Razer Blade Pro FHD review: The screen is its best and worst trick

Enlarge / The Razer Blade Pro FHD, complete with a week's worth of fingerprints on its black-aluminum frame. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

For all of the years we've talked about the gaming-hardware company Razer and its range of expensive and (sometimes) remarkably thin gaming laptops, we've rarely put those "Blade" machines through extensive testing. The Razer Blade line debuted in 2011 with a flashy multitouch panel that had a screen inside of it-which, at the time, was the most Pimp My Ride tweak we'd ever seen in a laptop. ("Yo dogg, I heard you like screens, so we put a screen... in your trackpad!")

But we passed that one up, along with most other Razer laptops, except for its 2016 not-quite-gaming entry, the Razer Stealth. As the company has settled into a steadier track record, we wanted to take an opportunity to see where Razer's purest gaming laptop line has come now that its Blade Pro variant-which has a 17" screen but a body that's still reasonably thin-has a model just a hair shy of $2,000. If you want Razer laptop features like a side-aligned trackpad and a customizable, color-mapped keyboard on your gaming-ready, 17-inch laptop, this means you no longer have to pay for Razer's whopping $3,999 version of the same model.

Our verdict? For a 17-inch gaming laptop, the Blade Pro FHD model is totally fine, and if you want that size in an impressively slim body at a $2,000 price point, this one comes with reasonable compromises. But unlike its insanely priced sibling, this Blade Pro UHD model struggles to excite us enough to recommend it-and its price tag-over cheaper and similarly powered gaming laptops.

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