Razer Blade Pro (2020) Review

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

We dove right in just last month reviewing Razer's first-ever productivity platform in the Razer Book 13. Coming off that article, I wanted to get right back in and test the opposite end of the market where Razer has had the most successful year after year. The Blade Pro is Razers best laptop; it offers the highest-end SKUs for CPUs and GPUs paired together with fantastic design, and for 2020 that includes a 17" QHD display that can be pushed to 165Hz for smooth gaming.

Specifications

As of today, Intel has not yet launched its Tiger Lake H platform CPUs, so the current generation of Blade Pro includes the 10th Gen Core i7-10875H, eight cores 16 threads with a base clock of 2.3GHz. Memory support includes 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz, and storage is deployed via a 512GB NVMe.

The display is the aforementioned 17.3" QHD display 165Hz with 100% sRGB factory calibration, this is paired with both Intel UHD Graphics and the discrete GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, a 5120 shader GPU that features 8GB of GDDR6.

Connectivity includes three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports alongside two Thunderbolt 3 ports and RJ45 for 2.5Gbe. HDMI 2.1 allows for display expansion while AX210 supports WiFi6e, and the integrated card reader supports the UHS-III protocol.

Dimensions for the Blade Pro are 15.5x10.25" with a z height or thickness of 0.78". Weight comes in at 6lbs or 2.75kg.

Pricing

The pricing of the Razer Blade Pro with the Core i7-10875H and RTX 3070 comes in at $2599 with a one-year warranty.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

Packaging and Accessories

Product packaging carries the familiar Razer logo.

Included with the Blade Pro, we have the power adapter, cleaning cloth, and reading materials.

Razer Blade Pro (2020) Overview

The power adapter for the Blade Pro is a 230W variant operating at 19.5v and 11A.

The Blade Pro is an all-metal design, matte black, Razer logo that does light up in use.

Ports on the Blade Pro include the proprietary power input, 2.5Gbe ethernet, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 in Type-A, 1x USB-C, and the 3.5mm audio jack.

The right side of the Blade Pro includes HDMI, USB 3.2, and Thunderbolt 3. the SD card slot rounds out connectivity.

The bottom of the Blade Pro offers four fans and four mesh openings for air intake.

Opening the Blade Pro, we are packed with hardware, a split battery along the bottom NVMe, and memory taking the center of the motherboard and CPU/GPU at the top.

The battery for the Razer Blade Pro operates at 15.4v with a total of 70.5Wh.

NVMe for the Blade Pro is the Samsung PM981a, 512GB in capacity.

Memory is offered in two sticks of 8GB DDR4 3200MHz.

With the Blade Pro open, we have the keyboard centered, supporting per-key illumination via Razer Chroma. The trackpad is glass and centered in the chassis.

BIOS/UEFI and Software

UEFI

BIOS is a legacy setup from AMI. The main page offers hardware information, including processor and memory, and iGPU. The advanced menu system includes support for configuring CPU, power, and Thunderbolt ports in addition to NVMe storage. Chipset options allow for changing GPU mode between discrete and Optimus; you can also enable RST for NVMe storage in this menu.

The boot menu includes boot options and support for fast boot.

CPUz shows us the configuration of the Core i7-10875H and RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.

Software

Included software is Synpase 3.0.

Customization options in Synapse include support for Gaming mode, fn, and multimedia keys, along with the ability to switch off lighting and effects.

Performance modes include balanced and custom for the fans. GPU mode can be switched down below between Optimus and dedicated GPU mode.

System/CPU Benchmarks

WPrime

WPrime is a leading multi-threaded benchmark. In our setup, we will manually set the number of cores for the CPU under test.

For comparison, we have the MSI Stealth15M, which is an 11th Gen platform paired with RTX 3060. The Blade Pro reaches 4.4seconds at 32M and 142 seconds for 1024M.

Cinebench

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests, a single-core workload that will utilize one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU

Single thread performance of the 10875H comes in at 1239, down a bit from 11th Gen. With 16 threads, the Blade Pro scores 6362 in R23.

Realbench

Realbench utilizes both video and photo workloads for real-world testing.

The Blade Pro scored 25 seconds in image editing, 48 seconds in H.264, and 55 seconds for multi-tasking.

AIDA64 Memory

Memory bandwidth was down slightly with the 2933MHz memory in the Blade Pro, 38K for reading and write followed by 35K for copy.

PCMark 10

PCMark is a benchmark from UL and tests various workload types to represent typical workloads for a PC. Everything from video conferencing, image import, and editing, along with 3D rendering, are tested.

PCMark did show good numbers for Blade Pro; essentials at 9747, 8219 for productivity, and 9137 digital content.

In applications testing, the Blade Pro reached peaks in Excel at 19177, 7655 for Word, and 10193 for PowerPoint.

BAPCo CrossMark

CrossMarkâ„¢ is an easy-to-run native cross-platform benchmark that measures the overall system performance and system responsiveness using models of real-world applications. CrossMarkâ„¢ supports devices running Windows, iOS, and macOS platforms.

CrossMark showed solid results for the Blade Pro, 1268 overall compared to 1195 for the Stealth15m.

Graphics, System I/O, Battery and Gaming

Graphics Performance

3DMark Night Raid

Night Raid is a DirectX 12 benchmark for mobile computing devices with integrated graphics and low-power platforms powered by Windows 10 on ARM.

The Blade Pro picked up 40660 in Night Raid.

3DMark Timespy

In Timespy, we see the overall score at 9537, about 3000 points higher than the Stealth15m.

Storage

The Samsung PM981 in the Blade Pro reached 2973 MB/s read, and 2921 MB/s write. 4KQ1 got 44 MB/s read and 104 MB/s to write.

External storage testing with our WD Black P50 on the Thunderbolt 3 port showed 1026 MB/s read and 911 MB/s write in USB 3.2 mode.

Networking

With Networking, we tested the AX210 to reach 1298Mbps.

Battery Testing

For battery tests, we use the PCMark 10 Battery tests in Game Mode.

In the Gaming battery test, the Blade Pro survived for 64 minutes.

Gaming

In the first of our gaming scenarios, the Blade Pro was able to hit 97 FPS on average for Far Cry New Dawn while Shadow of the Tomb Raider was able to tag 98 FPS on average, both games on high settings 1440p.

Moving to Gears, we see an average of 83 FPS, and Horizon Zero Dawn brings us 84 FPS.

Last, we have Forza Motorsport 7, with an average framerate of 169 FPS.

Final Thoughts

Hands down, the Blade Pro is the best gaming laptop we've had in-house this year. To add to it, the build quality is superb, including the smooth chassis design complete with a matte black finish, although it does attract fingerprints easily, and the RGB lighting can be intense at first. These issues are quickly mitigated with Synapse controlling the lighting, including per-key illumination and brightness, and Razer does include a soft cloth to clean the Blade Pro.

Performance of the Blade Pro was on par with our 11th Gen comparison in charts, often better in scenarios such as WPrime and RealBench image and video encoding. Memory bandwidth was lower due to the 10th Gen platform; the Blade Pro supports only 2933MHz memory, whereas the current 11TH Gen solution push memory to 4266MHz.

In GPU scenarios, most games were efficiently handling 80-90FPS on average these include Far Cry, Tomb Raider, and Gears. This should pair well with the 165Hz screen, offering smooth framerates in use.

Pricing is quite reasonable considering the current market; the Blade Pro complete with 10875H and RTX 3070 can be had for $2599 with a one-year warranty.

What We Like

Build Quality: Fantastic use of materials makes for an aesthetically pleasing and well-built platform.

Razer Chroma: Per Key lightning allows the ultimate in customization.

Price: $2599 for a complete gaming system is a solid deal when the current market is pushing desktop GPUs alone for that money!

What Could Be Better

NVMe: PM981 in testing is subpar and any enthusiast would want to upgrade.