Not for Business Users. Heed the warnings of myself and others. Look elsewhere or purchase with expectation of issues.
I should have listened to the stories but since I did not heed the warning of others, here is my review to perhaps to provide warning or help you with your purchasing decision.
I purchased this system for one reason, form factor with capability of occasionally gaming. I purchased this laptop primarily for business use because it had a TPM which allows me to take advantage of Bitlocker in Windows to encrypt my drive. I occasionally travel internationally and want the ability to game and not lug around my gaming laptop for the trip.
I read the reviews as you are now and took note of the myriad of reviews indicating multiple issues:
-Critical Hardware Failures within First Year
-Poor Support
-Screen Issues
Some people say the laptop is great and I often found their reviews were posted very soon after purchase. The more seasoned reviews painted a much darker picture of the Razer Blade.
With this information and knowledge I decided to take the risk and make the purchase. I thought to myself that the people with issues were just the unlucky few and that hopefully I’ll “get a good one”. However with this in mind, I anticipated that I would have an issue with this device at some point so I spent the extra money and got a +3 year warranty including accidental damage along with my purchase through Amazon. The factory warranty from Razer in my opinion sucks for such a high end laptop and the fact they offer no in house warranty extension options that really make a difference was also an area of concern for me.
I figured I would keep my current business laptop as a backup just in case something didn’t work and I had to send the Razer Blade off for service. My previous laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad that is still in like new condition while being almost 4 years old. I point out the condition of my Lenovo Thinkpad because I baby my laptops, no scratches or dings, never dropped, etc. I only purchased the accidental damage on the Razer Blade because my international travel requirement has increased and I figured it was cheap insurance “just in case”.
The Razer Blade worked fine and as expected for a few months. I gamed on it 1 time for about 30 minutes and the rest of the time it’s been 5/6 day a week business use every day. During my gaming session I noted things that other reviewers had, the fans are extremely noisy, you’re not going to be able to sit in a room gaming and the people around you not look at you like you’ve got a portable vacuum cleaner in front of you. It’s THAT noisy. I recommend you watch some youtube video reviews if you’re curious exactly how noisy it gets. In a nutshell, if you think you’ll be able to discretely sit at a desk and do some gaming on a current game during your “lunch break” in an office and people NOT notice, you will be gravely mistaken if you buy this laptop.
During the beginining of my 3rd month of use I noticed that the laptop would occasionally “hard freeze” where nothing would work but if I closed the laptop screen and allowed it to go to sleep, then resumed from sleep, it would continue working. This happened sporadically but I noticed it happened more frequently any time I did something CPU intensive. Initially I chalked it up to some driver or Windows issue causing it.
Yesterday I used the system for more than 12 hours and had several of these hard freeze events but the system appeared to resume normally each time. I left my laptop running overnight on my desk and returned to it this morning in a frozen state. I attempted to get the system to resume with no success so I resorted to a power cycle of the system. Upon power cycling the system I found it now hangs at the system post screen and does not boot any further.
I work in IT for a living so replacing system boards and other hardware on laptops is not an issue for me. After the system hung at post screen, I began troubleshooting the system. I shut it down, removed the bottom cover and disconnected the internal battery and power, waited a few minutes, reconnected everything and powered the system back up. No change or resolution to the issue. I tried booting off a USB Drive, different NVME SSD, everything possible without Razer parts being involved. No success.
I left the system hung at the post screen for an hour to see if it would do anything, no effect. CPU Fans weren’t spinng so CPU got quite hot during this test.
Off to the Razer Support product registration page I go to register the product. I fill out all the information required and register it within my profile, then contact Warranty Support via Chat which I learned is 7 days a week (very nice surprise to learn). TIP: Don’t throw away your box because product registration requires a Razer Part Number which is found nowhere else except the box of the laptop.
After confirming my issue, and registration details, the first thing Razer Support does is ask me for the same product information I just entered into the product registration site. So I reply with all the information required and proceed to answer the questions presented to me. Razer Support runs me through a couple of tests that I had already completed but for the sake of Razer Support doing their job, I went back through what the requested, No change to the issue.
Razer Support then asks me some questions that make no sense. My reported issue was the system hangs at post and hangs at post when entering recovery mode. After confirming all of this with Razer Support, they then ask me if I can get to the desktop… lol. I explain to the Razer Support person that since the system doesn’t boot and hangs at post screen, there is no desktop to get to.
Razer Support then repeats everything I’ve reported and we’ve covered back to me asking me to confirm what details that have been identified. So I redundantly confirm everything we’ve covered thus far, a 2nd time. Razer Support asks me if I would like to proceed with an RMA, I say yes, they ask for purchase details from here, I provide a copy of the Amazon.com invoice.
…After this Razer Support asks me to create a VIDEO of the issue and upload it to YouTube as additional details to the problem. Surprised to hear this request, I ask if this is a requirement for me to do and was told it was not required. I declined to fulfill this additional request by Razer Support.
Razer Support informs me that the video would not be required and then asks me if I need anything else.
You heard that right… we went straight from confirming registration details, to troubleshooting an issue to “Yes, I want an RMA” to “Anything else”? — As you can imagine my next question was Are we proceeding with an RMA? Where is the RMA information?
Razer Support informs me that I’ll receive the RMA information via e-mail but they do not provide a timeframe as to when I will receive this information.
As of the writing of this review, a review that I started writing at the time that initiated chat with Razer Support, I still don’t have an RMA # or details regarding my RMA. I did receive a Case number regarding my incident after I ended chat with Razer Support.
If you have read this far, I would like to close this review with my list of Pro’s, Con’s, and General thoughts regarding my purchase that was made less than 90 days ago.
PRO:
-Razer Blade Form Factor — Similar to older MacBook Pro designs, it’s great and I love that about this piece of equipment. This was the single largest driving factor in my initial purchase decision.
-TPM — My 2nd most important feature as I primarily use this laptop for business use.
CON:
-Keyboard Function keys — the fact that the function keys like !@#$% and ;’., don’t light up with the rest of the keyboard make it impossible to use in the dark or low light situations. Want to change your screen brightness or use another function key in the dark that you don’t specifically know which one it is? Good luck if you don’t have another light source.
-Keyboard lighting — The keyboard lightning is application driven and not hardware driven so if you can’t login to Windows and run the Razer software, you cannot control the keyboard backlight at all. When traveling I sometimes just want a low static backlight on my keyboard similar to that of my Lenovo ThinkPad so I can see the keys I need to.
-Fan Noise: As listed in my review, fan noise while gaming is atrocious. It sounds like a mini dust buster.
-Fingerprint magnet: You’ll want a Dbrand Skin or something similar if you buy this laptop.
Closing thoughts or points:
-Knowing what I know now, would I have made this purchase again? Absolutely not, I was closely eyeballing another manufacturers laptop of similar design, Aorus and I chose the blade because of my primary desire of form factor for my primary business use.
-Will I use my old ThinkPad until this unit comes back from RMA? Yes I will but I’m not going to wait around for the RMA repaired laptop to fail on me again in a critical time of need. This Razer blade failed on a Sunday when I was at home, I’d be screwed if it failed on me at a critical period and I no longer trust Razer’s ability to produce reliable hardware.
In closing I want to stress to those of you out there considering this laptop as a primary system for business use. My advice is to avoid it for this purpose. If you’re buying this as a casual on the go gaming system and can afford the down time for repairs, this might be the laptop for you but otherwise business users should avoid this laptop.
I really was all in for this laptop, even purchased a fancy Dbrand skin that I’m now going to have to remove before I send this off for repairs, this Dbrand Skin probably won’t survive the transition and I’m not going to buy another one when I get the replacement. This Razer Blade I’m sending back for RMA/Repair doesn’t even have any dust on the fan blades, it’s that clean. Sadly, I’m probably just going to Ebay this thing when I get it back and cut my loss of time and money on the extra warranty if I can’t get a refund on that.
