend looking elsewhere.

Pros: Beautiful design. The keyboard + Switchblade UI is quite unique and works very well. Speedy CPU, loads of RAM and storage.

Cons: We would have hoped for a college terminate GPU because the high-end price. Somewhat limited port selection.