Razer Blade Performance Revealed: Why is Razer Blocking Honest Reviews?

Razer Benchmark Scores Revealed


At this year's CES, we got a chance to play with the Razer Blade and did some benchmarking with the Blade and its newly included SSD. We simply ran the Windows Experience Index and ran CrystalDiskMark on the SSD that Razer had opted for. In the We identified the SSD as a LiteOn SSD which at the time of this writing cannot yet be purchased as a consumer product. These SSDs are new, but as you can tell from our benchmarks below, they are not that fast. The SSD that we are comparing the LiteOn in the Razer against is a Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD which is comparable to the LiteOn 256GB SSD.

Razer Blade Benchmark Scores

We ran the Windows Experience Index and CrystalDiskMark on both laptops and compared them. The laptop that we are comparing against has the exact same GPU and a faster quad-core CPU than the Razer Blade. If you look at the WEI scores, you will notice that the Razer Blade's CPU beats out the Alienware M14X that we tested because the dual-core processor in the Razer Blade has a higher clock frequency, running at 2.8GHz instead of the M14X’s 2.4GHz. Looking at gaming capability and overall system performance, that the Razer Blade is slower than the Alienware M14X in most categories. On top of that, the M14X actually scores a full point higher than the Razer Blade in 3D gaming with the exact same GPU (and less memory).

Alienware M14X Benchmark Scores

All of this leads us to one conclusion, Razer has ignored enthusiasts and has focused on aesthetic over performance. Unfortunately for Razer, this is a losing proposition in the long term when you consider that gamers demand the best available performance for the latest and future games. If a gamer were buy a Razer Blade, they would be paying twice as much for older, worse-performing hardware that what is currently available from other manufacturers. We still cannot in good conscience recommend going out and purchasing a Razer Blade at $2800 US.

BSN* Challenge

Here at Bright Side of News*, we will challenge Razer with the review of their product. If Razer chooses to send us product sample, we will review it in the same manner as we reviewed Maingear SHIFT, HP DM1z laptop and numerous other platforms over the course of the past three years. Namely, in a fair and objective manner with a focus on function, performance, and credit given for aesthetics.

Furthermore, we will be recording the product review video using broadcast grade equipment with a 4K camera, to ensure that absolutely every detail is visible on the screen, in identical video quality to what we provide our automotive and telecom customers with. Perfect products will look perfect when shot at a resolution 4096x2304 pixels, and imperfect products will have those imperfections show.

If you believe your product is good enough to hold up under that level of scrutiny, we challenge you.

We have reached out to Razer for comment, but they have not responded by the time of publication.