There are basically two products in the 14-inch gaming laptop space. Sure, there are others out there. But if you come to me asking for a 14-inch gaming laptop, I’d recommend one of the two, unless you’re desperate.
There was a year when I couldn’t decide between the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and the Razer Blade 14. But it looks like 2023 may not be that kind of year.
The Blade 14 is Razer’s fastest 14-inch laptop ever. It houses one of AMD’s most powerful mobile CPUs, the Ryzen 9 7940HS, a monster chip with 8 cores, a boost frequency of 5.2 GHz and a TDP of 54 W. It’s a great device without a second thought.
But pricing relative to its closest competitors makes little sense to me. The Blade 14 model I received (16:10/QHD+/240Hz screen, 1TB of storage, 16GB of memory, with his Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 inside) he’s $2,699. With the exact same resolution, storage, memory, processor and GPU, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is available now for $1,849.99. The only difference is that the screen refresh rate is slightly lower. (Hell, you can get a 14-inch MacBook Pro with all this storage and memory for pretty cheap, too.)
To justify the $850 price increase, the Blade 14 would have to deliver exceptional, stunning, out-of-this-world performance. it’s not. It’s just right.
We won’t go into too much detail about the Blade 14 chassis here. Because if he’s ever seen one Razer Blade, he’s basically seen them all. Uniformity is the hallmark of the Blade line. It’s sleek and thin, with a subtle RGB keyboard and a green snake logo on the lid.
Since last year, the Blade 14 has gotten a 16:10 screen, a slightly larger touchpad, and new battery optimization features (plus the ability to upgrade both RAM slots, which is nice), but it’s still nice to play games on. The feeling doesn’t change much. From its predecessor and various other Blade games I’ve played in my career. It remains a premium black build with a colorful keyboard. I still have quite a few fingerprints left. The big update is inside.
Blade averaged 220fps CS:GO at native resolution and 67fps red dead redemption 2, even in native resolution.I got an average of 99fps Shadow of the Tomb Raider 64fps with ray tracing off, 64fps with ray tracing on. Don’t get me wrong. These are great scores that match those expected from the RTX 4070.
But just as a thought experiment, I’d like to compare it to the Razer Blade 18’s score we saw earlier this year. This device is powered by his RTX 4080 and the scores for these titles in QHD resolution are nothing close to that. They’re not batting in the same league. They are hilariously distant.
Now, obviously, you can’t expect a 14-inch laptop of this size to perform anywhere near that of an 18-inch or larger console in basically any situation. However, I feel the gap between these two systems is huge (Blade 18 performed better by nearly 50%) tomb raider) might help explain the extra power the RTX 4080 can provide. At the time of this writing, his Zephyrus G14 with RTX 4080 can be purchased by him for $2,499.99. That’s $200 less than this test model of Blade 14. It doesn’t make much sense… well.
In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a Blade 14 with a 4080. The model listed on Razer’s site stops at 4070. The G14, on the other hand, can pair the same AMD processor with a 4090.
Blade 14 with 4080 doesn’t seem to be available either
Another observation from my testing period: I used “maximum fan speed mode” in Razer’s Synapse settings to get the most performance possible. I also think other buyers might want the same thing.Fans, get ready go insane when you turn this on. They fire, fire and don’t stop. The Blade’s speakers weren’t terrible, but they weren’t loud enough to allow him to hear the audio gaming at a comfortable level in the constant roar of the fans. I could hear the music, but the conversation was often muddled. I am not describing this as a criticism. It’s not a crime to run the fans very fast with a feature called “maximum fan speed mode”. I just want to warn you.
(Those super-excited fans luckily did the job. The 7940HS stayed within mid-70s to mid-80s (Celsius) for most of my gaming tests, going up to the high-90s. There were only occasional shots, which is impressive considering the following: we’re dealing with a 14-inch chassis, and the Razer Blade is commonly known as a giant fireball.)
I wasn’t blown away by the battery life. 6 hours 13 minutes normal use, 1 hour 9 minutes with gaming battery (about 56 minutes playtime, tested) red dead redemption 2). That’s a decent longevity for today’s gaming laptops, certainly ahead of other Blades, but it’s not the jaw-dropping all-day longevity we’ve seen on AMD systems of the past. And while it may sound like a broken record, it should be noted that his more affordable G14 has a larger battery.
Overall, the 2023 Blade 14 is a solid laptop with a very powerful processor inside that could be a true mainstream success. However, its high price pushes it into a fairly niche category.
I believe the Blade 14 has three advantages over the Zephyrus G14, which has the exact same chip inside. There are screens with higher refresh rates. I have an RGB keyboard. There’s also the fact that it’s three-tenths of an inch thinner (although I’ll also point out that it’s nearly half a pound heavier). And then there’s the general aesthetic, too. I’m sure some people prefer Blade’s understated black to the G14’s slightly eclectic dot-his Matrix and the like.
But that’s it. Even if they were all true, $850 just doesn’t seem right to me, and I can’t imagine testing the G14 eventually would change my mind unless the test unit is a full potato. Even if that were to happen, I think anyone willing to pay this amount should seriously consider his 4080 model of his G14 as an alternative. This will greatly improve the frame rate. not yet Less than the cost of this Blade model.
Again, no one said you should buy this. But you really need to. TRUE I want a blade
