Razer Blade 17 (Early 2022): High priced and power hungry

The Razer Blade 17 is among the compact gaming laptops in the 17.3-inch format. The powerful hardware of the laptop is housed in an elegant, full metal case with rounded corners. Razer prefers a simple design without frills. The Blade is available starting from about 2,700 Euros (~$2,815) with a Tiger Lake CPU. For our tested top configuration, you have to pay about 4,700 Euros (~$4,900).

The combination of a Core i9-12900H CPU, GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, and 32 GB of working memory (DDR4-4800, dual-channel mode) prepare the laptop for all the usual application areas, such as video cutting, rendering, and 4k gaming. A lightning-fast PCIe-4 SSD offers the necessary storage space and ensures short load times. There is also space for a second PCIe-4 SSD.

The laptop can run in either Optimus or dGPU-only mode. The latter results in an increase of the graphics performance. Advanced Optimus is not supported. Switching between dGPU and Optimus always requires a restart of the laptop. A BIOS update from June 2022 to increase the TGP from 165 watts to 175 watts remains largely without any effect and might mainly serve marketing purposes.

The 82-Wh battery used offers a WLAN battery life of almost 4 hours, which is not an outstanding value. Here the relatively high power consumption during idle operation and under low load becomes noticeable. A good feature is the ability to charge the battery using a universal USB-C charger (45 watts min.), with both of the Thunderbolt-4 connections supporting Power Delivery.

You can find additional information and many benchmark results in our review of the Razer Blade 17 (Early 2022).