Razer Blade 18 Gaming -Laptop: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 13th Gen Intel 24-Core i9 HX CPU 18" QHD+ 240Hz - 32GB -RAM - 1TB SSD CNC Aluminum Compact GaN -Charger - Windows 11 -Chroma RGB

The laptop was received 2 days earlier than the announced date of delivery from Amazon.ae. The device arrived in its original packaging and condition.I had the 2019 Blade Advance which weighs around 2.1 KG. I have a back problem which I was worried this device will be heavier than announced. However, with the features this beast has, it is still in the low weight limit and it can also fit in my 15.6" laptop bag too, which is awesome.The only thing is that the power adapter increases the weight in the bag. This is why I have purchased another adapter so that I keep one in the office and one at home while carrying the laptop during my commute without the extra weight.I recommend buying this device for the enthusiasts. You will not regret it.

It is an expensive machine !! Wondering how come there’s no warranty upon check out !?!

So I debated for months about what laptop to get to replace my trusty surface book 2. I simply could not find something that hit all the points that it had but I narrowed my search down to the razer 17 (4k 3080ti), the MSI z17 (3080ti), and the Gigabyte AERO 17 (3080ti). The MSI and Gigabyte had the downside of only being 90w and 105w gpus respectively. The MSI brought touch screen that I desperately wanted but lost out because it only ran at 1440p and I did not want to step down in resolution. So that left the Gigabyte in the running and it is significantly less expensive but lost out because they dropped all the ports off the laptop like some fruity company I know of. So we had the winner of the Razer from the selection. I also knew that I would be upgrading the unit right out of the gate as the storage and ram would need to be bumped up to better cover my software needs. So I booted the laptop to make sure that everything was working and then popped the cover off to swap the ram for a 64GB kit from Kingston (KF548S38IBK2-64) and a 4TB ssd from sabrent. The cover had a bit of a learning curve as you needed to slide it to the front of the laptop to get it to lift off but otherwise was easy to get into. I was disappointed to find a tamper seal on the boot ssd but it did not say warranty void so I will not dock it too hard here. I had some difficulty with the OS clone so I did a clean install from the recovery media from razers webpage (only accessible after you register the laptop). Everything came up and worked no problems when working from the recovery media (I do not recommend a truly clean windows install as there is no page to pull razers software and drivers from). The laptop is a joy to work with as it has tons of power ontap and after the upgrades the ability to replace my desktop in a pinch.CPUThe new i9 cores are shockingly fast and chew through both lightly and heavily threaded workloads and under the right conditions outpace my old 1950x threadripper. An older cpu to be sure but it still blows my mind that a laptop could keep pace with a hedt processor.GPUWhere this laptop really sets itself apart is in the gpu department where its higher power limit lets it stretch its legs pushing some titles in 4k at decent settings. I have also given it a shake at 8k but found that the vram buffer is on the very edge of working even in older titles. An example would be skyrim working at stock maxed settings but running out of memory once I enabled an enb.Thermals/NoiseExperiments aside the laptop will get very loud if you select anything other then the quiet mode. The laptop keeps thermals under control though so I can't knock it much here.BatteryExpect to be married to the power cord for almost any task as the system sucks down power at an alarming rate. I think some of this is a combo of the high refresh rate screen and the fact that the dedicated gpu is not really disabled in optimus mode but just in a low power state. Do note that the power brick gets quite warm under normal loads and downright hot under stress loads. I strongly recommend keeping it well ventilated and off cloth surfaces.ScreenThe screen was a pleasant surprise for me as it was brighter than the reviews I read lead me to believe. Note it is not a photon cannon but it meets or exceeds the outgoing surface book 2. One thing that I wish it had here was an HDR rated panel. I would give up the high refresh rate for that in a heartbeat but I know that I am in the minority here. Colors are good and I feel that I can edit content on it without having to worry about being terribly inaccurate.KeyboardI have to give this a meh rating as it is just so so at best. The keys are mushy and the layout is somehow off a bit for me. I am guessing that I will get used to it but off the bat I find I am getting more errors than normal when typing. The chroma colors are fantastic though and I was able to setup a matching color scheme to my desktop. The colors are bright and vivid so A+ there.TrackpadThis one surprised me as everyone raves about this track pad but I found the surface book despite its smaller size was better. It has a wedge click that misses my input frequently and its palm rejection is mediocre as I frequently would have the cursor move while I was trying to type.Port selectionThis was a selling point for me and it does not disappoint. The usb A ports are plentiful and the thunderbolt ports are fast. The 2.5G Ethernet is a nice touch though I can't test this as my network is 1G or 10G with no ability to run the interim steps (I will update this if I get a different switch.). The HDMI is 2.1 so you get the full bandwidth to run all the way up to 8k 60hz. Wifi runs the new 6e standard and with a supported network pulls nearly gigabit speeds. Finally the sd card slot is on point reading at my cards rated speeds.Build qualityExceptional fit and finish here. Everything is sturdy and I was not found wanting here coming from the exceptional surface book.Final thoughtsI love this laptop for everything it is capable of doing. It is not a true workstation replacement but no laptop will be able to reach hedt levels. Where this laptop shines is in that space in-between where I can't haul my workstation but still need to edit a video or stitch some images together. I can render a h265 video without proxies on this and with the ram upgrade I can stitch raw files together with confidence. Also it can game and game well but don't expect miracles here as while it has the 3080ti name it is still a notebook gpu so it struggles at 4k in newer titles. The deep vram buffer is a massive boon for work but don't expect to make much use of it in games. If you are looking for a gaming laptop I would look at the 1440p units as it is a more obtainable resolution. For the "creative" that games on occasion I think you will be hard pressed to find a better laptop that combines all of these specs in this form factor.

It still runs great after a year as most laptops should. Runs all games at max settings without any loss of FPS for example Overwatch, max settings, 120+fps, same with WoW, Cyberpunk i think on high runs 60fps. I've even had WoW in the background in a city, booted up and played a bunch of Overwatch and forgot i'd had WoW in the background for the past hour and didn't notice any drop in performance.2nd, and last part so i can keep this short, is the fan is extremely quiet. My old laptop the fan was so loud you'd have to use headphones to hear anything. This one really is a whisper even when its hot.Only thing i'd improve is it's a little annoying if i leave it unplugged with the lid closed, or if im traveling with it and dont shut it down, after about 5 or 6 hours the battery will be empty. Even with lid closed, sleep active, etc. This battery dies quickly if its unplugged and in sleep mode.Aside from that, amazing rig.

Coming from the flashy MSI and Asus the lighting is only keyboard which is fine. It is a little boring. MY only complaint is the keyboard is small no number pad.

This will likely be the last Razer device I've purchased. I really want to remain loyal to the company but I've recently bought things such as keyboards, mice and others that just didn't cut the mustard. For whatever reason though, I decided to drop 4k on a top of the line laptop to replace my 6 year old Origin PC. That was a mistake.Let's start however, with the positives.The computer is slick. I bought a Blade 17 with 32gb of RAM and a 3080TI. It's super thin, easily 40% thinner than my 6 year old Origin and very light for a 17 inch laptop (comparatively speaking). The screen is beautiful, crisp and bright and you definitely notice the 240hz in QHD. It's fantastic.It's also surprisingly quiet. I expected more fan noise but there is very little to be honest. I bought a laptop cooler just in case because I wanted to protect my new baby from overheating but it seems to do well on it's own. I've never seen the GPU heat go above 58 degrees Celsius in any game thus far.When I got it ready and got my games installed, I was very pleased. The computer could easily push 140 FPS in the most demanding games and still didn't feel hot to the touch. It crushed anything I loaded and I briefly debating using this in lieu of my personally built desktop with a 3070 and 32gb of ram because I felt this laptop was outperforming it in many regards. Unfortunately, that lasted about two weeks.Suddenly I started seeing artifacts and flickers in games. Previous experience instantly told me that is not a good sign. My FPS dropped dramatically. Whereas in my favorite shooters I was seeing between 70 and 120 FPS, I now see 40 at the most, usually 35 or less. Nothing I do changes this. Every game looks great but runs awful.I ran additional benchmarks on the computer to see what was wrong. The GPU is now benchmarking at ZERO percent after just two weeks. Either I got a lemon of a GPU or perhaps the chassis cooling is not what i's cracked up to be. Either way, spending four THOUSAND dollars on what should be a premier gaming laptop and it lasting all of two weeks is beyond unacceptable. Spending 4000 dollars on anything should all but guarantee and near perfectly functioning device. Sadly, that is not what I received.I received something that performed slightly above where I expected for about two weeks. However, after two weeks, my 6 year old Origin PC with a GTX 570 can actually play my favorite games at a higher FPS than this computer.It would appear that Razer's QC is once again lacking. I would stay away from this laptop and consider a different brand.Edit:6 Months later. Razer fixed the problem with the FPS. It took 3 months and required them to send me a new power brick because the one I had was the problem and not feeding sufficient power to the computer. Fast forward another 2 months and the touchpad stopped working. Because Razer makes trash, low quality products with no QC.STAY AWAY!

These are wonderful machines, but they are not configurable. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG). I knew this when purchasing my machine, but had a few specific questions before spending the money and I contacted their support desk for clarity. I explained that I was researching models and wanted a touch screen. I was seeing conflicting information online and I was assured that R709-0423x product line has a touch screen, so I ordered one. To my surprise, no touch screen! I contacted their support people again and referenced my case number. They acknowledged that what I was told was wrong, but ignored me when I asked for recourse. Don't trust the service people to answer product questions!