Razer’s Blade Pro 17 Is Our Favorite XL Gaming Laptop

Laptops usually come in one of two flavors: 13-inch for portability or 15-inch for horsepower. Simple. Easy-peasy. Occasionally though, a manufacturer makes a laptop outside of that binary. Sometimes they're itty-bitty 12-inch ultrabooks, designed to slip into manila envelopes (our favorite laptops). This time, pendulum has swung the other direction, yielding the Razer Blade Pro, a 17-inch speed demon.

Razer’s high-end gaming crams desktop-grade performance into a laptop that’s as thick as a pack of playing cards.

When the Blade Pro 17 first arrived, I worried that maybe Razer sent me the wrong review unit. On its own, in the box, it doesn’t look like a 17-inch laptop. It's a trick of the eye: The Blade Pro 17 is thinner and lighter than most laptops its size, though less portable than its 15-inch sibling.

When it's clammed shut, the Blade Pro 17 looks like a thin 0.8-inch-tall solid block of matte-black aluminum with sharp, precise edges and a trio of neon green snakes coiled around the lid. Open it up and you'll notice how massive the display is, surrounded by razor-thin bezels. Everything, right down to the hinge, is spare and robust, as big as it needs to be without being bulky.

Don't let that svelte profile fool you. When you try to fit it into a messenger bag, there's no mistaking it for a smaller laptop. Stuffing the Blade Pro 17 into a standard-sized messenger bag is not easy. I had a much easier time fitting it into a backpack. Still, that's 6 pounds of computer you're carrying around. It is impressively light for a 17-inch laptop. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I stopped to adjust my straps over and over again, sweating and beet red during an otherwise routine commute.

Typing on the Blade Pro 17 is the kind of experience that spoils you. The keyboard feels springy and responsive, tactile and quick. Even the keycaps feel good under your fingertips. They have a matte texture that doesn’t attract oils or dirt the way other keyboards might.

Since this is a Razer product, it also has Chroma lighting. The keyboard can be customized with the included Razer Synapse software. Each key has its own LED lighting that you can change individually, or load with predesigned lighting patterns.

The touchpad has a glassy-smooth matte finish that feels every bit as premium as it should. It's responsive and supports Windows Precision Touchpad multitouch gestures. But its placement is off. Situated between the leftmost edge of the spacebar and the rightmost edge of the control key, it’s a good, luxurious size. But it’s too close to the base of my thumb. When typing this review, my cursor kept jumping around the screen, occasionally clicking on things as I typed. I had to place my right hand at an uncomfortable angle to avoid ghost tapping it. I’d probably get used to it eventually, but it’s a pain (literally). Two out of five of my friends' thumbs grazed the touchpad while typing. If you're lucky, your thumbs will be in the majority.

Our review unit was the fully-loaded model, featuring a 2.6 GHz 9th-generation Intel Core i7-9750H processor with six cores, 16 gigabytes of RAM (expandable up to 64 GB), and a 512 GB solid-state drive.

Razer included some expandability, which is a pleasant surprise for tinkerers who want to invest in hardware and upgrade it over time. The Blade Pro 17 has a vacant M.2 slot which you can fill with up to 2 terabytes of additional storage. Graphically, the Blade Pro 17 boasts a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 with Max-Q design. All that horsepower comes at a high price. It starts at $2,500 but our maxed-out review unit would run you $3,200.