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The best Razer laptops can offer up an extensive supply of features and some seriously monstrous power – all in a sleek matte form factor that looks great on any desk. There’s a catch, though. These are particularly pricey machines, with new releases often running past the $3,000 figure for top configurations. However, if you’re looking to invest in a high quality rig that will see you through years of work and play (and look good doing so), it’s well worth splashing some cash on a premium device.
Razer laptops sit among the best gaming laptops on the market, and for good reason. The Blade 15 is, after all, widely considered the first gaming laptop to hit the shelves ever. There’s some serious pedigree in here, and today that manifests itself in efficient engineering, high quality displays, and the chassis design to keep everything cool and collected while running.
Now that the best Razer laptops are offering Intel, AMD and Nvidia’s latest mobile processors and graphics cards, 2022’s offerings are even more powerful than their predecessors. While it’s still early days for these recent releases, those prices are looking particularly hefty. If you’re after a cheap Razer laptop, therefore, we’d recommend checking out older models (2020 and 2021’s offerings in particular).
We’ve rounded up all our favorite Razer gaming laptops right here, after weeks of testing across both work and play.
The best Razer laptops available now
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1. Razer Blade 15 (2022)
The best Razer laptop
Specifications
CPU: i7-12800H | i9-12900HGPU: RTX 3060 | RTX 3070 Ti | RTX 3080 TiRAM: 16GB | 32GB Storage: 1TB SSDDisplay: FHD at 360Hz | QHD at 240Hz | UHD at 144HzPorts: 3x USB-A Gen 2 | 1x USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 | 1x USB-C | 3.5mm audio jack | SD card slot | HDMI
Reasons to buy
+Cutting edge components+Excellent color and contrast+Luxury design with solid build quality
Reasons to avoid
-Proprietary charging connection
The 2022 Razer Blade 15 lives up to the name of its ancestors; providing cutting edge components in a super portable chassis – and looking particularly good while doing it. This certainly isn’t your everyman Razer laptop. With a top price tag reaching $4,000 and some seriously premium gear under the hood, the Razer Blade 15 will appeal to enthusiasts far more than the everyday player. However, if you’re looking to invest in a machine that can sink its teeth into some serious PC gaming, this is the model for you.
That 4K 144Hz display is certainly an outlier even in this high-end market, and the overall build quality and design can’t be argued with either.
Razer Blade 15 review
We were incredibly impressed to see Shadow of the Tomb Raider flying at well over 60fps in 4K on our RTX 3080 Ti / i9-12900H testing unit, though of course more demanding games did struggle to break past 45fps in High settings. Still, fiddling with some of the more tasking visual effects did bring us closer to buttery smooth 4K gameplay than we’ve seen on similar models. It’s easy to wax lyrical about the performance under the hood when you’re spending $4,000 on Nvidia and Intel’s bleeding edge components, though. Perhaps even more impressive is the classically slimline chassis housing them all.
Razer didn’t need to add to the Blade 15’s footprint to get all this gear under the keyboard. In fact, with additional ventilation in place, this slimline rig still manages to offer up a comfortable, portable experience – even with all that power at your fingertips. That’s why this is the best Razer laptop currently available; it marries the power of a far chunkier rig with that suave design language that so many have fallen in love with over the years.
Still, if you’re not looking for a long-term investment, the Razer Blade 15 isn’t for you. In fact, with a lofty $2,000+ price tag even on an RTX 3060 rig, there will be very few everyday players who will be able to draw the value they need from their cash here. The Razer Blade 14 does make a far easier case for its MSRP, offering up a smaller starting price that will appeal to far more players, even if it’s not technically the top dog.
Read more: Razer Blade 15 review
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2. Razer Blade 14 (2021)
The best Razer laptop for most
Specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900HXGraphics: up to Nvidia RTX 3080RAM: up to 16GBStorage: up to 1TB SSDScreen: FHD at 144Hz | QHD at 165Hz
Reasons to buy
+Excellent build quality +AMD configurations+Compact form factor
Reasons to avoid
-Hotter due to small form factor-Smaller display
The Razer Blade 14 is one of the top gaming laptop options out there, let alone in Razer’s own category. Hitting the market just before the slimline design revolution took over, we found that the smaller form factor made this machine an excellent everyday workhorse, while always offering some excellent gaming performance in its back pocket. We were impressed by the high-end configurations on offer here – packing an RTX 3080 GPU and a Ryzen 9 5900HX processor into this chassis is no mean feat.
It’s incredible to think that there’s so much oomph and beastly power in this tiny thing.
Razer Blade 14 review
While we did find that some of that horsepower felt a little wasted on the smaller 14-inch screen, and the heat produced was considerable, being able to transport this level of gaming prowess this easily was always exciting. We were hitting 71 fps on The Division 2 at high settings, and 85fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider to boot. Very few gaming laptops can boast that kind of power in this form factor.
The matte-black aesthetic keeps things subtle, all belying the incredible performance under the hood. Sure, the Blade 15 and Blade 17 are more instantly recognizable as gaming-specific machines, and will offer slightly better performance thanks to the extra space for cooling.
However, Razer gaming laptops are all about that ease of use. In the same way that the MacBook previously dominated over clunkier, but (before M1) arguably more powerful, PCs, Razer puts its experience at the forefront, and in all the brand’s rigs we’ve tested, the Blade 14 represents this design ethos the best.
Read more: Razer Blade 14 review
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3. Razer Blade Pro 17 (2021)
The best Razer laptop for big screen viewing
Specifications
CPU: up to Intel 11th-genGraphics: up to Nvidia RTX 3080RAM: up to 32GBStorage: up to 1TB SSDScreen: 17.3” (1920×1080 – 4K-touch)
Reasons to buy
+Spectacular display+Powered by the latest components+Same great design and build+Slimline form factor
Reasons to avoid
-Very expensive-4K 60fps is still a pipe dream-Proprietary power source
We would recommend the Razer Blade Pro 17 to anyone who wants the absolute best from their portable hardware, and doesn’t mind foregoing the backpack. The Pro combines the latest in the component department with options on graphics cards going right up to the latest Nvidia RTX 3080, and the newest Intel processors, with a superb 4K touch screen, or 360Hz 1080p screen, to create an absolute beast of a gaming laptop.
Despite being the larger 17.3-inch screen variant of the blade family, it’s still got that (relatively) slim and light build which is an impressive feat.
Razer Blade Pro 17 review
In our testing, we found the slimline build to limit some of the back-breaking weight of the standard 17-inch laptop. Brands are quickly slimming even their largest machines down these days, but the matte black finish and slim-bezel design on the Blade makes it feel like it has a slightly smaller footprint than something like the Alienware X17. We were, however, concerned to find a proprietary power source on the 2021 model – something that always feel like a risk.
It also features one of the best keyboards to be found in gaming laptops – we found it exceedingly comfortable, and – even better – it looks fantastic as well. Razer’s use of proprietary ultra-low-profile mechanical switches is much appreciated, giving us a taste of snappy, responsive keystrokes that are difficult to find in other models.
If you’re after the biggest and best Razer laptop where budget is no constraint, then this is it. It’s a beautiful, incredibly powerful piece of portable computing that could easily replace your desktop as your go-to PC for gaming and more mundane applications.
Read more: Razer Blade Pro 17 review
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4. Razer Blade Stealth 13 (2021)
The best Razer laptop for ultra-portability
Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i7 11th-genGraphics: Intel Iris Xe – Nvidia GeForce 1650TiRAM: up to 16GBStorage: up to 512GB SSDScreen: 13.3″ (1920×1080 – 4K touch)
Reasons to buy
+Incredibly light and portable+Still offers Intel 11th generation processors
Reasons to avoid
-A little outdated graphically
Because it doubles down on Razer’s biggest strength – industrial design – the Blade Stealth 13 forgoes a lot of the usual spec bumps in favor of implementing a plethora of seemingly minuscule tweaks to its appearance. For example, the new 4.9mm ‘Micro Edge’ bezels are 60% narrower than that of its predecessor, thereby blessing the low-profile laptop with borders around the display that make it look as contemporary as it is. Zooming out, the chassis at large is constructed using a high-grade aluminum material carved out from a single block of metal, making it all the more durable as a result.
Although the base model is still limited to on-chip Intel graphics, two higher-priced tiers now exist sporting Nvidia GPUs. You might not find an RTX card here but you can still hook the Blade Stealth up to a Razer Core external fun box if you can’t live without the retina-burning sensation of 4K graphics being ray traced in real-time.
How we test gaming laptops
We review a massive number of gaming laptops, so trimming that list down to the best Razer models requires standardized tests and plenty of play time. We follow the same steps to ascertain where a PC sits on the market every time, in an approach that combines industry standard GPU, CPU, and SSD tests with real-world game performance and everyday usability.
We use 3D Mark, Cinebench, PC Mark 10, and Crystal Disk Mark to give us some baseline benchmarks on core performance. Then, we run a series of framerate tests on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Metro Exodus, The Division 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2 to determine how that performance manifests in actual gameplay.
Of course, we also live with these devices so we’re playing all the hottest games on each gaming laptop we test and checking how well they slot into our setups, everyday work life, and portability needs as well.
You can find more information on how we review the products we recommend in our full Hardware Policy, and we’re also showing you exactly how we test gaming laptops for more details as well.
Razer laptops aren’t the only thing the gaming tech behemoth is known internationally for though, of course. Right now, to help you find the right item, or to build the perfect Razer setup, we have guides to the best Razer keyboards, Razer mouse contenders, Razer headsets and Razer speakers, and the best Razer streaming gear going, too.
