The Razer Blade 14 refresh doesn’t disappoint in either style or substance
Razer Blade 14 (2023): Two-minute review
This year’s Razer Blade 14 refresh has been outfitted with the latest specs, including the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU, which sports a 5.2 GHz max clock speed and eight cores/16 threads, and up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. Despite containing such powerful and normally heavy components, it still manages to remain lightweight and thin, a contrast to the much larger laptop models like the 16-inch and 18-inch ones. And not only are the specs themselves impressive, but the overall performance is too. The laptop can get hot during more intensive gaming sessions but it never once stuttered, slowed down, or froze.
Its chassis is simply all black with the logo in green, the distinctive style of Razer products. There’s also a white version called Mercury, but unfortunately no Quartz from the 2022 model. It’s a little over four pounds with a thickness of less than one inch which, combined with the 14-inch display, makes it easy to carry around in most medium size bags. It’s ideal for those who need what might be one of the best gaming laptops to also be one of the best thin and light laptops for traveling.
The display is gorgeous, featuring a QHD+ resolution and a mind-blowingly high refresh rate of 240Hz, an impressive response time of less than 3ms, and a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. Both its keyboard and touchpad are responsive and have a satisfying snap. The keyboard also has customizable RGB lighting It also sports a solid port selection including two USB Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, an HDMI port, a power port, a Kensington lock, and an audio jack, though unfortunately there’s no SD card slot or ethernet port. Even better is that it has a physical webcam privacy shutter with a mechanical switch, an incredibly rare feature that’s more than welcome on the Blade 14.
Out of all the laptops that Razer released this generation, this is the most impressive one to me. Being able to produce a high-performance laptop with solid benchmark scores while not compromising on the build quality is no mean feat. The only spec that was a bit disappointing is the battery life. Razer claimed it could last up to 10-12 hours, and if going by pure productivity work then it gets close to that with eight hours of life. However, if you stream movies or play games, that gets cut down to a paltry four hours. It does charge quickly at least.
Its benchmark results are quite excellent, comparable to plenty of other similar spec laptops on the market like the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro or the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16. It’s able to keep pace with machines with better specs in benchmark tests. And for general performance, its framerate either keeps up with or passes other laptops with better specs. Ventilation isn’t too shabby either, as even when it does heat up, the performance never suffers.
When it comes to other performance metrics, like framerate, it also delivers great results. For instance, playing Cyberpunk 2077 on maxed-out settings gets you close to 60 fps, and I netted similar results for Dirt 5. Total War: Warhammer III naturally performed far above that amount in its highest settings. Titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Final Fantasy VII Remake also able performed well, consistently able to reach 70 fps or higher on the highest settings and with both ray-tracing and DLSS 3 enabled.Razer Blade 14 (2023): Price & availability
Starting at $2,399 / £2,499 / AU$4,499
Available now
Available in the US, UK, and Australia
Razer laptops tend to be quite expensive and the Razer Blade 14 (2023) is no exception. Despite it being a 14-inch laptop, it commands a starting price point of $2,399 / £2,499.99 / 4,499 which only increases as the GPU improves. With all specs completely maxed out including an RTX 4070 GPU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and the Mercury color which costs an extra $400 and defaults to 32GB RAM and RTX 4070, you’ll be paying $2,799.99 / £2,899.99 / AU$5,299.
Compared to other laptops with similar builds but larger display sizes like the Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra, you’re paying far more money.
