Razer Blade Pro 17 (2019) Complete Walkthrough: Their Most Powerful Laptop Ever
The Razer Blade Pro (2019) is the latest in Razer’s less popular but top of the line Pro line up. If you’ve seen Razer Blade Pro’s of the past, you can kind of understand why most people looking for a gaming laptop go for the much better selling Razer Blade 15 (I myself made that choice a couple of times).
For one, the Pro has always been this massive 17″ laptop with tons of power but the calling it a laptop seemed to be a pretty loose term. The new 2019 model, though, while not terribly portable, is following the recently updated design language of the other Blade laptops and while it might seem small, it makes a huge difference.
For the first time since any Blade Pro I’ve ever seen, it fits in a 15″ laptop backpack. Only just, mind you, but it does fit.
We have a more squared design (again falling in line with the new design language of all Razer’s new products) which I personally like, and with that, much smaller bezels.
This means that even though the Razer Blade Pro has a 17″ screen, its chassis is much closer to a 15″ size (other 15″ laptops nowadays at least are actually smaller than it nowadays but, again, it fits in the backpack).
That 17.3″ screen to be more exact, is a 1080P, 144hz panel with a peak brightness of 300 nits and boasts 100% sRGB color gamut with just 6mm bezels on the top and sides.
Above that screen, we now have all the necessary hardware needed for Windows Hello. This means you can now use your face to sign in, and while I prefer a fingerprint for this, Windows Hello does work well enough and is better than not having either.
Under that screen, we have pretty clicky keyboard with per key RGB in the form of Razer’s Chroma feature and instead of the trackpad being on the right like it was on older Pro models, its now in the more traditional location of under the keyboard (and further helps it fit more in line with the other Razer laptops). Personally, I like the new location as if I was going to be using a mouse to the right, it’d more likely be a separate one, not a trackpad and it makes for a smaller computer, of course. Also, the trackpad isn’t the most responsive I’ve ever used lately but it is at least a Precision trackpad which means Windows itself handles the drivers for it instead of every manufacturer making their own so it just is more precise, let’s you use Windows’ gesture system, and is just better. Trust me.
One complaint I do have about the keyboard though is the fact that Razer, again, decided to put this rouge function button in the bottom right corner. And while that might not seem like much, it means that every time I go to push the right arrow and my muscle memory expects it to be in the same place it is on pretty much every other laptop on the planet, I hit a function key instead. Same goes for the down which makes me hit the right arrow, etc. etc. Now, of course, with enough use you will get used to it, but, to me, it seems like an unnecessary new habit I have to build that has no benefit.
Besides the overall aesthetic, the Pro is all about Razer trying to squeeze in as much of the latest tech as they can and the 2019 Pro is no different. Because of the larger chassis, we have ports for days.
On the left, we have our AC adapter port, a 2.5Gbps ethernet port for faster transfers over your home network (say to connect to a NAS that supports faster than gigabit speeds), 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (which is a rebrand of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports so same specs as those, not sure why there’s a new name but there you go), 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and our 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the right, we have a UHS-III SD card reader (put this on a Blade 15, Razer!), another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port that is also a Thunderbolt 3 port, another USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, an HDM 2.0B port, and a Kensington Security Lock to lock the device to a desk if you have shady coworkers or something.
The laptop also supports all the usual suspect on Wifi 802.11, but they added the latest spec slowly becoming more popular, Wifi 6 (802.11ax technically). So even though, chances are, you probably don’t have a router that can give you that, the computer would be able to handle it once you decide to upgrade.
For specs, we have the latest 9th gen Intel Core i7-9750H processor with 6-cores clocked at 2.6Ghz that can boost to 4.5Ghz. This is paired with 16GB of RAM when you buy it, but following a trend I think is smart of Razer, it’s user-upgradeable to 64GBs if you want.
This upgradeability isn’t limited to the RAM, either. The laptop comes with a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD that you can swap out for up to a 2TB one and it comes with an unpopulated M.2 SSD slot that you can then add another up to 2TBs of storage to, if you need.
Head here for the best price I could could find on the new Razer Blade Pro 17.
Let me know what you guys think in the comments below and thanks for watching!
