- So, your Apple sticker's still on my laptop. Just gonna take this off now. (beeping)Hey guys, this is Austin!When it comes to gaming systems, Razer is almost always on the expensive side of things. That doesn't mean that they don'tmake really nice stuff, but the value is not really going to be the strong suit here. For the money though, this delivers some of the best build quality around, but with the brand new 2019 Razer Blade 15, is this the new king of the hillor is it straight up not worth it?Inside you'll find the latest RTX Cards. The advanced version starts with an RTX 2060, but you can spec it up to an RTX 2070 Max-Qor a 2080 Max-Q, which is what my review unit is rocking. There's no doubt that it's powerful. The Blade can handle pretty much any gamemaxed out at 1080p. Pretty decent frame-rates. This includes Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Black Ops 4, you name it. It can't quite hang with the 17 inch ROG Zephyrus Swith it's crazy over the top cooling, but as far as performance goes, the Razer Blade lines right up with what you would expectout of a standard 2080 Max-Q design. A lot of the other specs are basicallyidentical across all of the Razer Blade models. You're getting the same six core i7-8750H,You're getting 16 gigs of RAM, really the main choices besides your SSD size and your screenis the 2060, 2070 or 2080. But there is a huge price difference between the three. Just going from the 2070 to the 2080 addsa full $400 to the price of the Blade. Okay, so let's just take a secondand talk a little bit about price. Now, of course, the Razer Blade has always beena premiumly priced laptop if that's a word, which I think it might be, but on top of that, RTX has inflated the price of pretty muchevery gaming laptop it's gone intoand this is absolutely no exception. At a full $3000 for the 2080 version I have here and $2600 for the 2070 version, it's just difficult to justify that kind of pricewhen other options such as the 15 inch Zephyrus Scome in with very similar specs for about $2000. The Razer also has a couple of key featuresthat the Zephyrus is missing. Mainly Thunderbolt 3. Now I get that this is not going to bea deal breaker for everyone, but for me, I actually do use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and monitorpretty much every day so that's a big featurethat I want to be included in pretty much any kind of gaming laptop or, well really, any laptop I buy at this point. Now you can't talk about the Razer Bladewithout mentioning the design. Now as far as I'm concerned, this is about one of thenicest pieces of laptop hardware out there, right up with MacBooks and the MacBook Pros of the world. It's all CNC aluminum, I know it's a very expensive processto pull off, especially with this anodization, and put simply it's a very solid, very sturdy, very nice feeling piece of technology. You're paying more, but at least some of thatcost is definitely in the actual build qualityand some of the design work that they've done here. You also get the generally solid Razer keyboardwith the per-key RGB backlighting, you get the nice large touchpad, the good speakers, you even haveWindows Hello facial recognitionand there's a lot of good stuff here, but does it justify that $3000 price tag?I will definitely admit, I have had issueswith quality on some Razer laptops in the past, but as far as I can tell, they basically nailed it this generation. I mean, hardware wise, there's not a lot to complain aboutwhich is always a good thing whenyou're spending this much money on a laptop. Is it getting old? I'm complaining about the price of the laptop?It's a big issue, it legitimately is. It's a very very expensive piece of tech, and you're paying a lot of extra moneyand I think pretty much everyone expectsto gets something when they pay that. And you're getting some stuff, like hardware wise it's a little bit nicer, but performance wise you can get a lotmore performance or basicallythe same performance for a lot less. Which I think is a compelling argument for almost everyone. As a surprise to basically no oneyou're getting a very solid display. Now, this model has the 1080p 144Hz panel, but there is an optional 4K unit as well. Now it's solid, but it's really nothing all that exciting. I mean, basically every other gaming laptopin this class has a very very similar panel. What is a little bit more exciting, are some of the new options that are comingfor the Blade a little bit later this year. At CES I got to take a look at two of these new options. One of which is a 240Hz panel, which, let's be real, I don't know ifall that many people can tell the difference,but for some people it might be nice, specifically people who are playingvery very high frame rate games, but more importantly than that, for me is a 4K OLED panel. Now I know I mentioned earlierthat there was already a 4K optionthat you can get for the Blade,but it's still a standard panel, I mean it looks nice, but the OLED panelI was able to take a look at in the Razer boothwas incredible, I mean the contrast, the brightness, it was such a massive, massive step up. Now it doesn't support those higher frame rates, but as far as I'm concerned, I want OLED all up in my Razer Blade. And well basically, everywhere else in fact just everywhere. The 2019 Razer Blade delivers a rock solid buildand good performance, but it comes at a steep cost. Now if this was sort of a no price comparisonwhere I just pick the absolute favoritepiece of hardware on the market, I actually might go with the Blade. But when you look at that Zephyrus S, for a significantly cheaper price,you're getting that better performance,you're getting a little bit of an unusual design, but I think for most people, it is totally worth the trade off. So, is the Razer Blade worth it?Well for some people, yes, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm holding out for that OLED panel. That, that is what's going to get the moneyand oh, I just realized, think about how expensive the OLED's gonna be. Oh no, I was all excited about gettinga new Razer Blade with OLED. Oh no. . .