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The GTX 1060 is one of Nvidia’s best mid-range chipsets. It’s clocked to 1,404MHz and can reach a boost frequency of 1,670MHz, while its 1,280 stream processors use the Pascal architecture. We’re also pleased that Razer has equipped the Blade Pro with the more powerful 6GB variant of the card – it’ll be quicker right now than the cheaper 3GB version, and it’s more future-proofed.
It’s a great chip for 1080p gaming, and it’s also found in the Asus ROG Strix Scar laptop. However, the Razer Blade Pro is much more expensive than the Asus, and its £2,099 price is also undercut by the PC Specialist notebook – even though that laptop has a GTX 1070 GPU instead of the GTX 1060 found in the Blade Pro.
The i7-7700HQ is a familiar chip that’s also found inside the Asus Scar and PC Specialist laptops. It’s no wonder that it keeps getting picked for powerful portables, as it’s got four Hyper-Threaded cores and a stock speed of 2.8GHz that boosts to 3.8GHz.
It’s not Coffee Lake, but that hardly matters in a larger laptop like this. The Core i7 chip will still have ample speed, and battery life probably won’t be great anyway, especially when the Blade Pro makes do with just a 70Wh power pack.
Razer has paired the processor with 16GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 memory, a 256GB Samsung PM951 SSD and a 2TB hard disk. We have no complaints there: the storage is plentiful and its dual-channel memory arrangement will be quicker than the single-channel memory included in the PC Specialist and the AMD-powered Asus machine.
Connectivity is fine, too, with dual-band 802.11ac wireless and Gigabit Ethernet provided by gaming experts Killer.
One other thing to note is that the Blade Pro is a big-brand, mainstream system, so it doesn’t have the wealth of customisation options that PC Specialist can offer. That’s an issue if you’d like to fine-tune your machine’s specification.
However, Razer does sell one alternative version of the Blade Pro. The beefed-up model has a 4K screen with 100% Adobe RGB reproduction and multi-touch, and the sharper panel is powered by a GTX 1080 graphics core and an overclocked Core i7-7820HK processor. It’s also got 32GB of memory and larger storage options. You’ll have to pay for it though: that model costs a mighty £3,800.
And that, really, is one of the larger issues with the Blade Pro. We have no qualms with the Core i7 processor and GTX 1060 graphics core for 1080p gaming and the vast majority of work tasks, but most machines that include this kind of hardware are much cheaper than the Blade Pro.
Some of them have better warranties, too. Razer's laptop is protected by a one-year deal, while PC Specialist equips its laptops with a superior three-year deal.
