The 2016 Razer Blade Pro Review

Software

Razer makes a point of advertising that the Blade Pro doesn't come with the bloatware that ships on other Windows laptops. This has been an issue of mine with many Windows laptops for a long time, and it's good to see other vendors speaking out against the issue as well as initiatives like the Microsoft Signature Edition laptops. By my definition of bloatware, Razer is mostly truthful with their claim. I wouldn't describe the GUI layer for drivers as bloatware, even if it is quite ugly in many cases. The one thing that I think Razer could do without or offer optionally is the Dolby settings panel. This is non-essential software, and it doesn't relate to any special audio hardware beyond the included Realtek audio codec, which already has its own bundled software. It's a minor complaint, but it's one I felt was worth pointing out.

Razer obviously includes their own Synapse software. Whether you like the design or not, this is definitely a useful program as it's used to control the Chroma backlighting of the keyboard and trackpad. Without it, you wouldn't be able to set the backlight to a more normal state like a static white color. Synapse also provides some power management to control whether the fan profile is optimized for lower noise or max cooling, as well as macro recording, trackpad settings, and a gaming mode to disable certain keys and key combinations to avoid accidentally minimizing or quitting a game. My one complaint is that the app is not really a true HiDPI app, with some visible scaling problems and low resolution bitmaps.

The last app I wanted to comment on is the Killer Network Manager. The design of the app can really only be described as horrendous. I think it's probably the worst GUI I've ever seen in my life, and I'm not excluding Java apps made using Swing, Python apps using Tkinter. The home screen looks like a sad ripoff of the Windows 10 tile interface, and it's not HiDPI so you can't even begin to imagine how bad this really looks unless you've used it yourself.

Clicking the tiles brings you to the different parts of the application. These are again sitting on a dark grey background which is just not appealing to look at. Some of the screens are literally just blurry text sitting on the background along with a few buttons, which have nothing to indicate they are buttons except for a thin rectangular border, which is also grey in color. It's dull, lifeless, and unappealing, and it's really an embarassment to have this shipping on a computer. Even though Razer doesn't make the software themselves, it still reflects poorly on their brand to have such a horribly designed and aesthetically unappealing application included.

Brett mentioned to me that Killer has shipped a new piece of software to replace this network manager, but the aesthetics aren't really improved in the new version. On top of that, the older app has no way to update directly to it, so you need to know that there's a new version, navigate to it on Killer's website, select the right software and driver bundle for your chipset, uninstall the existing version, and then install the new version. I know from experience that users rarely update software that doesn't have an update function built in along with automatic update reminders when new versions are available, so most users are just going to live with the old Killer app anyway. It's not as though the new version is aesthetically presentable either, so you'd need to want any new features that have been added to make it worth updating.

Audio

The Blade Pro uses stereo speakers. There are two speaker grilles visible to the left and right of the keyboard and trackpad, as well as two slits on the left and right sides of the chassis. I don't have equipment to measure the loudness of the output, but my subjective evaluation of the audio quality is that it's pretty typical of laptops. In my particular case, I don't get to use the speakers very much because when playing games the fans are far too loud to hear any noise.

As for TV and movies, most of my videos are encoded to High10 profile H.264, which means they have to be decoded in software so the fans end up going crazy in that circumstance as well. For the average person the speakers will be fine, but if you're doing any gaming you'll want to use headphones, and even for music and movies I think that's still a preferable experience.

Thermals

As I mentioned in the design section, the Blade Pro has intake fans on the bottom side of the chassis. Razer has used this design for their other laptops, and it seems to work quite well as they're able to put high performance GPUs into more compact designs than anyone else. The Blade Pro has an exhaust area in front of the keyboard hinge, which directs hot air away from the user.

I'd like to thank FLIR for providing a FLIR ONE thermal camera, which is how I was able to examine the Blade Pro's chassis to get an idea of the surface temperature. As you can see, the warmest area is the exhaust vent by the display hinge. This isn't really an area that the user will interact with so it's not an issue. There's also a warm area around the power button above the keyboard, as well as on the upper area of the keyboard itself. I took some measurements while running games, and the warmest temperature I saw was 47 degrees celsius, which is warm but not uncomfortably warm by any means.

The keyboard is also used for exhaust, and because it's localized there's a cluster of keys near the middle and top where the temperature is noticeably warmer than the other parts of the keyboard. This didn't present any actual problems during use, and this kind of thermal design is not uncommon, but with such a powerful machine the effect is a bit more noticeable than with something like a MacBook Pro.