What excitement! Knowing that you have in your hands one of the most powerful laptops in the world is something exhilarating, a bit like being behind the wheel of a big car. But you still have to know how to drive… and, in our case, have the use of so much power. A 9th generation Intel Core i13 CPU (13950HX), an RTX 4090 16 GB graphics card that displays the image on a mini-led screen with double resolution (4K + Full HD) at 240 Hz, the technical sheet of this Razer Blade 16 literally makes you dizzy. Resolutely high-end, like its price, it's time to see what we can expect from this titan.
“Hello, I am the most powerful laptop in the world”
La Razer Blade 16 range is wide and has several models, ranging from around 2000€ (with a looking 4050) at more than 5400€, the price of excellence, at the time of writing these lines. This is the most advanced model that has come to the drafting. In addition to the Intel Core i9 13950HX and the nVidia RTX 4090, there are 32 GB of RAM and 2 NVMe disks of 1 TB, hard to do better. We will come back to this later in the article. But first, let's talk about the chassis, one of the most important points for a laptop.
Razer has obviously thought big for this top of the range. In addition to the technical characteristics of the bowels of the beast, the Blade 16 (also available in 18 inches) sports an anodized aluminum frame, matte black finish, compact and robust. The solidity of the whole is reminiscent of the design of the MacBook Pro from which it seems strongly inspired. The keyboard keys barely stick out, leaving a sensitive and soft touch, while the edge of the screen has a light rubber seal to prevent nasty dust from sneaking in once the laptop is closed.
The overall design remains unchanged from the previous vintage. It's sober, very professional, and far from the "gamer" standards of the moment. The RGB, fully adjustable via the in-house "Synapse" application, is limited to discreetly bringing out the characters on the keyboard. On the hood, the green logo also lights up discreetly. The hinge of the screen, rather precise, inspires confidence. The slab does not bend if you close it by taking it from a corner and not from its center.
The keyboard offers precise and silent typing. A wide, and perhaps even a little too large, touchpad takes place on the lower part. Unfortunately, we tend to trigger accidental "clicks" with the wrist when entering text. Nothing to say on the other hand about its reactivity or its coating which does not attract fingerprints more than that.
The webcam, unpretentious, will do the job for your videoconferences, but will not allow content creators to have a very clear image quality on facecam.
And to finish the tour of the chassis, let's talk about the connectors. In my opinion, this is the weak point, and I do not share the opinion of many colleagues or even of Razer, which announces “PORTS GALORE” on its website. That's meager, at least in comparison to my current MSI GE75 Raider (test here). For wireless, nothing to report, the latest standards are present: Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. An HDMI 2.1 port, 3 USB 3.2 ports, a USB C, an SD card reader and a Thunderbolt 4 (USB C format) are present. I would have appreciated a Displayport, to avoid having to buy a cable to connect to an external monitor, and above all, ESPECIALLY, a 2.5 Gb Ethernet port. For a gaming laptop, this seems essential to me at a time when many competitors are looking for responsiveness and speed on the network. Especially since equipping a house with Wifi 6 is still expensive.
For scalability, dismantling is possible and provides access to RAM, one of the 2 NVMe disks, and the battery.
An innovative mini-led monitor
Before looking at pure performance, we can't ignore the screen. The Razer Blade 16 uses a 16-inch mini-led panel. Its particularity is to offer a double native resolution. The choice for the user: a 4K mode at 120 Hz, or a Full HD mode at 240 Hz. Both provide fluidity in play, the difference between 120 or 240 fps is barely noticeable. For professionals, in video editing for example, a 4K display will allow you to place a maximum of elements on the screen. Be careful, however, such a definition on 16 inches requires having a good view, it makes sense, but also a fairly low eye-screen distance.
The parade to use 4K without tiring is to modify the display scale in the Windows settings. A setting between 200 and 250% is very satisfactory. Small flat all the same, during the test, the setting of scale made certain software and games unstable. Windows itself reverting back to 100% scale after a few reboots. In any case, switching between 4K and Full HD mode requires a system restart.
The panel is perfectly calibrated from the factory, so much so that the "before-after", once the calibration has been carried out using a probe, does not show any noticeable difference to the naked eye. A very good point for creative people. And for those who wish to work/play on the terrace, the matte slab can be used outdoors under a parasol.
Unsurprising performance
It's time to talk about what players, but also pros, expect from such a machine: high-level performance. And I even wonder if it is necessary to elaborate on the subject as the answer seems obvious. Yes, and even a big YES, the Razer Blade 16 can absolutely run every game currently available, with the graphics sliders set to the extreme, at 4K resolution.
Recall that nVidia's mobile RTX 4090 GPU shares its technical sheet with the version Desktop of the 4080. On this Razer Blade 16, it is a model with a TDP of 175 W (150 W + 25 in boost) that we find. Either the most efficient mobile model. The CPU, an Intel Core i9-13950HX, is also among the most powerful of the moment, with its 24 cores (8 + 16) capable of climbing to 5,5 GHz.
It is therefore a monster, as much for the players as for the image professionals (thank you nVidia Studio), offered by Razer. Of course, all this has a cost in terms of electricity consumption. A cost that remains relatively under control. But before talking Watts and heat dissipation, here is a performance recap table in game and in some pro applications. I include, for comparison, the reference values of the MSI GE75 Raider, a laptop of 2020 (core i7, RTX 2070, 32GB RAM) that I still use daily for gaming as well as for animation and 3D modeling or even video editing.
| MSI GE75 Raider | Razer blade 16 | |
| 3dsmax 22 – 4K 5M Polygon Viewport Browsing (Average FPS) | 70 | 142 |
| 3dsmax 22 – 4K render – Arnold CPU (h:m:s) | 00:03:32 | 00:01:04 |
| 3dsmax 22 – 4K render – Arnold GPU (h:m:s) | 00:00:54 | 00:00:34 |
| Adobe Premiere – export h265 – 4k – CPU (h:m:s) | 00:17:00 | 00:11:03 |
| Adobe Premiere – export h265 – 4k – GPU (h:m:s) | 00:13:38 | 00:08:10 |
| Adobe After Effects – export h265 – 4k (h:m:s) | 00:09:20 | 00:05:14 |
| Cinebench R23 – Single Core | 1167 | 2043 |
| Cinebench R23 – Multi Core | 7396 | 33028 |
| Cyberpunk – Overdrive Path Tracing Ultra QHD – DLSS Quality (medium FPS) | 14 | 64 |
| RDR2 – Ultra No DLSS QHD (Medium FPS) | 44 | 103 |
| RDR2 – Ultra DLSS QHD quality (Medium FPS) | NA | 110 |
| Flight Simulator – DX 12 Ultra DLSS quality 1440p (Medium FPS) | 32 | 87 |
Some details on these benches
For 3DSMAX, I display a CAD of 5M polygons and I measure the performance on a predefined camera animation (in order to have the same anim on all the tests). For renderings using Arnold, this is the same scene in CPU rendering and then in GPU rendering. The gain is obvious.
For Adobe Premiere Pro, this is a classic edit, that can be found in the daily life of youtubers. A 30 minute sequence with some effects, transitions. Not all of them are accelerated by the GPU, which explains why the gain is not multiplied by 2 or more. Adobe After Effects leverages CPU + GPU when exporting. The exported scene is none other than the Youtube video intro credits.
The synthetic bench Cinebench R23 shows the expected gain on applications fully exploiting multicore.
Reflection around this level of performance
With this high performance, I still have a hard time understanding why everyone is talking about PC Gaming, and only about this use. Or rather why the tests that can be found on the web never talk about the professional use of such a tool. The numbers are there! The Razer Blade 16 costs over $5000, so is it only aimed at wealthy gamers? Certainly NO. For an image professional, these 5000€ are to be compared with the enormous productivity gain made possible by this CPU/GPU couple. In 3D rendering for example, a pro can choose between improving the quality of his work, via more precise renderings, but which will require the same duration as on a less efficient PC, or increasing his quantity of production since the time saved is well there. And I'm not even talking about working comfort!
To give you a concrete example, in my case (a lot of video exports and design work and 3D rendering), the difference between the use of the MSI GE75 Raider laptop and the Razer Blade 16 can translate into 15 days of work saved per year, or 3 weeks!
Controlled consumption
With a CPU whose thermal envelope is 55W and a GPU with 175W boost, we expect to greatly exceed 200W. The charger, flat but heavy, is capable of delivering 330W. Arrived on the Windows desktop, idle, I was pleasantly surprised to measure only 31W at socket, screen brightness at max, Wi-Fi enabled. We move on to a more classic use, web browsing with the playback of a video on Youtube. This time, 61W is displayed on the Wattmeter screen. And it's also time for the ventilation to start, very discreetly.
It's time to launch Cyberpunk 2077 to awaken the sleeping titan in the belly of the Razer Blade 16. This time, all the components are present. Consumption instantly increases to 250W, a value that will not go further. Ventilation is present. Noise pollution is difficult to quantify, depending on the location of the sound level meter. I measure 43 dB at 60cm in front of the laptop screen. Better to use headphones to play.
Placed in the category of TRANSportables more than laptops, the Razer Blade 16 does not shine with its autonomy and is clearly not made to play on battery power. In office use, by playing a little on the brightness, we can hope to last 4 hours (3 hours minimum observed).
DLSS3 to the rescue
nVidia gave us some interesting information about DLSS 3 during the test. This AI-based technology is less energy-intensive to generate images that the full solicitation of the GPU. Nevertheless, this consumption measurement is done on “low” resolutions, with a deliberately restricted framerate.
Let's do the test with Cyberpunk, in "High" setting (and not ultra), in Full HD, limited to 60 fps for "classic" rendering and "30 fps + image generation" in DLSS 3 (i.e. 60 fps displayed by the game). The measures taken speak for themselves. Where Cyberpunk 2077 on the Razer Blade 16 needs 165W to display 60 fps, it will only take 150W for the same result with DLSS 3 enabled, a power saving of around 10%.
Stratospheric!
This is finally the word that will conclude this test of the Razer Blade 16. As much by its price as by its performance. Everything impressed me, starting with the technological evolution that has taken place its last 4-5 years. If there is little, we could still hear, wrongly, that a portable PC is not made to play, today, it is quite simply impossible to hold such a speech.
This Razer Blade 16 is not free from flaws. It will be criticized for the lack of connectivity (Ethernet especially), a fairly neutral audio rendering, an equally generic webcam, and the interest of double resolution which did not completely convince me with professional applications which do not all know how to react correctly when faced with such a high pixel density. The investment is to think about, but once in hand, the price can quickly be forgotten.
Buy the Razer Blade
16-inch model on Rueducommerce.fr
18-inch model on Rueducommerce.fr
