The Razer Blade 16 is a big laptop in size and capability, though it also comes with some compromises. However, Razer frames its Blade laptops, and they cater to gamers first, a subset of consumers notoriously fickle about performance. Creators aren’t far behind with their demanding needs, which Razer knows. They’ve told me, “We believe gamers are creators, and creators are gamers.”
I approached this 2024 iteration of the Blade 16 with that in mind. Even with its distinct gaming character, how does it perform as a productivity tool? Can it claim to be a worthy alternative to slimmer and lighter alternatives?
Big Boy
My loaner review unit is essentially the base configuration. That means a 14th-gen Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU with 24 cores and a Nvidia GeForce RTX4070 GPU. The 16GB of RAM is a bit low for that kind of power, in my view, while the 1TB SSD could also be seen as modest if you need ample storage.
The 16-inch (2560 x 1600) QHD+ 240Hz OLED is the real jewel of the whole ensemble — a gorgeous canvas with outstanding contrast and color reproduction. It is a Samsung panel co-developed with Razer to give it a unique look.
The port options are also agreeable, with one HDMI 2.1, one Thunderbolt 4, one USB-C 3.2, three USB-A 3.2, and a UHS-II SD card slot. Plus, a headphone jack, of course. That card slot is crucial in bridging the gap between consumption and creation because it doesn’t require a hub or adapter to slot your card in. The 2023 Blade 16 has the same ports and card slot, so any outreach to creators, including photographers and videographers, is the same this time.
All of the power under the hood comes with compromises up front. The Blade 16 weighs 5.4 pounds, while the 280W adapter is a brick in its own right, adding an extra couple of pounds. Part of the weight stems from the aluminum body with a premium feel. There’s nothing about this laptop that screams cheap to me, and it’s clear Razer put thought into how it feels when touching it. Granted, the surface is a total fingerprint magnet, but nothing about it feels otherwise inferior.
Except when you’re flirting with as much as eight pounds to merely take your laptop with you, you must strongly consider where you plan to use it most. If it’s parked in your workstation at home as part of a broader setup with an external monitor, more limited portability may be fine. But I’m combining the laptop and adapter because battery performance all but demands it be within reach.
Getting Things Done, Hearing the Roar
I haven’t often used laptops that render images and run through batch edits like the Blade 16 can, even if the benchmark results below aren’t all that impressive. The combination of CPU and GPU power is sufficient with specific workflows. I did less video in my testing, as my workflows are more focused on still images, but rendering 4K or 1080p footage was buttery smooth. Not to mention the superb color accuracy I could trust when looking at it. There’s also something unique about using a laptop with an RGB backlit keyboard to do imaging post-production.
I pushed what I could onto the device running Photoshop and Lightroom. Along with Bridge, I had all three running simultaneously for long periods. To make things more interesting, I also ran DxO PureRAW 4 to gauge performance further, including DaVinci Resolve for video. All that while also having web browsers open — and when the mood struck, to play some video games, too. There’s not a whole lot this laptop can’t handle from a productivity standpoint, even if there are more powerful options out there.
Indeed, Blade 16 can be a beast in the right situation, and sometimes it roars like one when the fans go into action to cool it down. Working on photos, it never got as hot as it did while gaming, but it’s different from the kind of laptop I would recommend resting on your lap as the heat could be problematic. The fan noise is also one of those subjective things that can either grate on you or you learn to drown out somehow, be it listening to music on headphones or just concentrating so much on the task at hand that you somehow block it out.
The CPU and GPU largely share responsibility for the heat and subsequent fan noise, though it’s not clear Razer can enable you to do much about it. Its Synapse software offers some granular control over certain performance metrics but not enough to keep things much quieter. One of the caveats is that it also seems to matter what order you do things in. For example, if I was gaming first and then decided to quit that and go to work on Photoshop or Lightroom, the fans wouldn’t necessarily die down in spite of the lower computational and graphics load on the machine. They eventually would lessen in intensity, but only if I didn’t keep multiple apps open at the same time.
If I reversed that and started working first and gaming later, the fans wouldn’t buzz into action as quickly or rigorously until gameplay started. To be fair, that’s not uncommon for PC laptops capable of running premium games, but when you’re spending upwards of $3,000, performance expectations should be paramount and these sorts of things can stand out.
The Screen Sets the Tone, Battery Doesn’t
The thing is, the OLED is just so nice to look at. This is one display I don’t have to nitpick about when it comes to how it displays color and detail. And with such a high screen refresh rate, video benefits on top of that. On that side, I understand Razer’s decision not to overhaul anything and simply refresh the Blade 16 in 2024 with a new CPU and display.
My sense is that the screen is one of the biggest reasons to consider getting this laptop — but only if you’re an avid gamer as well. Otherwise, it’s just expensive overkill. I’ll admit, though, I did enjoy going through some of my older photos on this display to see what stood out. I don’t know if the Mini-LED variant presents a better visual, but the OLED does well with 99.9% sRGB coverage and 153.9% gamut volume. Not to mention 99.9% DCI-P3 color space and 107.6% volume. The HDR on this machine is just glorious.
Except, the battery isn’t. I know it’s asking a lot of a machine of this size and spec to last longer, but hitting five hours per charge is a feat in this case. Depending on screen brightness and how much the components chug along, you may be lucky even to hit five hours. Mind you, that’s with mixed usage, where gaming alone dwindles it even further. The beefy 280W charger (other configurations come with a 330W charger) did a great job charging it back up quickly, taking about 90 minutes to get back to full.
The size and weight are one thing, but productivity demands longevity, and that’s where things get dicey with the Blade 16. It’s a premium build, no doubt, and despite a large battery inside, it guzzles power at rates that may be unacceptable when you plan to work out in the field regularly.
Benchmark Tests
Editor’s Note: This review has been in a holding pattern for about two months, as PetaPixel has worked alongside Razer to isolate and solve an issue that has plagued importing images into Lightroom Classic on this machine. While some aspects of using Lightroom Classic have been fine, such as exporting, import performance has been anything but. Even after going through multiple channels, and partially resolving the issue, there is still something going on. Razer says the problem concerns how Lightroom works with Intel’s Raptor Lake HX processors. Intel is experiencing instability woes across multiple machines, and while we have done our due diligence, and the author of this review, Ted Kritsonis, has gone above and beyond troubleshooting and running benchmark after benchmark, it is time for this review to go out the door. The Lightroom section will remain incomplete, and Kritsonis explains more about this specific issue, including the ways that users can partially correct for it, in a separate article. All other benchmark tests worked as expected.
Photoshop
The Razer Blade 16 (2024) is the worst performer on this list, but not by a significant margin. Of course, it’s also a notebook, while some of the best machines on this list are desktops. The MSI Creator and the MacBook Pro models here are good points of comparison, rather than the Mac Ultra or Maingear MG-1 desktop machines.
Looking at the category breakdown, the Razer Blade 16 struggles a bit, but is again in the general vicinity of the competition.
Lightroom (Export Only)
Exporting images in Adobe Lightroom Classic has proven to be entirely normal on the Razer Blade 16, so we can still take a look at those results as normal.
Again, the Razer Blade 16 is pretty much near the bottom of the list, but not by a huge margin.
Premiere Pro
Given that the Razer Blade 16 is built with gaming in mind and has a powerful GPU, it should come as little surprise that its performance in Premiere Pro, a GPU-heavy application, is relatively better than its performance in Photoshop and Lightroom. The Razer Blade 16 performs well here, delivering performance between Apple’s first M-series MacBook Pro and its newest machines.
Performance Takeaways
The elephant-sized Lightroom in the room aside, the Razer Blade 16 (2024) is an okay performer. It’s near the bottom of our test charts, but it’s not so out of the race that users should scoff. It’s definitely built for gamers, which helps more with video editing applications than photo editing ones, but its performance is not so bad that it should be outright tossed out. The Razer Blade 16’s biggest strengths do not like in our benchmarking, though.
Are There Alternatives?
This is a tough one because the Blade 16 proves it’s a gaming laptop first. In that vein, you could get good results from, say, an Asus ROG Strix or Alienware Predator Helios machine, both of which cater to gamers first. PC manufacturers also offer plenty of variety for creatives anyway, so you’re not necessarily limited in scope unless gaming is on your want list as well. Not all score points on battery life, but they can offer the power and performance necessary to do a job efficiently — particularly for photos.
Then there’s the MacBook Pro 16, often a benchmark in this realm. Apple’s silicon gives its laptops a unique edge because it makes both the hardware and software. That’s not something PC manufacturers can point to as a distinct advantage on their end; Intel doesn’t make laptops, and Microsoft doesn’t make chips. It’s also not clear how well Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Series chips will fare as they enter the market in greater quantities. So, while the Blade 16 can crush a MacBook Pro on heavy graphics (like gaming), the Pro returns the favor in power efficiency.
Should You Buy It?
No. However, if the Razer 16 suits your workflow and budget and you can live with its instability in Lightroom, it is a pretty machine with an excellent display, and one could see the case for it. But ultimately, a user will need to really value the machine’s appearance, good assortment of ports, and its stellar screen to justify the purchase.
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