Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model (i7-9750H, RTX 2080 Max-Q, 240 Hz) Laptop Review

[Redaktion]

The Blade 15 is barely one year old and Razer is continuing to push it to the limits with new CPU, Wi-Fi, and display options. How much of a performance boost can this new 9th gen Intel and RTX 2080 Max-Q SKU offer over the last 8th gen Intel and RTX 2070 Max-Q SKU?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Blade-15-Advanced-Model-i7-9750H-RTX-2080-Max-Q-240-Hz-Laptop-Review.420692.0.html

[Chazza]

Thanks for your review, arrived just in time for me as I'm looking to buy one of these.

I didn't actually know the 240Hz panel was IPS before reading this, I'd been thinking only TN panels could reach that refresh rate like my Acer Predator XB272 monitor. Definitely makes this a more attractive purchase than I originally thought.

Still deciding whether I should go for the 2070/2080, as the latter is a massive £600 ($760) more expensive in the UK, although does upgrade the SSD from 256GB to 512GB for that price (I'd probably replace it with a 2TB M.2 anyway). I'm thinking probably the 2070 as I still have a 2080 Ti in my desktop if I want to do some heavy gaming, what do you think?

[S.Yu]

I wonder if either of the two wide gamut screens are 10bit, and how bright they go, if neither are 10bit and neither go any brighter than 300nits then I'd rather try out the 144Hz regular gamut screen which is much cheaper. A thing about these screens is that the brightness on paper isn't gonna last very long with aging, when peak brightness falls below 200nits it really impacts viewing quality.

[Mr.Bean]

You didn't tell witch version of GPU it is... 80 or 90 Watt ?

Also, no comparison with his direct competitor aka Aero y9 ?

[KumaHIME]

I wonder if either of the two wide gamut screens are 10bit, and how bright they go, if neither are 10bit and neither go any brighter than 300nits then I'd rather try out the 144Hz regular gamut screen which is much cheaper. A thing about these screens is that the brightness on paper isn't gonna last very long with aging, when peak brightness falls below 200nits it really impacts viewing quality.

even if it was 10bit, you would only be able to see 10bit content for things that made use of directx such as video games or viewing HDR 10bit content. nvidia has limited support of 10bit output on consumer geforce cards to just directx. to get full 10bit support, you have to go quadro. This has to do with the fact that nvidia gives their consumer cards poor openGL drivers, as they leave the good openGL drivers for their more expensive quadro line. This is also why cinebench graphics scores vary little to not at all between a gtx1050 to an rtx2080.

You didn't tell witch version of GPU it is... 80 or 90 Watt ?

Also, no comparison with his direct competitor aka Aero y9 ?

it uses 90W version. razer is one of the rare companies that puts the 90W version of the rtx max-q gpus into all their products. You can actually see their HWinfo screenshots of the furmark+prime95 stress test, and see the powerdraw on the gpu just under 90W, as well as a peak powerdraw of 104W.

contrary to that, the aero uses the 80W version, albeit the performance difference isn't much.

[KumaHIME]

i would like to express a word of caution to everyone viewing this review. if you look at the HWinfo screenshots in the stress tests, you can see that a -100mV undervolt is applied! (IA Voltage Offset and CLR)... now, either razer has done this in the bios themselves, or notebookcheck applied the undervolt, without mentioning it in their review.

in either case, this makes this review an unfair comparison to the 8750h version, since, there was no undervolt whatsoever on that machine. This means that i can only assume that the 9750h and older 8750h model of the blade 15 have the same capabilities in terms of performance per watt as well as resulting performance after a good undervolt tuning.

[S.Yu]

I wonder if either of the two wide gamut screens are 10bit, and how bright they go, if neither are 10bit and neither go any brighter than 300nits then I'd rather try out the 144Hz regular gamut screen which is much cheaper. A thing about these screens is that the brightness on paper isn't gonna last very long with aging, when peak brightness falls below 200nits it really impacts viewing quality.

even if it was 10bit, you would only be able to see 10bit content for things that made use of directx such as video games or viewing HDR 10bit content. nvidia has limited support of 10bit output on consumer geforce cards to just directx. to get full 10bit support, you have to go quadro. This has to do with the fact that nvidia gives their consumer cards poor openGL drivers, as they leave the good openGL drivers for their more expensive quadro line. This is also why cinebench graphics scores vary little to not at all between a gtx1050 to an rtx2080.

Thanks for the info, I wanted a 10 bit panel for PS and LR to reduce banding, but didn't really dig into it yet.

[sticky]

Fairly certain no laptop has ever had a 10 bit panel, considering the cost.

[Tux]

On the British website, the Mercury White version looks now available. It was previously limited to US.
If I'm correct this applies only for the RTX2070 + 240Hz + 512Go configuration.

[Laptop Gaming]

The Best Laptop Gaming!

[em3]

Looks good but I'm gonna wait for the Asus Scar/Hero 3 before making a decision...

[KumaHIME]

Fairly certain no laptop has ever had a 10 bit panel, considering the cost.

Lenovo's Thinkpad P1 with the 4k screen has a 10 bit panel, and comes standard with nvidia quadro graphics, so you can actually use the 10 bit panel.

[sticky]

@KumaHIME

The P1, much like HP's DreamColor display and MBP 15 is actually 8-bit + FRC, a.k.a Fake 10-bit. Systems with faster Quadro (AMD Pro should work too in theory) cards e.g. P2000 should be able to output to a 10-bit external display.

[S.Yu]

At this point it would seem that getting a 10bit monitor (the price is actually pretty reasonable second-handed) and a mid-range Quadro in an external casing to use with the 144Hz version of the laptop is most sensible.

[Warney3k]

The the UK buyers on this thread just be aware that the secondary functions on the UK keyboard are still not backlit. This is super annoying. I have the 2070 version and I'm otherwise really impressed. I wouldn't consider the upgrade to the 2080 and 240hz terribly substantial considering the cost.

The new pro 17 is worth a look as it has even beefier cooling (4 fans). My unit doesn't have thermal problems but I bet that new pro is even better.