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Should you buy the Razer Blade 14 (2024)?
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Should you buy the Razer Blade 18 (2024)?
When you first turn on a Razer Blade laptop, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Razer has made some of the best gaming laptops for years, and this trend continues with the 2024 series. I’ve spent the last month with the Razer Blade 14 (2024) and Razer Blade 18 (2024) in the Mercury silver colorway, and both are compelling devices.
New this year is a 4K, 200Hz IPS display for the 18-inch, an option for the Mercury color (previously, some models were only available in black), Thunderbolt 5 (only on the larger model), Wi-Fi 7 for both models, and the latest flagship mobile processors from Intel and AMD. Naturally, we just had to try the new 4K display, paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 mobile GPU, in addition to the new Razer Blade 14, which has an RTX 4070 GPU.
After a month of alternating between the two, the Razer Blade 14 is now hands-down my favorite gaming laptop, but it was a close race. Both of them are among the best laptops I’ve ever used, with plenty of power, good input devices, loads of ports, and bright, colorful, fast displays. The 14-inch model was more usable for daily tasks, even with the lower specifications, and was far more portable.
About this review: Razer loaned XDA the Razer Blade 14 (2024) and Razer Blade 18 (2024) for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article.
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On-the-go greatness
Razer Blade 14
Sublime power in a small package
Razer’s smallest gaming laptop is also my favorite. It has a bright, gorgeous display and options for a silver or black CNC-ed aluminum chassis. The AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU provide plenty of power, but the Razer Blade 14 (2024) suffers from the usual gaming laptop woes of short battery life and high temperatures.
Pros- Fantastic performance whether productivity or gaming
- Gorgeous design with choice of Mercury or Black
- Beautiful QHD+ display with 240Hz refresh and AMD FreeSync Premium
Cons- Short battery life
- Expensive
- Gets hot
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Portable desktop
Razer Blade 18 (2024)
All the power of a desktop, condensed
The Razer Blade 18 (2024) is the pinnacle of gaming laptop hardware, with a gorgeous 4K 200Hz display, Thunderbolt 5, Intel’s i9-14900HX CPU, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. You’ll pay for the privilege, though, and the powerful hardware runs hot and tears through battery life.
Pros- 18-inch 4K 200Hz display in the same size chassis as the old 17-inch model
- Powerful hardware for any task
- Thunderbolt 5 for future connectivity
Cons- Loud fans and overheating CPU issues
- Battery life is terrible
- Extremely expensive
Pricing and availability
The Razer Blade 14 (2024) was announced at CES 2024 and is now available from Razer’s website and selected retailers, including Amazon and Best Buy. The only available configuration is an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 mobile graphics card, at a price point of $2,700. It’s available in black or silver (Razer calls this Mercury).
The Razer Blade 14 is now hands-down my favorite gaming laptop
The Razer Blade 18 (2024) was also announced at CES 2024, and is available from Razer’s website and retailers like Best Buy and Amazon. The mid-range test unit in review is priced at a wallet-busting $4,500. It’s not quite the top-spec (some storage and memory options push it even higher), but we got to experience an Intel i9-14900HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 mobile GPU, and a 4K, 200Hz IPS display for that price. The base model starts at $3,100 and has an RTX 4070 GPU, 1TB SSD, and a QHD+ 300Hz Mini-LED display.
What I liked
Plenty of ports, great touchpads, bright colorful screens
The Razer Blade 14 and Razer Blade 18 are visually striking, especially in the Mercury colorway. While I love the Razer black with the green USB ports, the silver option is more office-friendly and doesn’t scream GAMER at you. The speakers in the 14-inch model are good enough (as you’re fighting physics in that size), but the THX speaker setup in the 18-inch model is superb, with expansive, room-filling sound. You might still want a gaming headset so you’re not annoying everyone in your local coffee shop, but it’s good to see Razer taking full advantage of owning THX with decent speakers.
The keyboards on both have Chroma RGB lighting, which has per-game profiles to light up only the WASD cluster in FPS titles. This is a nice touch, and they’re also nice enough to type on. I prefer a little bit more feedback from my keyboard, but it’s overall pleasant. The large touchpad on both is a different story – it has to be the most responsive touchpad I’ve used outside a MacBook. You’ll still probably want to pick up a gaming controller or external mouse, but for productivity tasks the touchpad was refreshingly good.
for productivity tasks the touchpad was refreshingly good
The port selection on both laptops is comprehensive, and all the USB ports use current-gen speeds. The Razer Blade 14 has one USB4 Type-C port and one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port on each side, plus a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, 3.5mm audio jack, Kensington lock slot, and power socket. It can also charge up to 100W from the USB4 ports, which is nice if you don’t want to carry the heavy 230W power brick around. Note that because this is an AMD laptop, you don’t get Thunderbolt branding, but USB4 is functionally similar.
The Razer Blade 18 has three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a 2.5GbE network port, HDMI 2.1, a 3.5mm audio jack, a full-size SD card reader, and one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port on the left side. The right side has a Thunderbolt 5 port, making it the first device to have one. I couldn’t test this fully, as TB5 devices are just starting to trickle onto the market, but it gives the Blade 18 some serious future-proofing.
Performance is mostly what you would expect from this form factor
Razer’s motto of “By gamers, for gamers” means you should always expect premium internals. The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS and GeForce RTX 4070 combo in the Blade 14 wasn’t that far behind the Intel i9-14900HX and GeForce RTX 4090 combo on the Blade 18, at least not for productivity tasks and benchmarks. They both absolutely chewed through the productivity tests I threw at them, like unpacking archive files and batch-processing photographs in Affinity Photo 2.
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Razer Blade 14 (2024, AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, RTX 4070) |
Razer Blade 18 (2024, Intel Core i9-14900 HX, RTX 4090) |
Alienware x16 R2 (Intel Core Ultra 9 185H, RTX 4080) |
Alienware m16 R2 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, RTX 4070) |
Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (Core i9-14900 HX, RTX 4090) |
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PCMark 10 (AC) |
7,706 |
8,960 |
7,105 |
7,187 |
8,583 |
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Geekbench 6 (single / multi) |
2,431 / 12,897 |
2,863 / 17,330 |
2,200 / 13,179 |
2,308 / 12,349 |
2,961/ 17,488 |
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3DMark: Time Spy Extreme |
5,802 |
10,168 |
8,501 |
6,032 |
10,653 |
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Cinebench 2024 (single / multi / GPU) |
102 / 915 / 11,449 |
122 / 1,564 / 22,502 |
100 / 1,059 / 17,126 |
93 / 853 / 11,056 |
126/ 1,508 / 22,357 |
The synthetic benchmarks show that the high-performance components in both gaming laptops are comparable to those in similar laptops from other manufacturers. The AMD Ryzen 9 9845HS impressed me the most, as it outperformed Intel Core Ultra processors while not being that far off the beefy Core i9 inside the 18-inch model.
the speaker setup in the 18-inch model is superb, with expansive, room-filling sound
Gaming benchmarks are where the larger Blade 18 pulled away, but its lead wasn’t commanding enough to be an outright win. Cyberpunk 2077 really shows that only the most powerful graphics cards can handle ray tracing without AI helping to upscale things, with the mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 performing slightly lower than a desktop RTX 4070 Super. The Blade 14 wasn’t tested at 4K resolution but struggled in the more demanding titles at 1440p without turning in-game settings down.
But that’s also fine, as turning down in-game settings a notch to get higher frame rates has always been my preferred way to game on a laptop. It also reduces the heat generated by the components, lowering the fan noise considerably.
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Games |
Razer Blade 14 (2024) |
Razer Blade 18 (2024) |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super |
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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (RT: Ultra / No DLSS) |
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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (RT: Ultra / DLSS: Quality) |
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Alan Wake 2 (High preset with path tracing & frame generation) |
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Forza Horizon 5 (Extreme preset with DLSS) |
Razer offers only limited display choices for these two models, with two options on the Blade 18 and one on the Blade 14. That’s a good thing, as choice paralysis is horrible, and the options are all good. I’d like to see OLED come to these models in the future, but it won’t be until at least next year, as Razer told me the current options are the only ones for 2024. Both displays have an FHD webcam, with a physical privacy shutter and IR for Windows Hello.
While both screens are bright and beautiful, I actually prefer the QHD+ display on the Blade 14 to the 4K display on the Blade 18. It felt punchier, and that’s a big reason I prefer the smaller device overall.
What I didn’t like
Both got too hot for comfort
Razer makes superb gaming laptops, and there is very little here for me to pick at. The keyboard could be a little less mushy, preferably replaced with low-profile mechanical keys instead of membrane. That would likely affect the thickness of these devices though, so it’s always a trade-off.
But then we get to thermals and noise, which I have a big problem with. I expected the Intel Core i9-14900HX to get to high temperatures because it’s a slimmed-down version of the i9-14900K, which is hard enough to cool with a 360mm AIO liquid cooler. And it did, getting to 100.3C under gaming loads before it started throttling to keep the temperature stable. The AMD Ryzen 8945HS surprised me, getting to the same temperature while compiling shaders in The Last of Us. The AMD chip was cooler overall when used for productivity tasks, and made less fan noise, with dBa readings in the low 50s, compared to the high 60s for the Blade 18.
absolutely chewed through the productivity tests I threw at them
That means while you should consider ANC headphones while gaming on either of these laptops, it’s almost a requirement for gaming on the Blade 18. The more powerful speaker setup on that machine is still no match for the symphony of fan noise. Also, battery life is what you might expect from a couple of thin gaming laptops. On average, I could get 90 minutes of gaming from the Blade 14, while the Blade 18 was closer to just 60 minutes. Testing with looping video at 50% brightness gave closer results, with the Blade 14 averaging just over 3 hours and the Blade 18 just over 3.5 hours. You’ll want to carry the power brick with you at all times, whichever version you pick.
Should you buy the Razer Blade 14 (2024)?
You should buy the Razer Blade 14 (2024) if:
- You want a portable powerhouse gaming laptop
- You prefer AMD CPUs in your computer
- You prioritize refresh rate over resolution
You should NOT buy the Razer Blade 14 (2024) if:
- You need a larger screen
- You want a stronger laptop GPU
- You would be OK with a cheaper, less powerful gaming laptop than this
Should you buy the Razer Blade 18 (2024)?
You should buy the Razer Blade 18 (2024) if:
- You want a viable desktop replacement
- You like a larger display
- You need Thunderbolt 5 and an SD card reader
You should NOT buy the Razer Blade 18 (2024) if:
- You don’t like being chained to a wall socket all day
- You want a more portable laptop
- You want something more budget-friendly
Razer’s Blade gaming laptop line is often second to none; in this case, one is just second to another model in the range. Between the portability, punchier screen, and better thermals, the Razer Blade 14 is the one I’d want to keep out of these two devices. I also feel it has a better balance of components, between the QHD+ 240Hz display, AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS processor, and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, which makes for a better unit as a whole.
Between the portability, punchier screen, and better thermals, the Razer Blade 14 is the one I’d keep
That said, the Razer Blade 18 is an absolute beast, with future-forward features like Thunderbolt 5, the 4K, 200Hz display, and an RTX 4090 GPU. It’s a shame that even a flagship GPU can’t quite drive the speedy screen to its full potential. The only other thing it can’t handle is an entire workday away from a wall socket. But really, did you expect it to?
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On-the-go greatness
Razer Blade 14
Sublime power in a small package
Razer’s smallest gaming laptop is also my favorite. It has a bright, gorgeous display and options for a silver or black CNC-ed aluminum chassis. The AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU provide plenty of power, but the Razer Blade 14 (2024) suffers from the usual gaming laptop woes of short battery life and high temperatures.
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Portable desktop
Razer Blade 18 (2024)
All the power of a desktop, condensed
The Razer Blade 18 (2024) is the pinnacle of gaming laptop hardware, with a gorgeous 4K 200Hz display, Thunderbolt 5, Intel’s i9-14900HX CPU, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. You’ll pay for the privilege, though, and the powerful hardware runs hot and tears through battery life.