Hot hot hot: Razer Blade AC charger is the warmest we've ever recorded for a gaming laptop

We already noted in our review of the Blade Pro 17 that its AC adapter would reach high temperatures when under high processing loads. While this isn't unusual for gaming laptops, the fact that the Razer charger reaches a significantly warmer temperature than practically all other AC adapters we've seen warrants a closer investigation.

In all our gaming laptop reviews, we would run Witcher 3 for about an hour before recording the temperature of the AC adapter with a Fluke infrared thermometer. Results would typically range between 40 C to 55 C (104 F to 131 F) as exemplified by our 230 W AC adapter from Chicony below. This particular charger powers the 17.3-inch Eurocom Nightsky RX17 with RTX 2070 graphics and several MSI laptops as well. When running the same Witcher 3 test on the Blade Pro 17 with RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, however, surface temperatures would be as warm as 67 C (153 F) on both the top and bottom sides of Razer's equivalent 230 W AC adapter.

One may point to the small size of Razer's AC adapter as the culprit. While it is indeed smaller than other AC adapters of equal wattage, it really isn't that much smaller or even lighter than the Chicony adapter (~17 x 7 x 2.5 cm vs. ~15.3 x 7.3 x 3 cm). The minor differences are certainly not enough to justify the wide temperature delta of 17 C in our point of view.

This isn't to say that the AC adapter is unsafe to use because Razer likely designed its charger to run very warm in the first place. The Blade Pro 17 is still the laptop to beat in the super-thin 17.3-inch gaming category. Nonetheless, we recommend positioning any AC adapter away from temperature sensitive items and this will be especially true in Razer's case.

Keep in mind that the latest Blade 15 series also shares the same AC adapter as the Blade Pro 17. Older AC adapters from Razer have been known to become damaged from the heat over time.