Last month, we reached out to Razer to see if they would send us the $4,000 Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition for testing. With the 16-inch MacBook Pro just announced and on its way for review, it seemed like the perfect time to see which top-of-the-line laptop would take the photo editing crown.
Editor’s Note: For those of you who want to skip straight to the comparisons and performance testing, just scroll past Introduction and Background, straight to Specs and Price Point.
For the rest of you, given that we don’t typically review laptops in-house, we wanted to put this comparison in the proper context.
Introduction
Over the past year or so, Windows has been courting “creatives” more adamantly than ever before. Thanks, in part, to the sheer CPU and GPU demands (and crappy optimization…) of Adobe’s photo and video editing apps, as well as the continued explosion of VFX and 3D rendering workflows, PC companies realized that the raw horsepower advantage they’d always had on Macs had become more valuable.
Combine this with the release of a surprisingly user-friendly Windows 10, NVIDIA’s rift with Apple, and a few years of Apple snubbing pro users, and you’ve got an entire swath of Apple power users still relying on their mid-2015 MacBook Pros, suddenly unsure if their next machine is going to be a Mac or Windows machine.
I am one of those users. For years, I’ve held on to my mid-2015 MBP with its usable keyboard, reasonably powerful specs, all the ports I could want, and magsafe connector, unsure if Apple could lure me back with their next proper redesign. Now I’m at a crossroads.
Background
There was a time when all new “creatives” naturally drifted towards Mac. In 2007, I was… Maccurious, and so I tried switching from a Sony Vaio to that iconic white plastic MacBook.
I was hooked, and for years you couldn’t shake Apple off of my personal computing pedestal no matter haw hard you tried. The workflow was just so seamless, and Windows wouldn’t do anything resembling “catching up” on the usability front until 2015 when Windows 10 was released. Vista was crap, Windows 7 was okay, and Windows 8 was such a touchscreen-optimized train wreck it took Windows 9 down with it.
But then came Windows 10 in 2015, just as Adobe was moving over to the Creative Cloud and Apple was making a few “brave” design mistakes.
Since then, it’s a been a painful waiting game for those of us who weren’t sure what would become of Apple’s “Pro” computing lineup. Windows laptops kept getting better and better, while Apple issued semi-apologies, reiterated that the SD card slot would never come back, and ran into increasingly frustrating performance issues by putting Intel’s hottest chips in their thinnest design yet.
Over the past year, Apple finally got serious again—releasing the iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and the much-improve 16-inch MacBook Pro—but so has their competition in the creative space.
The Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition is an almost blow-for-blow competitor, with the same exceptional build quality, an almost identical price at a similar spec, more I/O, and allegedly more raw photo and video power than the latest flagship MacBook Pros.
How does that translate in real life when you put these two machines head to head? Let’s find out.
Specs and Price Point
Despite Apple’s reputation for making “overpriced” laptops, the fact remains that you have to pay for the kind of build quality and specs that you’ll find in a flagship MacBook Pro. The Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition–or any of the Razer Blade 15 laptops, really–is a good example of this.
The two computers we’ve been testing go blow-for-blow in almost every category. Both use an aluminum unibody design, both feature exceptional glass trackpads, both pack 32GB of RAM and powerful graphics, and both feature impressive multi-core Intel CPUs that promise to churn through both single and multi-threaded workloads. Here’s a spec breakdown of the Razer Blade 15 Studio and 16-inch MacBook Pro we’ll be comparing:
Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition
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Apple 16-inch MacBook Pro
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That’s right, the Razer is more expensive than the MacBook Pro despite offering half the storage, a 6-core i7 instead of an 8-core i9, and a smaller battery. In fact, if you drop the MacBook Pro down to the same 6-core i7 used in the Razer and match the storage, the 16-inch MBP comes out even further ahead at just $3,200.
If you’re willing to lose the SD card slot, cut your RAM in half, downgrade the storage to 512GB, and downgrade your graphics card to an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Max-Q with 8GB of VRAM, you can drop that price down to $3,000 on sale ($3,300 retail) by getting the fully loaded Razer Blade 15 Advanced GForce Studio Edition… but now you’re competing with a 16-inch MBP that costs just $2,600 if you match the two computers spec-for-spec (except graphics).
No matter how you slice it, the Apple computer is actually the cheaper option here.
Build Quality
I can confidently say that there is no significant difference in build quality between these two machines. In fact, since the Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition is only available in the Mercury White variant, they look extremely similar.
Both use an aluminum unibody design that’s rigid and stands up well to scuffs and finger prints, both look sleek and professional, and both are pretty hefty–an understandable drawback thanks to the 80Wh battery in the Razer and the 100Wh battery in the MacBook Pro.
While the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a bit longer in one dimension, it’s also a bit thinner than the Razer, and both will slot into the majority of “made for 15-inch laptop” sleeves in your backpack or messenger bag of choice.
This category is a dead tie.
Usability
We’ll discuss operating systems shortly. For now, when I say “usability” I’m talking about the design elements that affect the day-to-day use of each laptop. In other words: what ports do you have, how do the keyboard and trackpad function and feel, how do the displays compare, and what kind of battery life can you expect.
I/O
In terms of I/O (ports) the Razer is the clear, breath-of-fresh-air winner. You’ve got USB-A, you’ve got USB-C, you’ve got a Thunderbolt 3 port, and (praise the Lord) Razer has put an SD card slot just into this Studio Edition variant of the Razer Blade 15.
While Apple’s Phil Schiller is adamant that pros don’t need an SD card slot, our recent deep dive into that question disagrees, and we’re glad Razer is listening to creatives who don’t want to live “that dongle life.”
The tradeoff is the versatility of the ports you do have. Any of the four USB Type-C ports on the MacBook can be used for charging the device, hooking up an external display, and give you full Thunderbolt 3 transfer speeds. By contrast, only one of the two USB Type-C ports on the Razer is Thunderbolt 3, and it cannot be used to charge the device.
Still, Razer takes this one by a landslide.
Keyboard and Trackpad
aaa
Apple’s old-new keyboard takes a resounding win here, and maintains its crown as the trackpad to beat… but not by much.
Display
aaa
The win goes to Razer on sheer specs. Both displays look great, but the additional resolution and higher contrast ratio made possible by the OLED display gives Razer an edge. You can’t go wrong with either of these displays though.
Battery Life
aaa
Apple takes a strong win here. The 100Wh battery in the 16-inch MacBook Pro—the FAA limit for taking on planes in the United States—lives up to its wattage. Combine that with the much more convenient 96W power adapter that you can use as a generic USB Type-C power brick, and it’s a no brainer.
Performance
Given the recent GPU Acceleration improvements that Adobe made to Lightroom Classic, we were very curious to see how these tests turned out. Would the 8-core CPU in the Mac win out, or would the more powerful GPU (with twice the VRAM) in the Razer take down Apple? We’ll let the numbers speak for themselves…
But first, let’s cover some housekeeping.
All of the tests were run with both computers fully charged and hooked up to A/C power, with no other applications running, using the exact same images and (where applicable) identical edits on the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. We went into the Lightroom settings on both computers and make sure GPU acceleration was on (instead of “Auto) for both, and we also went into the Razer’s performance settings and put both CPU and GPU performance at max.
We used 110 RAW files from a Sony A7R IV and 162 RAW files from a 100MP PhaseOne XF Medium Format camera.
Basic usability and “snappiness”
Lightroom Import and Preview Generation
Lightroom Export
Photoshop Tests
MacOS Catalina vs Window 10
The reason why 90% of die hard Mac users, even the pissed off ones, won’t switch.
Conclusion
If you’re a long-time Windows user looking for a well-built, exceptionally powerful machine with zero bloatware, the Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition or otherwise is a fantastic choice. Don’t let the company’s gaming history and three-headed snake logo deter you: with its industry-leading graphics, I/O for days, and display to die for, this is the best Windows laptop I’ve ever used for photo or video editing.
On the other hand, if you’re a long-time Mac user wondering if this is the PC that will finally get you off the MacBook Pro, it’s just not. It comes close. The premium build, the raw performance, even the price tag are all right in line with a similarly specced 16-inch MacBook Pro. But there’s one thing Razer can’t fix, and that’s the Windows operating system.
It’ll slow you down in a million, mind-numbing little ways that will eat away what ends up being only a meager performance advantage, leaving you with lot less hair and a little less sanity.
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