Razer Blade 14 (2023) Review

As Razer’s smallest gaming laptop, you could never tell the Blade 14's size purely from the benchmarks. This 14-incher (starts at $2,399; $2,699 as tested) pairs AMD’s AI-enhanced Ryzen 9 7940HS processor with a high-wattage Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card to perform like a much larger machine. Razer’s impeccable aluminum chassis and customizable features are clues that this little gem doesn’t come cheaply, but for on-the-go gaming, the Blade 14 is as premium as it gets, earning our Editors' Choice award for ultraportable gaming laptops.

High Design: Classic Razer With the Latest Tech

The new Blade 14 impresses for the same reason as the original Razer Blade 14: It packing powerful components into a svelte build. AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS processor that’s standard across all Blade 14 models has eight cores and can boost to 5.2GHz; numbers that should make even desktop fans look twice. Its Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 graphics chips also deliver a 140-watt maximum graphics power rating, which even some 17-inch gaming laptops can’t match.

Our model’s only upgrade over the base model, which has an RTX 4060 and 16GB of RAM, is the RTX 4070 GPU. The $2,799 top model sticks with an RTX 4070 and bumps up the RAM to 32GB. A 1TB SSD is standard across all models, and both the RAM and SSD are upgradable after purchase.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The Blade 14’s quintessential Razer design starts with its CNC aluminum chassis—no stamped metal here. It’s just three parts: the lid and the top and bottom halves of the chassis. The chassis feels supremely solid and exhibits no flex whatsoever.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Our test model is black, but the $2,799 model is white. The green Razer logo on the lid is backlit independently of the display. It supports static and breathing patterns, but you can turn it off, too.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Moving to a modern 16:10 screen aspect ratio hasn’t changed the Blade 14’s size much versus the 16:9 original, at 0.7 by 12.2 by 9 inches (HWD) and an even four pounds. The Alienware x14 R2 is slightly smaller and lighter (0.57 by 12.7 by 10.3 inches, 3.96 pounds); the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402) is similarly sized but lighter (0.7 by 12.3 by 8.9 inches, 3.6 pounds); and the MSI Stealth 14 Studio is larger but slightly lighter (0.8 by 12.4 by 9.7 inches, 3.8 pounds).

Device Customization Galore

Razer’s Synapse app adds lots of value to the Blade 14. Changing the keyboard backlighting is the obvious reason to use it: The Chroma Studio section provides presets and full custom modes, where you can create all kinds of effects, layers, and patterns. A tutorial is included.

(Credit: Razer)

Synapse also allows setting keyboard macros and has a gaming mode, which disables the Windows key and other shortcuts that can interrupt your gameplay.

For performance, the app provides Balanced, Silent, and Custom profiles, the latter allowing individual tuning of CPU and GPU power profiles.

(Credit: Razer)

Moving on, display settings allow the Blade 14 switch to a power-saving 60Hz screen refresh rate while on battery, which is enabled by default and probably one of the reasons I saw such long battery life in our benchmarks below.

(Credit: Razer)

Battery settings also include a life optimizer that can maintain optimal battery charge for long-term health.

(Credit: Razer)

The best part of Synapse is that you can save all the settings to an unlimited number of profiles.

Razer's inclusion of the THX audio app is also worth a mention, as its spatial audio setting is essential for keyboard-flanking speakers to sound their best. It didn’t seem to help the bass, of which you'll hear almost none, but the overall sound is crisp and loud enough for you and a friend to watch a movie. The default music profile seems suited for everything. I did notice an expanded soundstage when I switched to cinema or gaming modes, but neither are ideal for music.

(Credit: THX)

Typing and Tracking on the Razer Blade 14

No laptop brand does keyboard backlighting quite like Razer. The Blade 14’s laser sharp, piercingly bright lighting looks fabulous and has endless customization possibilities in the Synapse app. Each key is individually backlit in 6.8 million RGB colors. I also like that you have 100 levels of brightness to work with; most laptops give you two or three.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Limited key travel means that the keyboard doesn’t provide much tactile sensation, though it does allow for fast typing: I managed 111 words per minute with 98% accuracy in the Monkeytype typing test, on par with what I do on desktop keyboards. Nonetheless, the keyboard’s layout could be improved by using an inverted-T arrow-key arrangement instead of placing full-size left and right keys around half-height up and down keys. The keyboard also lacks dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, which only exist as Fn-key combos with the arrow keys.

I can’t complain about touchpad, though, which might be one of the biggest I’ve seen on any laptop. Its glass surface is sturdy and produces tactile, quiet clicks.

Superb Screen: 16:10 QHD+ FTW

The 16:10 display has a fine 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution that’s well within the capability of its RTX 40 GPUs in today’s games, especially if the game supports Nvidia’s performance-enhancing DLSS. It has about 10% more vertical space than the outgoing 2,560-by-1,440-pixel 16:9 equivalent.

Razer's screen brightness and color coverage are well above average, and its anti-glare surface effectively minimizes reflections. Technical goodies include a 240Hz refresh rate, a rated 3ms response time, and AMD FreeSync Premium to mitigate frame tearing. Naturally, you won't find touch support here—that’s not expected on a gaming laptop.

The 1080p webcam shows decent sharpness and minimal grain even in low light. Meanwhile, the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU’s AI engine enables special background effects, such as portrait blur shown here below. The webcam also has a tiny sliding privacy shutter, and it supports infrared for Windows Hello biometric facial logins.

(Credit: Razer)

As for ports, the Blade 14 includes two USB4 Type-C ports, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports (10Gbps), one HDMI 2.1 video output, and a 3.5mm universal audio jack. You'll also find a Kensington lock slot.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The USB4 ports are compatible with Thunderbolt 4 devices and can also be used to charge the laptop, though the included 230W adapter must be connected to the proprietary port on the left edge for full performance. Razer says the adapter can charge the Blade 14 to 80% battery capacity in one hour.

Delightfully, upgrading the Blade 14 is (mildly) possible; eight Torx T6 screws hold on the base panel underneath the laptop, which comes off without prying. Under it are two SODIMM slots, an M.2 2280 PCI Express 4.0 SSD slot, and an M.2 2230 wireless card slot. The DDR5 memory runs at 5,600MHz instead of the usual 4,800MHz.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Benching the Blade 14: Cutting its Own Path

Our $2,699 Razer Blade 14 has an eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU, an 8GB Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. A one-year warranty is standard.

Primary competition comes from the Alienware x14 R2, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402), and the MSI Stealth 14 Studio. The Alienware is lighter on performance, with an RTX 3060 in our 2022 review unit. The MSI can come with an RTX 4070, though it’s limited to 90W. Only the Asus really approaches the Blade 14’s potential; the $2,499 Asus estore configuration I saw included a 125W RTX 4080.

Capabilities aside, the Blade 14 is no doubt a luxury purchase and has seen a significant price hike since the first generation, which started at $1,799. That price got you only a 1080p screen back then, but Razer has clearly cut out the entry tier this go-around.

While I've mentioned many systems against which the Blade 14 compares, I've kept its benchmark rivals to the MSI Stealth 14 Studio and several larger machines in our testing round on account of its out-size GPU. This includes the 16-inch Acer Predator Triton 300 SE, the MSI Katana 15, and the Origin EON16-S. This all-Intel bunch uses 45W Core H-class chips that should prove able competition for the Blade 14’s Ryzen chip.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

The Blade 14 began our testing with a leading score in UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. All these laptops score nearly double the 4,000 points we look for from everyday PCs.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro by Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

AMD's Ryzen 9 7940HS within the The Blade 14 was on par with the Katana 15’s Intel Core i7-13620H, which seems about right. The AMD chip is not quite as fast as the MSI Stealth 14’s Core i7 or the Origin’s Core i9, as it shouldn't be within its class. Regardless, this AMD chip's numbers are still excellent for a laptop, and should prove reliable in anywhere from light everyday to intense use.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We run both synthetic and real-world gaming tests on Windows PCs. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also looped into that group is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance.

Moving on, our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege representing simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. On laptops, Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run once at Ultra quality settings and, for Nvidia GeForce RTX laptops, a second time with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.

Razer's latest Blade 14 showed exceptionally fast graphics performance, especially in 3DMark Time Spy and the real-world gaming tests. Esports hounds should be quite satisfied—the Blade 14 more than saturated its 240Hz refresh rate in Rainbow Six at the game’s Ultra quality preset. The Origin nosed ahead, but by only minimal margins (aside from Rainbow Six) in most cases. Remember, except for the Stealth 14 Studio, these were all 15- or 16-inch machines in our tests.

I also ran the gaming benchmarks at the Blade 14’s native screen resolution, where I saw 105fps in F1 2021 (Ultra with DLSS), 73fps in Assassin’s Creed (Ultra), and 230fps in Rainbow Six (Ultra). These are all highly playable frame rates, spelling good news for PC gamers.

The Blade 14’s cooling fans were well-behaved and didn't exhibit particularly loud volume, so it shouldn’t be a distraction around others. The keyboard and touchpad remained cool enough to touch while gaming. The only hotspots I noticed were above the keyboard and around the fan outlets. The fans direct hot air from inside toward the display hinge and away from the user.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptop battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with screen brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting are turned off during the test.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its brightness in nits (candelas per square meter) at the screen's 50% and peak settings.

The Blade 14 easily outlasted the other gaming laptops in our battery rundown, thanks likely to those aforementioned battery-saving features. It tied the MSI Stealth 14 Studio in display color coverage but blew past it and the others with a sizzling 567-nit peak brightness. For gaming and content creation alike, this is more than an ideal 14-inch laptop.

Buy This Blade: For 14-Inch Gaming, Look No Further

Razer’s new Blade 14 slices right through the competition. Revamped with a 16:10 screen and the latest parts from AMD and Nvidia, this eminently portable 14-incher keeps up with much larger gaming laptops without any real compromises. An all-aluminum bosy, a bright screen, long battery life, end-user upgradability, and quiet cooling fans are just some of its many highlights. Pricing is the only major turnoff. Razer no longer sells anything that could be considered a budget configuration, but on the other hand, it’s not more expensive than other machines in this elite tier. Overall, the Blade 14 doesn’t miss a beat, easily earning our Editors' Choice award.