Pros
- Ultimate gaming laptop performance
- Classy design
- Huge screen improves immersion
- Can double up as a laptop for content creation
Cons
- Absurdly expensive
- Abysmal battery life
- Too heavy for on-the-go gaming
With an asking price of four grand or so, it’s easy to see why the Razer Blade 17 (2022) makes it onto our list as the most powerful 17-inch laptop we’ve tested.
That power comes courtesy of an Intel Core i7-12800H processor, an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti and 32GB of RAM, which is one of the most powerful configurations money can buy today. As a result, it should come as no surprise that Razer’s large screen candidate broke our tests, offering unmatched scores in the benchmarks, and excellent results in AAA titles, with Horizon Zero Dawn averaging at 119fps in 1080p, and 99fps in 1440p.
The power of the Blade 17 also extends into its display, with our sample shipping with a 240Hz 1440p panel, which sits in the middle of the available options. We found its colors to look bright and vivid, which came thanks to above-average brightness and a respectable contrast ratio of 1140:1. As well as being vivid, those colors were especially accurate with our colorimeter measuring 99% in sRGB, 83% in sRGB and 97.50% in DCI-P3. This means you could comfortably use the Blade for professional workloads, and offers a comparable experience to Apple’s MacBook Pro.
With regards to design, the Blade 17 looks fantastic with a professional aesthetic afforded by the black, anodized aluminum chassis. Its sturdiness is backed up by the 2.75kg heft, although at just 19.9mm thick, it’s relatively slim, too. We also found the port selection to be top class with HDMI, Ethernet, USB-A and Thunderbolt 4 all represented.
In running our benchmark test for battery life, the Blade 17 performed poorly, only managing to last for just shy of three hours, so this will be a laptop to use while plugged into the mains pretty much exclusively.
There really isn’t much separating the Razer Blade 17 from the Alienware x17 R2, but with a wealth of configurations available, you’re able to purchase one of the most powerful portables on the market with the Razer.
Reviewer: Ryan Jones
Full review: Razer Blade 17 (2022) review