Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 RTX 4090 Review: Core i9-13950HX beast with world's first dual-mode mini-LED UHD+ display

[Redaktion]

The Razer Blade 16 Early 2023 is a new offering for gamers interested in a flagship 16:10 16-inch gaming laptop. Featuring a desktop-class Intel Raptor Lake-HX Core i9-13950HX, a 175 W Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, and the world's first dual-mode mini-LED display, the Blade 16 seeks to take on some of the most powerful juggernauts this year. We explore Razer's ambitions with the Blade 16 and whether it is worth the additional US$700 over the Blade 16 RTX 4080.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Blade-16-Early-2023-RTX-4090-Review-Core-i9-13950HX-beast-with-world-s-first-dual-mode-mini-LED-UHD-display.702200.0.html

[Neenyah]

Cons: High heat and noise emissions

I appreciate excellent reviews and I really don't want to be negative to Notebookcheck's authors here but why is this ALWAYS being mentioned as a con for super-powerful GAMING laptops? Even desktops are frequently very loud and oftentimes hot (unless one is rocking a maxi tower with impeccable airflow) when you pack powerful components inside because things like that are unavoidable. Heck, powerful cars (engines and a whole area around them) also get absurdly hot.

Then here we have one pretty small and light device (smaller and lighter than the Legion 5 Pro, for example) that's rocking some of the very strongest specs currently on the market and we expect it to be quiet and cool? Hm?
 
I mean check this part:

We recorded a maximum of 54.2 °C while stressing with The Witcher 3 at 1080p Ultra while a combined Prime95 and FurMark load results in a hot spot of 52 °C at the top center of the chassis.

And then compare that with ma(aaaaaaaa)ny significantly less powerful ultrabooks that get absurdly hot (ThinkPad T14 Intel reaching 67.3°C (!) bottom) and similarly-sized laptops to this beast here. Let's say this from this X1EG5 review: notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Extreme-G5-Laptop-reviewed-Flagship-ThinkPad-with-more-CPU-power.672968.0.html

During both gaming and the stress test, we measured more than 55 °C on the bottom and 50 °C on the top of the base unit, respectively. Under load, it is unwise to have the device placed on the user's lap and also warm fingers can be expected when typing.

Not only that it is less powerful but it gets significantly hotter than this Razer here and it also gets equally loud on max load. Ok, ok, but it's slimmer so... Fine. How about the ThinkPad P16 G1 RTX A5500 then? Thicccer with apparently bigger fans, equally loud and similarly hot - yet less powerful.

For some reason those two non-gaming and less powerful but equally loud (or louder) and hot (or hotter) laptops do not have "High heat and noise emissions" under their cons. But this one here, that's far better performer with equal/lower dB and °C output - has. Weird. I can keep pulling a lot of more examples if needed.
 
Also fu*k PWM, seriously. OEMs need to stop doing that crap.




 

[Vaidyanathan]

Cons: High heat and noise emissions

I appreciate excellent reviews and I really don't want to be negative to Notebookcheck's authors here but why is this ALWAYS being mentioned as a con for super-powerful GAMING laptops? Even desktops are frequently very loud and oftentimes hot (unless one is rocking a maxi tower with impeccable airflow) when you pack powerful components inside because things like that are unavoidable. Heck, powerful cars (engines and a whole area around them) also get absurdly hot.

Hi Neenyah. It is a given that powerful components mean high emissions. Now, we aren't expecting such a laptop being stressed to operate at room temperature. We are only making the point that this is something to watch out for. This is akin to reviewers mentioning say, the RTX 4090 desktop card as "pricey" in the Cons section. Everyone knows that. It's just a way of telling readers and potential buyers to be wary of during purchase.
Besides, the RTX 4080 version of this laptop had much better manageable surface temps, so the higher temps we see with this are definitely a cause for concern given that it doesn't really translate into significant performance gains.

[Neenyah]

Fair points Vaidyanathan, I cannot disagree! Thank you for your (fast) reply 🙏

[RobertJasiek]

Neenyah, every reviewer selects Pros and Cons somewhat arbitrarily. Those listed might help the reader while those not listed could have helped him as well...

Power-hungry components in desktops can be loud or rather silent depending on how well cooling is done and chosen.

Power-hungry components in notebooks can be loud if run at full TDPs and fan speeds and if the cooling is bad. Their noise can be medium if the cooling is good, their TDPs / power tagets etc. are restricted to 50 - 80% and medium fan speeds are chosen.

Good cooling is a requirement but insufficient for lower noise.

Some want maximum speed whatever the noise. Others want moderate noise at lower but still reasonable speed. Therefore, it is important to test both (and in particular not only for 3D games).

That you find many examples of loud computers is the reality: by far too many are too loud. However, moderate noise is possible and some such devices exist.

[Vaidyanathan]

Fair points Vaidyanathan, I cannot disagree! Thank you for your (fast) reply 🙏

You're welcome. Thanks for all the support :)

[check your test]

please check your test equipment which test response times - in most of your recent reviews - appears to be too high  - please check your last 6-8 reviews in at least 4 of them, regardless of screen type, the response times are above 50ms

[Alejandro]

I sometimes feel those assigned scores are really arbitrary. This computer has a price tag of $4,300 and computers with a cost of $2,500 and a lower graded GPU are easily beating it. Yeah, I know, the display is really cool, it has really good build and beautiful aesthetics. But a 90% general score and a 97% gaming performance score? Really? For a RTX 4090 that is being beaten by a RTX 4080 and a $2000 cheaper laptop? Come on!

[Vaidyanathan]

please check your test equipment which test response times - in most of your recent reviews - appears to be too high  - please check your last 6-8 reviews in at least 4 of them, regardless of screen type, the response times are above 50ms

Hi there. The problem with miniLEDs is that the constant PWM flickering is so strong that it often overlaps with the response time curves. This makes it a tad bit cumbersome to properly define the curves in the oscilloscope. Even if we try and narrow down to individual peaks, the acquisition is not sufficient for proper quantification.

Can you let me know which other non-miniLED laptops you've come across on the site with 50 ms+ response times? Thank you.

[Vaidyanathan]

I sometimes feel those assigned scores are really arbitrary. This computer has a price tag of $4,300 and computers with a cost of $2,500 and a lower graded GPU are easily beating it. Yeah, I know, the display is really cool, it has really good build and beautiful aesthetics. But a 90% general score and a 97% gaming performance score? Really? For a RTX 4090 that is being beaten by a RTX 4080 and a $2000 cheaper laptop? Come on!

Hi Alejandro. We use a mostly-automated rating system that works largely on the benchmark and measurement data. It's definitely not an "arbitrary" rating. :)
That being said, I understand what you mean. However, we have to consider the entire experience of using the product as well. Yes, the Blade 16 does lose by a small margin to certain 4080 models. But, it is also able to get ahead of other 4090 laptops such as the Zephyrus M16. The 90% score is not just for gaming performance alone but the cumulative weighted average considering all other devices in the Gaming class of laptops. If the gaming performance had very clear leads, say like the MSI Titan GT77, it would have been awarded 100% instead of 97%.

[NikoB]

In fact, in this completely "raw" semi-finished product, only the screen is of interest. But even there, according to the author of the review, everything is bad. 1000 backlight zones is a shame for such a diagonal against the background of 4096 zones in the iPad Pro.

The author himself saw that despite the declaration of hardware integer switching in fhd, in reality bad bilinear anti-aliasing switching is apparently used. But how is this possible if NVidia at the driver level gives an integer switch from 2019? I would like to receive detailed explanations from the author.

With a real integer switch to fhd mode, one pixel is obtained from 4 pixels of a 4k panel. Detailing naturally drops by a factor of 4, but the interpixel distance on a 4k panel is several times smaller than on fhd panels, so the picture and text in reality should look more monolithic, visually better than on native FHD panels.

I have nothing to say about the strange response of the panel, because. you have to see it with your own eyes.

The performance of the 13950HX is shameful compared to other models.
In the test with CBR15, you should always show graphs for all possible factory profiles, so that a potential buyer can see how much the speed really drops in each profile, coupled with the noise level.

The laptop is definitely noisy. As usual with Ryzer.

An incomplete keyboard without a numpad, as usual, excludes its use as an all-rounder for office work, programming and other tasks where it is necessary.

I do not see a photo of the power supply in the review - it is not clear whether the power plug is sticking out to the side. If so, this precludes its use by right-handers on sofas and beds.

In general, it is clear that this is an unfinished laptop for big money, despite the fact that for 2 times less you can buy a heaped up system unit with a desktop 4090, which is 4 times quieter at full speed and 1.5 times faster, not to mention the processor (which in general will be silent under load with a large heatsink) and memory.

I repeat my thesis for 2023 again - buying a "gaming" laptop in 2023 has become the most senseless waste of money for those who play a lot and seriously.

With a price of $2000-2500 this notebook may be of interest in sales, but no more.

[NikoB]

Forgive me for the remark about the power plug - the first photo shows that it is a normal angular one, I hope it is durable and will not melt from such a load.

The keys are flat with decent actuation and tactility but offer a short 1 mm travel distance.

It's generally terrible, it's like typing on a touchscreen or tapping your fingers on a table. Blind fast typing is definitely impossible here, and playing comfortably without an external keyboard is definitely the same. But then what's the point of this "gaming" laptop?

[Ednumero]

Interestingly, we see that the matrix in UHD+ mode looks quite sharp and well-defined. One would expect a larger pixel size upon switching to FHD+ mode, but we see identically sized pixels here.

Hmm, wouldn't this require the panel to physically change the positions of its subpixel filters, or have some other exotic mechanism? This would be impressive, but might not be reachable within today's tech!

We also get to see fuzziness and aliasing artefacts in the sub-pixel matrix — it is not as sharp as the UHD+ mode and is definitely not as sharp compared to a native FHD panel.

That makes sense. What I'd be most interested in would be the visual comparison between integer scaling and naïve scaling.

UHD+ 120 Hz / FHD+ 240 Hz

If the panel meets the bandwidth requirements for 120 Hz 3840x2400, shouldn't the 1920x1200 rate be 480 Hz rather than 240 Hz? it should even be able to exceed 240 Hz when set to 2560x1600, and 200 Hz on 2880x1800. It might be hard to appreciate with the measured response times, but it is great to see resolution-dependent refresh-rate-boosting displays entering the market in any case. Hopefully future iterations iron out these response time shortcomings.

[NikoB]

In fact, all panels with VRR support must easily switch to any available frequency from the possible ones according to the upper limit if the channel bitrate is sufficient.

4k panels when changing the resolution to fhd should be exactly as clear at the pixel level as in the native one, because. one pixel fhd consists of 4 pixels 4k matrix 2x2. Due to the extremely high ppi, native 2x2 pixels should look like a monolithic pixel to the eye, but at the same time, the interpixel gap on a 4k panel will obviously be narrower than on a native fhd panels. As a result, this should in practice lead to a more monolithic (analog) picture in fhd mode on a 4k panels with an honest integer resize from 4k resolution to fhd than when viewing content on native fhd.

When 8k panels appear, the human eye will not be able to see pixel of  4x4 matrix in fhd mode even at close range, i.e. a pixel consisting of 16 pixels of an 8k panel will be perfectly sharp and clear in its structure, and an interpixel one will be even smaller, as a result, an 8k panel in fhd mode with an integer resize to fhd will visually look like a reference fhd panel with invisible interpixel intervals. Just like on smartphones for a long time.

That is what we should strive for. But resizing the panel from 8k to 4k and from 4k to fhd should be done HARDWARE at the panel electronics level, and not at the OS driver level! It should have been in all panels for laptops and monitors for 10 years, since the first 4k monitors appeared! But it hasn't been done yet! And this is a shame for the entire industry! If  NVidia had not made an integer switch to fhd mode in drivers in 2019, instead of the usual muddy bilinear in the electronics of all panels on the market (except for IBM X-ray, as far as I know), and then Intel followed suit and then apparently AMD, we would have so far we have been looking at muddy fhd mode on 8k/4k panels.

It's time to stop this practice and do a hardware resize in the panel control chip - the operating system and drivers should not deal with this garbage and waste system resources on this elementary crap, the code for which a schoolboy will write in a couple of minutes. The system and driver must think they are working with a native FHD matrix when the user sets the FHD resolution in the system settings. The only time when nasty ClearType and similar sub-pixel anti-aliasing techniques are used on screens with low ppi is in the past, but on 4k+ screens this crap is simply not needed, as it was on smartphones a long time ago.

[mario64]

Is the attached ICC profile Standard or Advanced Color? Also, what if you enable HDR? Is the profile still active? Thank you