Now for something different yet almost exactly the same this is the razer blade 15 studio edition so this one is exactly the blade advance but in the mercury white option which as you can see is a light silver and instead of the usual g-force rtx cards inside we have Quadro rtx 5000 max-q so that’s the top-of-the-line Quadro card and it is basically equivalent to the rtx 2080 max-q.
Review
Overview
What’s the difference we’re going to find out now so the difference is a lot of money this is a 4300 laptop there is only one configuration and one color option is well specked out but it’s expensive now you can blame razer and say oh boutique expensive but really nice gaming laptops but it’s not just that the Quadro cards are expensive and the top of the line Quadro rtx 5000 is particularly expensive for example if you look at the think pad p53 from Lenovo which is a mobile workstation with Quadro cards it’s a thirteen hundred dollar up charge if you want to go to that rtx 5000 Quadrocard inside so that’s why it’s so expensive
So what’s the difference well it’s for folks who are doing 3d design modelling rendering professional work creator types that sort of thing the drivers are supposed to be more stable the silicone on this is more thoroughly tested so it’s supposed to be able to run 24 7 without fail that sort of stuff and the drivers the studio drivers which admittedly you can actually use on a GeForce card these days too are more stable and more optimized for the creative programs out there that said sometimes they actually do pretty well for gaming and sometimes a little bit better for gaming too.
That’s the difference there otherwise this isn’t going to be a long review because you are looking exactly at the blade 15 in all of the respects here the 2020 model with intel 10th generation cpu so this is like the high spec version of the blade 15 with GeForce graphics cards inside you get an eight core i7 cpu intel 10th gen you have that Quadro card with NVidia optimus so it’s switchable with intel uhd630 graphics for when you’re not doing demanding things.
You need a little bit of battery life we have two ram slots as ever and can go up to 64 gigs of ram this ships with 32 gigs of ram ddr4 you have one m.2 pci nvme SSD slot and comes with a very fast one terabyte SSD just like the gaming laptop and again is because it’s the same physical laptop in all the respects you get the razer chrome or perky RGB backlit keyboard.
You have thunderbolt 3 and usb c one side is thunder ball 3 the other side is usb c and the usual usb a ports HDMI a full size uh s2 sd card slots so good stuff right there and the usual razer vapor chamber cooling with graphite thermal paste which is pretty good stuff.
Build quality again just like the regular blade 15 beautiful unibody build if you like light silver you’ll like this one not available in black feels great looks great it certainly is the windows equivalent of a MacBook pro so who’s this for obviously.
if you just want to play games you could spend about three grand or 3 200 instead get the equivalent maxed out regular blade 15 advanced the only difference would be 16 gigs of ram instead of 32 on this one but you can upgrade it yourself so whatever so it doesn’t make any sense if you’re just going to play games and nobody’s going to spend this much extra money 1300 for the pleasure of having a Quadro card it is for those who are also thinking about a dell precision that Lenovo ThinkPad p53 which is still not yet updated to intel tension cpu but that should be coming soon.
ASUS pro art workstations you get the mobile workstations you get the idea here and even that 16 inch MacBook pro with the optional 800 upgrade to the Amd Radeon pro 5600m instead of the usual 5500m that you get that’ll still cost you about four thousand dollars if you configure a 16-inch MacBook pro similarly to this and you won’t get as much gpu power for 3d rendering still with that Radeon card and you’ll get half the V-ram that has eight gigs of gddr6 this one has 16 gigs
So even still say you work for a ge and you’re designing microwave oven parts and you’re using 3d rendering software you know your boss is probably going to say razer right and they’re going to go buy a Lenovo or Dell. I suspect that the target audience for this is 3d gaming studios largely because those are the folks who already are playing games you want to test your creations you want to look at the competition and you want to be able to do your renders and all design and all that sort of thing.
I think gaming studios ea whatever they’re probably pretty open to blades you know especially if they like you a lot and they want to make you feel happy and stay working for them in terms of performance and thermals is pretty much what you would expect that they’re not limiting the power limits too much on this here.
Inside Overview
So, to get inside it’s just like the usual blade 15. you’ve got torx t5 screws they’re visible and then it’s easiest if you lift up from the rear and there’s some plastic clips but nothing too challenging and metal bottom nice tall rubber feet here to help give it a little ventilation there that’s what the underside looks like and this is heat pads for your SSD and other components over here here’s our internal speaking of the SSD here it is it’s a light on one terabyte SSD the benchmarks are great on this.
I’m not going to say anything about that brand no complaints two ram slots right here again it comes with 32 gigs of ram unlike the regular blade 15 advance that comes with 16 and obviously it’s upgradable you can go up to 64 gigs they’re still doing that display cable routing over the vapor chamber cooler but hey you know I guess it’s okay I have a blade 15 older one gtx 1070 several years old and it hasn’t melted that cable yet we have the intel wi-fi ax201 wi-fi six card here with Bluetooth 5.1 no room for a second SSD in this design here ever since they increased the battery capacity to 80 watt hour and of course that is the battery the speakers are up firing so the other thing.
You’re going to see is the back side of the housings over here and they fire up surrounding the keyboard where the grill area is much like a MacBook pro and again vapor chamber cooling over here they use graphite thermal paste and I’ve repasted previous blade 15 and blade 15 advanced and honestly unless you’re switching to something l am.
Keyboard & Touchpad
RGB backlit keyboard half fully no more with that very visible pwm where you can see the keyboard kind of flashing at you at different brightness levels so yay that and it has a very large track band it’s Microsoft precision the keyboard is again just the same so that means really short travel not a lot of tactile feel but a lot of today’s thin and light laptops are running that way you have intel wi-fi six ax201 inside and Bluetooth 5.1 you have an 80 watt hour battery.
Benchmarks
Let me tell you in benchmarks and in games I could see a difference in in fact we have a few benchmarks you can see on the regular default mode and on the high performance mode and yeah it doesn’t generate that much more heat either so good so the display on this is a 4k O led panel it’s the same one again that we’ve seen on the blade 15 and that’s not a bad thing I find O led a little brash and harsh on the eyes.
I don’t know it’s just maybe it’s the very high contrast on or whatever but it is factory calibrated and they do a pretty good job of the calibration on this for color accuracy and it is wide gamut so you’ve got almost 100 adobe RGB on here in fact 100 of p3 color gamut contrast is super-duper high because well it’s an O led display it’s fine it’s made by Samsung as are all O led laptop displays.
Gaming
Doing something like playing battlefield 5 as a test we saw the cpu go up to using 77 watts of power it is normally a 45 watt cpu so go them this is a max q card and when again playing battlefield 5 it hit 103 watts of power consumption so that’s reasonable for a max q card performance on this is good I mean again if you see the battlefield footage on ultra 1080p settings it’s maxing it’s going over 100 frames per second thermals on this it’s a vapor chamber cooler it helps it’s still going to get hot long gone are the days when blades had really noisy fans though
So this doesn’t make any hideous noise you’re not going to derange people in the workplace when you’re doing your renders and that sort of thing but it will make some noise if you’re pushing it hard this gaming laptop it’s hard right and the surface temperature is mostly above the keyboard right below the display area where all gaming laptops and most laptops in general these days get hot.
we’ll get too hot to touch but the rest of it the keyboard is warm the keyboard deck area where you rest your hands not too hot the batteries down there some heat is reasonably well controlled but it’ll toast your hands especially in the summer time.
It’s going to happen as always with razer you get the same synapse software that you would on a regular blade 15 for gamers and the performance profiles do make a difference there you have your balance default one and then you have custom basically is a simple slider for cpu and gpu put both of those to max performance when you’re rendering or gaming depending if you need both the cpu and the gpu to be and it will make a difference
Battery life
Battery life on this is an 80 watt hour battery again just like the blade 15 advance we do have optimus so if you’re doing light tasks on the go and razer claims a six hours maximum run times on this and if you’re doing very light work well yeah that’s certainly possible but probably most people are going to see more like four and a half-hours not doing rendering or gaming on the go but just doing your regular business and productivity tasks and streaming video that sort of thing ships with the same 230 watt charger that most blades ship with these days that have the more powerful gpu options
Technical Specification
Processor
Intel Core i7-8750H 6 Core
Operating System
Windows 10 Home
Memory
16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
Display
15.6″ FHD 144 Hz display
Graphic
NVIDIA Geforce 2070 RTX Max-Q
Keyboard
Chiclet keyboard
Bio metric security
Supports Windows Hello instant facial unlock with integrated webcam and IR sensor
Networking
Wi-Fi
Integrated Wi-Fi 4 (802.11 b/g/n)
Bluetooth
Bluetooth® 4.0
Interface
- 1 x COMBO audio jack
- 1 x Type-A USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1)
- 2 x USB 2.0 port(s)
- 1 x HDMI
Summary
it really doesn’t make much of a difference their paste is pretty good so that’s the Razer blade 15 advanced edition for 2020 with intel 10th gen CPU and the NVidia Quadro rtx 5000 max q card a very pricey spend but it’s a kind of niche product for those of you who know that you need this sort of product.