Razer Blade Pro Review: Is a Thin 17-Inch Gaming Laptop Worth It?

There will always be people who desire a large, powerful laptop. I'm referring to individuals like developers who want to showcase early game builds at trade shows or those who refuse to compromise on performance while away from home. But is there any advantage to making these 17-inch behemoths thin and light as well?

For years, that's precisely what Razer has been attempting to accomplish with its 17-inch Blade Pro, which packed desktop-level specifications into a surprisingly thin chassis.

But with prices hovering near $4,000, that question was largely academic since you'd have to be independently wealthy to purchase one. However, Razer has now trimmed back some components to create the most affordable 17-inch gaming laptop the company has ever produced, making the idea of a thin-and-light 17-inch gaming notebook finally worth exploring.

Blade Pro

Price: Starts at $2,300

What is it? An unusually thin 17-inch gaming laptop.

Like: RGB keyboard lighting and it's incredibly thin, did we mention that yet?

Don't Like: You're paying a significant premium for that thinness.

That said, starting at $2,300, the Blade Pro still doesn't appear to be that inexpensive, and when compared to other 17-inch devices, it isn't. Like the $3,800 fully-equipped Blade Pro, this model has a solid aluminum unibody chassis that measures just 0.88 inches thick, which is nearly 40 percent thinner than a traditional 17-inch system like the 1.43-inch thick Lenovo Legion Y920. But even with that level of thinness, the Blade Pro's 6.8-pound heft and overall dimensions indicate that this isn't something you can casually toss into a bag.

In fact, the Blade Pro doesn't even fit in the messenger bag I carry daily or any of the other shoulder bags I own, aside from my cavernous camping backpack or the rolling suitcase I use when traveling. This implies I must purchase specialized equipment just to transport this item, making it just as cumbersome as other 17-inch systems with much larger waists. This is simply thinness for the sake of thinness.

Instead of a 4K display, this new model features a large full HD screen with excellent peak brightness (360 nits) and a convenient matte coating to prevent distracting reflections from interfering with your games. You also receive a substantial number of ports, including one USB-C jack with Thunderbolt 3 support, HDMI, Ethernet, and even an SD card reader. And because it's Razer, you get a chiclet keyboard with some of the most colorful and attractive RGB backlit keys on the market.

One of Razer's deviations from the standard laptop design is moving the touchpad to the far right side of the system, rather than below the keyboard, as is customary. This takes some getting used to because numerous laptops have taught me to instinctively reach below the spacebar when I need to make a quick cursor gesture. I was able to adjust in less than a day, making the touchpad's location more of a quirk than a genuine disadvantage. However, if you believe that this placement allows you to mimic the traditional mouse and keyboard arrangement with your left hand on WASD and your right on the touchpad, think again. Even with a large 4 x 3.25-inch surface area, no touchpad is adequate enough to replace an actual mouse.

Razer then spices things up further by incorporating a physical scroll wheel that can be reprogrammed to perform various functions using the company's Synapse software. However, the strange thing is that, despite my anticipation of using it, I discovered that most of the functions I genuinely wanted to use it for, such as volume control or scrolling, were already handled by function keys or touchpad gestures. This renders the wheel somewhat superfluous.

In terms of the Blade Pro's actual gaming capabilities, its performance is consistent with what you'd expect from a system equipped with an Intel Core i7-7700 HQ CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU. The Blade Pro achieved 82 fps on high in Rise of the Tomb Raider and 55 fps on high in Civilization VI. This should give you the confidence to play virtually any modern AAA title at settings high enough to satisfy you. However, I would be remiss not to mention that gaming laptops priced over $2,000 typically include an Nvidia 1070 or 1080 GPU, which provide 20 to 40 percent better graphics performance. Another advantage of the Blade Pro's large chassis is that it can accommodate two storage drives, allowing you to have a 256GB SSD for your OS, applications, and games and a 2TB HDD for all of your additional media.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that the Blade Pro's battery life is rather poor, lasting only 4 hours and 10 minutes on our battery rundown test. And if you intend to engage in any gaming without connecting the power cord, that time decreases to an hour and a half or two at most.

However, the perplexing aspect is that for nearly $500 less, you can purchase the $1,850 14-inch Razer Blade, which has the same excellent build, CPU, GPU, and RAM in a chassis that you might actually want to transport. Both systems even have the same screen resolution, and for my money, the smaller Blade is the one I would select. Of course, the larger 17-inch Blade Pro has a few more ports, and its larger screen provides more space for work and play. However, let's not forget that you can take the $450 you saved on the 17-inch Blade Pro and spend it on a nice desktop monitor, a large external drive, and still have some money left over for games. There's a reason Apple discontinued the 17-inch MacBook Pro; the balance between performance and portability simply isn't there, even on a chassis this thin. And at $2,300, the "cheapest" Blade Pro's value proposition is also quite poor.

If you're still set on a 17-inch gaming laptop, you're far better off choosing a thicker system that can accommodate more powerful components without raising the price to nearly $4,000. You could even splurge a little and opt for something like the MSI GT75 VR, which, at 2.3 inches thick and weighing over 10 pounds