How reliable are these now?

What it says in the title. I remember people complaining about Blade thermals and motherboard issues nonstop for the first few years, while I sat smugly behind my fat Clevo. Well, the hefty king died last night, and I need a new PC. How many of you have had issues with the last couple of Blade generations? How did Razer support respond to you? Can you genuinely recommend the Blade 15 to someone who doesn't want to go through 2-3 returns before getting a decent unit?

 

I've heard reports all over the place. Personally, my RB15 2018 base model has been the best laptop i have ever owned. Thermals on point, no repaste needed. Honestly, aside from the ****ty software and weird keyboard layout.

But the loudest voices are often the ones who have had numerous problems. You don't often hear from the far greater number of people who have no complaints at all and this is true of ANY laptop manufacturer.

Before I even bought mine, I read through something like 200 pages of the 2018 RB15 owners lounge posts (I bought mine mid 2019), and found quite a few people having issues. I think the most remarkable thing there is that Razer actively fixed those issues. You can read through and see a trend where newer owners simply don't encounter the same issues, as model revisions came through in real time. So that was pretty nice to see.

I've also heard on numerous fronts that Razer is actively attempting to turn around their reputation for customer service and warranty support. I haven't personally seen anything that lends credence to these claims though. I did need only request a recovery flash drive for my blade, and they sent one, though i had to do so twice before it was actually sent, so take that as you may


But I'm also a bitter individual that doesn't trust any warranty when it comes to technology though. Except maybe Dell .. who has a reputation of simply trading up and eating the cost when situations are unsatisfactory for the customer (I've personally had them do this for me, so i can vouch for it) ... so any laptop I buy, no matter who made it, I often buy the extended in-house warranty from the retailer I bought it from on. In this case, it was Microcenter's accidental protection plan. Because I also don't trust myself to not spill coffee on the damn thing (Which I have actually done, though it made a full recovery, incredibly, so I haven't actually had to take it in for service, though that was pretty ****in incredible too.)

 

I've cut my share of Razer peripheral cords for warranty claims (they ask you to cut the cord and send a photo), but I've been using a Blade 15 Advanced OLED at work for about 8 months. I've liked it so much that I picked up a Blade 15 Advanced in Mercury White for myself and a Blade Stealth in Mercury White for my mother-in-law. So far, the Blade 15 Advanced OLED at work is running strong and it takes the abuse. The same goes for my personal Blade 15 Advanced.

However, I just contacted Razer Support for a broken USB-C charger for my mother-in-law's Blade Stealth where the USB-C plug stayed in the laptop when pulling the cable out. Razer Support was quick to point the blame on the user, stating that I'll have to cough up the price of a new charger. I pointed out I've had my share of Razer peripheral failures and even included a few links of people having the same issue with their USB-C chargers. Due to the state of the world, I've already replaced it with a third-party charger, but I hope Razer ends up send out a charger free of charge...

 

They denied the warranty claim on the charger and told me to go to their online store and purchase a new one. Hah.

 

I have a 2018 RB 15" base model. I have changed the primary SSD and secondary storage from a 1Tb 5,400 rpm HDD to a 4TB SSD and have upgraded the memory from 16Gb to 32Gb. I have done nothing else to my laptop. I don't alter bios, overclock/under temp/change thermal paste .... anything. I have had (knock on wood) zero issues with the laptop. This platform has been a very reliable machine. I hope this remains because this is my primary work machine.

 

Mine was a blind purchase.
I used Razer for my gear for a while and one day decided to see if they had a laptop.
I found my current laptop but did open a thread here to see if people could share their input on some MSI laptops.
In a few weeks I will have this laptop for a year now.
Plenty of gaming now more than ever.
I play Doom Eternal, COD, for 7-8 hours when I am not working.
We get to the crux of the matter.
I come from desktop gaming and the laptop does not have the cooling I would want.
Is it possible to improve on the cooling that much in such a small form factor?
I had a chat with unclewebb , the guy who did ThrottleStop and he assured me that the chip is smart enough to adjust clocks following temperatures.

For example :

1. Stock paste after 11 months of usage. Laptop is on a Coolermaster Pad with dual fan blowing cool air under it. Window usually open.

Ambient 24: Synapse Balanced Auto Fan --> Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 85-90 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 85-100 degrees.
Ambient 24: Synapse Gaming Gaming with Fan between -->4500 and 5000 rpm Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 85-90 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 85-95 degrees.
Ambient 24: Throttle Stop with x36/Vcore -141.6 with Fan between 4500 and 5000 rpm. Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 67-84 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 65-87 degrees.
Ambient 24: Throttle Stop with x35/Vcore -141.6 with Fan between 4500 and 5000 rpm. Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 67-82 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 65-84 degrees

​

1. Grizzly paste no Liquid metal. Laptop is on a Coolermaster Pad with dual fan blowing cool air under it. Window usually open.

Ambient 24: Synapse Balanced Auto Fan --> Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 65-85 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 67-85 degrees.
Ambient 24: Synapse Gaming Gaming with Fan between -->4500 and 5000 rpm Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 60-78 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 63-82 degrees.
Ambient 24: Throttle Stop with x35/Vcore -141.6 with Fan between 4500 and 5000 rpm. Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 58-78 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 60-81 degrees.
Ambient 24: Throttle Stop with x34/Vcore -141.6 with Fan between 4500 and 5000 rpm. Doom Eternal maxed out at 1080p 60-74 degrees on cpu / COD MW maxed out at 1080p 59-70 degrees.​

 

Just got a Razer Blade Pro 17 recently to replace my Clevo P775TM1.
Got tired of carrying it around, plus it was very, very noisy. Temps weren't great, and people sitting in front of me would regularly complain about the sheer heat being thrown at their face

It's still to early to talk about reliability on this unit (it's a late 2019 model). All I can say is that in 2 decades dealing with powerful laptops, this was the first one that didn't require a repaste upon arrival.
Temps are great, and the machine is so much quieter than anything else with similar performance.

Been loving the 240Hz screen. But mine has a small stain-like blemish on the lower part. Doesn't really get in the way but I might try my chance with Razer support later in the year. When this corona stuff calms down and I take a week off.
Quite curious on how they will handle it as my machine is from Razer Germany and I'm currently in Portugal.

 

Purely out of curiousity.... do you have a feeling for whether the stock paste degraded during your time with the machine, or (as best as you can recall) do you think the thermal performance after 11 months is about the same as on day one?

 

The thermal performance of the laptop was pretty close as to what it was when I got it.
I did not see any huge degradation to stay that it was very bad.
i wanted an improvement because it was not feasible in the long run to game with it like this.