Razer’s flagship 15-inch gaming laptop is a frequent and favorite visitor to our testing benches. The 2022 Blade 15 Advanced Model is in the same rarefied pricing tier as its predecessors—it starts at $2,499.99 and our review unit is $2,999.99—but now boasts the latest components from Intel and Nvidia, having waited for both 12th Generation “Alder Lake” CPUs and the newest GeForce RTX 30 Ti GPUs to launch before updating. Our Core i7 and RTX 3070 Ti configuration cruises past the 60fps mark in modern titles at both full HD and its native QHD resolution while maintaining a premium, portable metal build. If you have a huge budget and want top-end power but value portability, the Blade 15 is the best pick. The Lenovo Legion 7 is the better pure performer in this tier, while the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is the best even more portable option.
A Well-Honed Blade
The Razer Blade 15 is a tried and true design by now. Almost every time a new model rolls around it ends up earning a rave review as arguably the most premium-feeling gaming laptop you can buy. To be sure, this luxury comes at a high cost—you’ll never find the Blade 15 in our roundup of bargain gaming notebooks—but enough people continue to buy systems in this price range to justify annual updates from Razer and several competitors, even if most of us can only look on with envy.
The design has changed very slightly, but it’s mostly the same thin, sleek form we’ve come to know. The details and our thoughts on build quality carry over from our review of the late 2021 Blade Advanced. The 2022 edition measures the same 0.67 by 14 by 9.3 inches (HWD) and weighs the same 4.4 pounds as that laptop.
Rivals come in all different shapes and sizes; we’ve come a long way from the fairly strict 15.6- and 17.3-inch definitions for gaming laptops. The Blade 15 is quite portable for a powerful gaming rig, but there are a wealth of even more mobile options with smaller displays, such as the Asus Zephyrus G14 and the Alienware x14. In the other direction, an increasing number of 16-inch laptops are cropping up, like the Lenovo Legion 7 and its Intel-based Legion 7i sibling.
Despite sharing the size of the previous edition, the latest Razer includes minor but welcome improvements: larger keycaps, a new look for the speakers, and a change to the power button. The bigger keys aren’t super noticeable, but make it a touch easier to type quickly. The small power button embedded in the top corner of the right-side speaker has been replaced by a less finicky full-size key in the top right corner of the keyboard itself. The change is cleaner and logical.
The new-look speakers are also sleeker. They haven’t changed their location, but the previous speakers were more like mesh grilles set in a slight indent that I thought looked out of date compared to the rest of the modern design. The 2022 speakers are more in line with what you see on most contemporary laptops, an array of perforations in the chassis itself. It’s a small change, but it looks cleaner.
While larger keys do make for a more comfortable typing experience, the key feedback is less positive. There isn’t a lot of travel, likely due to the laptop’s overall thin design, so key presses aren’t especially satisfying and can feel flat. Slim competitors have managed more satisfying keyboards, so it’s an area for improvement. As always, Razer’s signature per-key RGB lighting is present. On the positive side, the touchpad remains one of the best in any Windows laptop, delivering smooth panning, responsive presses, and a high-quality feel.
The port offerings are also unchanged, but everything you should need is included. The left flank holds two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, a USB-C port, the power connector, and the headphone jack. On the right, there’s another USB-A port, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, an HDMI video output, and an SD card reader. Last year’s model upgraded the webcam to 1080p resolution, so you still get superior video call quality.
Display Details and Configuration Options
Like other so-called 15-inch laptops’, the Razer’s screen measures 15.6 inches diagonally and is available with a variety of resolutions and refresh rates, from full HD (1080p) with 360Hz refresh to 4K with 144Hz. Our unit’s in-between panel should be very appealing to gamers, combining QHD (2,560-by-1,440-pixel) resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate.
Speaking of configuration options, let’s get into the components, which as mentioned star Intel’s 12th Gen “Alder Lake” processors and Nvidia’s RTX 30 Ti GPUs. Our $2,999.99 test unit teams the 14-core (six performance, eight efficient) Core i7-12800H with 16GB of memory, a 1TB solid-state drive, and a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti.
For $500 less, the base model will net you the same configuration as ours except for a step down to the GeForce RTX 3060. Another $2,999.99 model is mostly the same as our review config but swaps the display for the 360Hz full HD panel. There are also some souped-up RTX 3080 Ti configurations if price is truly no object; they include a $3,999.99 flagship with a 12th Gen Core i9-12900H processor and the 4K 144Hz panel (the only model with this CPU and this display).
Performance Testing: ‘Alder Lake’ and RTX 30 Ti Run Amuck
Between these high-end components and the thermal challenges of a thinner laptop, there will be plenty to digest surrounding the Blade 15 Advanced’s performance. We put the system through our usual suite of benchmark tests, comparing the results to those of the following laptops:
The Alienware x15 is the most direct competitor, a slim 15-inch rig that will also let us see how much of an improvement the 12th Gen Core i7 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti can bring over the 11th Gen and an RTX 3070. The others fill out spaces above and below the Blade in size and power, from the super-portable, less expensive Asus G14 to the 16-inch Lenovo Legion 7 and 7i. These give us a taste of AMD’s Ryzen 9 and Intel’s Core i9, both a step ahead of even the latest Core i7, so all tiers are represented.
We should note that all RTX 30 Series GPUs are not created equal; manufacturers can set different power delivery limits to fit the constrains of their laptops, often leading to performance variations between different notebooks with the same GPU. All 2022 Blade configurations run their GPUs at 105 watts.
Productivity Tests
The main benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop’s storage.
Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
It’s not surprising that the Blade 15 trailed the Ryzen 9 and Core i9 systems, but it managed to stay competitive with them in most tests. It should theoretically lead the Alienware x15, but traded results with it, possibly indicating an advantage for the Alienware’s thermal solution. In general, these results show the Razer is a more than capable media editing or content creation machine, if not quite on a Core i9 or Ryzen 9 level. For full-time creative pros, such a system or a mobile workstation may be a better bet, but if you only use your gaming laptop for part-time professional work the Blade is proficient enough.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
We test Windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two more tests from GFXBench 5.0, run offscreen to allow for different display resolutions, wring out OpenGL operations.
In addition, we run three real-world game tests using the built-in benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive esports shooter games respectively. We run Valhalla and Siege twice at different image quality presets and F1 twice at max settings with and without Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing. Note that we run these game tests at 1080p so results can be compared between systems.
Our graphics tests largely follow the same story as the CPU tests, but there’s a little more fluctuation. Razer’s new laptop posted strong frame rates in the real-world games, comfortably averaging over 60fps in the most demanding title (Valhalla) at maximum visual settings. The same is true in F1 2021, averaging over 90fps even without the help of DLSS, while Rainbow Six Siege can take advantage of the display’s high refresh rate.
Now, let’s compare to the others. The Blade 15 Advanced predictably beat the smaller Zephyrus G14 in average frame rate, and its RTX 3070 Ti mostly outperformed the Alienware X15’s standard RTX 3070, though the latter pulled even in Valhalla and some of the synthetic tests. That points to some variation by software rather than a universal power advantage, so don’t assume that the Ti suffix grants blanket superiority. As always, hands-on testing is important given their thermal and wattage differences.
Still, on the whole, you’re getting what you pay for with the Razer. The larger Legion laptops and their RTX 3080 GPUs deliver superior performance, but that too is not universal, nor are their leads always significant. In one sense, since these are all expensive rigs, you may be wondering why you wouldn’t save a bit of cash and opt for the AMD-based Lenovo, but that assumes you’re purely going for performance—the Blade 15 emphasizes portability and design, so you’re paying for its form factor as well as its frame rates. Which is more important is up to you.
Also, some Blade models we’ve tested have gotten annoyingly loud while gaming. Happily, while there are some peaks under high strain, the new Razer’s average fan noise was not obnoxious or at least not out of the ordinary. Thinner designs sometimes suffer here, but the Blade 15 Advanced got neither especially loud nor harmfully hot during gameplay.
Battery and Display Tests
We test laptops’ battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
There was a time when Razer’s machines led the pack in battery life, but the last couple of generations’ more powerful components have ended that. The 2022 Advanced outlasted the four and a half hours of the 2021 model, so that’s an improvement, but other machines have superior stamina. Granted, the Alienware x15’s advantage is minimal, so the Razer’s runtime isn’t damning, just disappointing. It lasts long enough off the charger to make its portable design useful.
On the display side, the Blade’s QHD panel’s color coverage is above average, while its maximum brightness falls short of its competitors’.
Building a Better Blade
The 2022 Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model is about what you’d expect from an iterative update, with a few more improvements than some past annual editions. There are a handful of design tweaks that aren’t major but still enhancements, as well as impressive new components. Getting both new CPU and GPU releases makes this year’s revamp more worthwhile than others, though we wouldn’t call it drastic enough to justify trading in a 2020 or 2021 laptop. The Blade 15 isn’t flawless, but if you’re shopping in the high-priced aisle and want a gaming rig that’s reasonably portable, it’s the best premium mix of mobility and performance.
