Epic Laptop Battle Razer Blade 16 vs MacBook Pro 16

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M2 MacBook Pro 16 versus Razer Blade 16 2023 fight internet Gordon with PC World here this is a  showdown I've been looking forward to for a   while it's basically Apple's brand new M2 MacBook  Pro 16 versus razer's brand new Razer Blade 16   2023 model yes basically M2 versus Intel 13 gen  and Nvidia RTX 40 series before we go too far   down this Rabbit Hole though I do want to warn  you this is not the top end MacBook Pro 16. I   couldn't get my hands on that one but honestly um  the CPU performance doesn't change much between   the M2 Pro in this laptop and the M2 Maxes that  are out there as well the GPU does though so   that may make it a little weird on the GP side  because it's probably unfair to do this fight   I will say though uh the performance I'm seeing  out of the GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU in there   it doesn't make me think the M2 Max either 30 core  or 38 GPU core is going to make a big difference   but first let's get into the stuff that we can  compare that isn't really going to change from   the M2 Pro or the M2 Max and that is performance  on the CPUs we'll kick this off with the familiar   Maxon cinebench R23 it is a 3D rendering Benchmark  it is nearly pure CPU there's a multi-core test   there's a single core test it likes More chords  when it can get them and in this case you're   looking at an eight performance core plus four  efficiency core for the new M2 Pro versus 24 cores   or eight performance cores plus 16 efficiency  cores in the Intel that's a lot more cores and   that pays off as we see cinebench favoring the  13th gen core I9 13950hx by a whopping 79 you   know because basically more cores are better in  this Benchmark and when you're looking at uh you   know 12 cores versus 24 cores it's just not  going to be pretty The World Isn't only about   um multi-core performance though a lot of  the applications don't really use all the   cores even if they're brand new oftentimes they  really can't use all the cores in a laptop so   let's also look at cinebex R23 default run using  a single thread on each of these CPUs or a single   CPU core for people who like to hear it that way  you're looking at basically again a nice win for   that 13 gen core I9 to the tune of 23 the 20 22  versus 1647. so uh pretty sizable win for Intel in   cinebench R23 moving on to another 3D rendering  Benchmark we're looking at blender benchmark   3.1 in this case I'm using the 3.40 engine to  render the three scenes at this Benchmark uses   to measure a performance of a CPU and as you can  see we saw really big gains for the Intel CPU in   the multi-core test and we're seeing it again  in the monster CPU Focus we're looking at you   know about 49 better samples per minute looking  at junk shop CPU focused it's a very sizable 61   percent Improvement for the core I9 over the M2  Pro and looking at the classroom CPU Focus it's   a 46 Improvement for samples per minute uh again  for the Intel CPU over the Apple M2 moving on from   3D rendering onto something people are more  likely to do I'm actually using the recently   released handbrake 1.6.1 it is a free encoder go  out and download it it's fantastic it's available   on many platforms it's also native in fact all  the tests you've seen so far are native to the   Apple M architecture as a handbrake is as well  for this first test I'm taking handbrake and I'm   taking a 4K file and simply encoding it with x264  it is CPU focused I set both of the laptops to the   same settings within handbrake and we see that  the core I9 with the higher core count generally   more cores handbrake runs faster although not to  the tune that you're seeing the 3D rendering we're   seeing it finish about 20 percent faster on the  core I9 versus the M2 Pro not everybody encodes   the same way so earlier we did x.264 using the  CPU cores these chips actually have their own  

video encoding engine so I use handbrake using  Intel's quick sync which is built into the 13th   gen CPU or apple video toolbox which is built  into the M2 Pro basically doing an h.265 10-bit   encode of that same 4K file again set the same  way on the Mac as well as on the Razer and we see   the PC with quick sync is about 16 percent faster  than the MacBook Pro moving on to an encode that's   definitely a little tougher we're actually going  to use handbrake 1.6.1 again to do an SVT AV when   in code using 10-bit this is actually built into  handbrake on both the mac and the PC for this I'm   actually using the av-1 preset that's built into  the Mac I use that preset and then I set the PC   version to the same settings for some reason there  was no preset for the av-1 in code but I basically   set it the same way we're again using that same  4K file and we see again with an all CPU in code   this does not support any hardware acceleration  so you can't do it on the media encoders you could   do it potentially on the Nvidia GeForce card in  the Razer Blade but um handbrake doesn't support   it yet so this is a pure CPU encode versus a  pure CPU encode and I do want to point out for   people who need to know this SVT av1 apparently  was built by Intel so there's a little bit of a   home field advantage obviously but you see the  Mac is actually not doing so great here I'm not   really sure why it's it's doing so poorly because  basically the Razer Blade finishes the encode 82   percent faster in about 635 seconds versus the 3  three thousand six hundred and eight seconds of   the MacBook Pro 16. I don't really think uh this  is the the final word on this I do think there's   probably a problem with handbrake doing the av1 on  the Mac but I I will again say the av1 preset is   actually built in to the mac and that's actually  what I set the PC to so I don't quite get it   um I would say stay tuned but if you have to do  av1 using CPU right now uh the 13th gen 209 pretty   much whoops the M2 Pro I'll admit 3D rendering and  video encoding is kind of nerdy stuff although if   you're going to buy one of these laptops you're  probably into the nerdy stuff if you want to know   how these laptops feel and just kind of boring  things I try to get a feel for that by running   babcos Crossmark this is again a cross application  Benchmark as his name implies it's actually   compiled for the different platforms native on Mac  it's also compiled on Linux and Android and iOS it   tries to give you a performance in productivity  creativity and responsiveness such things as   document editing spreadsheets web browsing photo  editing photo organization video editing and   responsiveness would look at sort of application  launches and file opening so again this is   actually kind of the stuff A lot of people do care  about they basically write right applications on   the multiple platforms and then they compile  them using native compilers to that platform   so it's about as even as you can get overall  the winner is the the core I9 and it is mostly   CPU this GPU is not doing much in this Benchmark  the core I9 is about 12 faster than the M2 Pro   in productivity it opens that up to a nice  27 percent for the core I9 over the M2 Pro   interestingly when we get to creativity again  we're look that's where you're looking at photo   editing photo organization and video editing the  MacBook Pro actually has an advantage to about 10   percent over the razor blade with its core I9 so  you know hey that that's pretty fair and overall   in responsiveness for opening files launching  applications uh it actually favors the core   I9 and the nvme Gen 4 drives in the Razer Blade  to the tune of 45 our next test is primate Labs   geekbench 5.51 it's a multi-discipline test that  tests a whole bunch of different applications on   the CPU multi-core and single core it's free you  can download it it will upload the results of the   internet if you don't pay for it but we can  see the core I9 with more cores in multi-core   performance coming in with about a 33 percent  increase in advantage over the M2 Pro and in   single core it actually closes up although you  know core I9 is still ahead but I wouldn't say   it's a big lead given that Intel chip about a  five percent advantage over the M2 Pro uh one   thing I want to note the brand new version just  came out today I have not had time to fully test   it for this hopefully we'll run that in the future  take a look at it but 5.51 is a known quantity and   it's been out there for quite a while okay a lot  of that stuff before has been kind of theoretical   I mean except for cinebench which is a real  application and blender is real but most people   aren't doing that handbrake also real but I mean  how many people are really doing video encoding   let's look at something everybody does and that  is browsing the internet for that I'm going to use   Google Chrome 1.10 and I'm actually going to run  four different popular browser based benchmarks  

the first ones from Principal Technologies it's  web expert for the next three jet stream 2 motion   marking speedometer are actually developed by the  folks who did Apple Safari browser so they're a   little bit of a home field advantage there in web  expert all of these I want to note are very much   lightly threaded single core maybe two at best  if even it doesn't really matter so it's really   about how fast these CPUs are under a single core  it doesn't care if there's 24 cores or 12 cores   frankly in web expert core I9 24 faster than M2  Pro jet stream two about eight percent faster   motion Mark 1.2 85 percent faster however uh again  I've seen some weird things on the Mac I haven't   done a lot it's a lot of extensive Mac testing  in quite a while but the performance on some arm   parts can be a little weird this 85 percent faster  makes zero sense to me in fact if you look at the   actual sub scores of it like one is just simply  stuck at one which really drags performance down   so that means either Chrome is broken or the  actual Benchmark motion Mark 1.2 is broken with   this version of Chrome that I used uh so I really  wouldn't say that 85 faster in motion Mark really   means anything right now but I do have to report  it because that's what I got so speedometer four   percent faster basically dead even between the  M2 Pro and the core I9 and actually I will say   that's a that's actually a pretty good showing  for the M2 as well as the core I9 actually here   again is something very practical a lot of people  edit photos Adobe Lightroom classic is the unsung   hero of all photographers Photoshop gets all the  glory but Lightroom classic really does all the   work for working photographers unfortunately  I would normally do this with push it bench   but it doesn't quite work on the Arm based Max  yet so I essentially loaded the Adobe Lightroom   classic 12.1 it is native to the mac and then I  I took 2854 Canon raw files that I've shot over  

the years on the EOS 5D Mark 1 Mark II Mark III  and Mark IV yes no no 1D I don't have a 1D just a   5D for this but that's 2854 raw files I take those  from the laptop and then I export them all to jpeg   at 50 with the simplified copyright Watermark I  also apply a light sharpening for screens as it   does the export so it is uh you know the CPU that  matters here some of it is the GPU and also some   of it is the SSD that's here because honestly  you are reading and writing a lot of data but   honestly this is these in both these laptops  are stupendously fast so that might not be the   bottleneck you'll see three results here which  is a little different because we see the blue bar   which is a Lightroom writing default on the Razer  Blade if you're running on default Lightroom on   Windows does not support more than one graphics  card so there is actually a portion where where   it will do GPU exports by default on auto it will  use the integrated Graphics of the 13th gen chip   and using the integrated graphics and the CPU to  do that export the Razer Blade actually comes out   last at 357 seconds that's basically 24 slower  than the MacBook Pro 16 with the M2 Pro which is   a 270 seconds so of course the question is well  what happens if I switch over the razor blade   to the GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU and I did that  because people are going to wonder so when it does   the export if you change it in the preferences  under Adobe Lightroom classic it says GPU is now   fully enabled and by the way on the Mac because  it has an integrated graphics with integrated   memory it's all one there is no secondary Graphics  discrete graphics in the Mac it basically fully   enabled for the GPU encode so the Mac is giving  you some GPU some CPU when you enable that GeForce   RTX 4090 though the Razer Blade comes out on top  at 167 seconds that's basically 38 faster than the   MacBook Pro 16 and for comparison the Razer Blade  defaulted to the integrated Graphics versus the   GeForce it gives the GeForce the g-force is a 53  faster export so big win for the g-force but you   know honestly if you're going to be running only  on integrated Graphics the the magic of the M2   actually has a nice lead over those Intel parts  our next test fortunately does run on the Mac   that is Puget systems Puget bench 0.956 running  Adobe Premiere Pro 23.1.0 this is the standard   run and notice the bars are a little differently  colored previously all the bars were blue because   they were pretty much all CPU bound tests on this  test it's really hard to say where the Benchmark   uses the GPU green for NVIDIA or the CPU blue  for Intel so I colored them both both of them   added up though give a pretty good beat down to  the Mac we're looking at a 29 Advantage for the   razor blade overall in actually the the sub score  Standard Export score is about 21 standard live   playback score which does actually use that  Intel integrated Graphics 30 percent faster   for the Razer Blade the effects score 40 faster  and then when you look at the GPU effects which   I'm going to assume run on the mighty GeForce RTX  4090 laptop GPU 164 faster than the 19 core GPU   in the M2 Pro so really big Advantage for um the  rtex 4090 and the 13 gen core I9 of course we're   with the M2 Max fault I don't know but you can  imagine it would pick up some performance because   it simply has you know 30 or 38 cores depending  on which one you buy so it could pick up some   GPU score I'm not sure it's going to beat it in  the export score or the live playback score but   it could get closer for today though a big win  for the razor blade before we move on too far   though I do say video editing especially on these  laptops is very important and Puget bench actually   produces a lot more data so I'm going to throw  up this score it's a big headache list to look   at but it actually kind of it tells you where the  strengths of the different laptops are because   when you are editing and something as big and wide  as Adobe it's not really clear where you're going   to get a performance Advantage there are frankly  some things where the Mac has an advantage over   the razor blade even with the 4090 and the 13 gen  in there and there's definitely some things where   the 13 jnn and 40 90 laptop have a big lead  as well I would say the advantage if you're   going to work with a lot of prores goes to the  MacBook Pro definitely a lot of the h.264 some   of the h.265 and the red Advantage generally goes  to Intel and Nvidia of course you're wondering   well why does the Mac have such an advantage with  prores and I will say that that is the home field   advantage prores is a codec created and owned  by Apple I think they're the only ones in fact   that can actually make accelerators for prores so  that is very much a you know home field advantage   um some people on the PC may want to cry well  that's not fair I would say whatever if I edit   with prores I don't care what you say I just  need it done faster but if clearly looking at   these results if you're going to edit a lot of  red coverage the 13 gen with the 4090 has a nice   advantage over the the MacBook with the M2 Pro as  well so don't just simply see the score above and   go like oh my gosh I need to buy this you need to  look at what's better for the Codex that you work   in future bench actually has a standard run as  well as an extended run I know we're doing a lot   on Adobe Premiere but I will say Adobe Premiere  is the 800 pound gorilla of video editors it is   extremely important it's something that these  kind of laptops are kind of made to run so we   actually run the extended run which actually  includes 8K media and as you can see the score   is uh 13 gen core I9 with RTX 490 to the tune of  32 percent over the M2 Pro and the MacBook Pro 16.  

it also has a nice lead in extended export scores  of 47 over the MacBook Pro extended live playback   score is actually kind of dead even and because  we did the sub score breakdown previously let's   also look at the subscore breakdown here again for  the extended run and you could see you know a lot   of the leads for the PC come from an 8K 8.26500  megabit export overall the winds are enough that   the Razer Blade gets the nod by Puget bench upper  score but again if you look at the details there   are some things you might kind of want the Mac  for but generally it looks like the Razer Blade   with 13 gen and the 4090 laptop GPU have the edge  so you know early on I gave you the warning that   this is uh the M2 Pro it's not the M2 Max 30  it's not the M2 Max 38 and I do want to admit   that that is uh that's a problem because honestly  I really want to see the M2 Max especially the 38   I've heard amazing things about it the previous uh  M1 Max the M1 Ultra so obviously people are going   to say this is unfair I will admit this but it is  worth looking at it and I will say after running   this though I'm I'm not con completely convinced  that the M2 Max 30 and I'm calling that the 30   because there's a 30 core version or the M2 Max 38  are going to really even the scales here with the   RTX 4090 laptop GPU first up is again the blender  Benchmark you saw earlier in blue but now we are   running it on the graphics card the GPU on the  Razer Blade that RTX 4090 laptop GPU at 175 tgps   in the blender 3.40 version and it's just simply  a crushing crushing uh defeat for the M2 Pro   and I don't think the M2 Max is going to change  this whether it's a 38 or 30 because uh you're   when you're looking at 4101 samples versus  382 samples that's 974 faster for the RTX   40 90 laptop GPU so yeah I I admit the max is  going to be better I don't think it's going to   make it that much better though so we'll have  to see if I can get my hands on a Max 30 or a   Max of 38 but I don't think it's going to change  and I will say this is open source free software   this could potentially be by the way the  people who work on blender really really   optimize for NVIDIA this Benchmark you don't  get to pick whether it's Optics or whatever or   metal manually The Benchmark itself picks what to  run it on so I don't really know what it's doing   um but I will say if today you need to do  gpu-based blenders you're going to want   the razor blade and the RTX 4090 laptop over the  pro and probably over the max 30 and the max 38.   earlier you saw geekbench running the CPU single  core multi-core geekbench also has a compute   Benchmark I ran this on both the graphics Parts on  both of these laptops I will say a geekbench lets   you run either in Cuda on the Cuda API which is  NVIDIA sync or Apple's metal API and I also ran an   opencl which is on both platforms and you can see  again very very big wins for that RTX 4090 laptop   uh 250 847 versus 52 777 that's 375 performance  Advantage for the RTX 4090 over the M2 Pro with   its uh 19 core GPU and again when you're looking  at opencl 375 Advantage for the g-force over   the M2 part so uh with that M2 Max 30 or Max 38  change it's um score yes is it enough to defeat   the g-force I don't think so in fact I actually  saw some scores for uh the M2 Max published by our   sister publication Mac world and I think they were  about 80 or 90 000 for metal for geekbench 5.51   uh 80 000 is not more than 250 000 last time I  checked so mighty GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU   it really is mighty this next test I really love  because it eases the hot word of today and that's   AI it's topaz Labs video AI 3.31 it literally came  out like about a week and a half ago for the test   I take a 720p flip cam style grainy low res shaky  cam video of my kids from 10 years ago and I use   AI to up sample it to 1080p I'm actually using  the Thea model for video AI as well as motion   D blur using themus and that's using AI for this  test I elected only to use the gpus because you   can use the CPU on this but I didn't want to  wait the five or six hours just to run it once   it's just not worth it because I have to run  it multiple times to get her an actual accurate   result and I'm not going to do that on the CPU if  you're going to use video AI don't even bother to   screwing around the CPU run it on the GPU so again  the results are measured in seconds the faster is   done the faster you can do something else and you  can see the Razer Blade 16 with that GeForce RTX   4090 laptop GPU took about 376 seconds versus the  MacBook Pro M2 Pro at 2008 seconds that's about   81 percent less time for the GeForce RTX 4090  would this change with the M2 Max yes it would   definitely get better you might cut it in half  probably not quite in half but it definitely will   get better uh let's look at a little bit of gaming  and I will say I did do a little bit of gaming on   the Mac I think it's unfair because I like to rely  on gaming benchmarks that have built-in benchmarks   they're just simply more reliable it's of course  you're it's this weird non-parity because you have   Windows developed by one developer for the PC  and then you have somebody porting that to the   mac and we also have a problem on the Macintosh  where a lot of the games are still actually made   for Intel base Max using x86 and many of them  are not actually native to the Mac so it's it's   really kind of unfair in a way but you know I did  run one game because honestly people are still   running it because they still want to see what  it looks like the first game is Rise of the Tomb   Raider I'm running this at 1900 by 1200 resolution  highest quality setting a lot of the Mac reviews   actually run that at like medium or low I don't  quite get it because it's actually pretty decent   at highest quality but you can see the um this  again is actually very impressive I'm I'm really   kind of Blown Away that it can run rise of the 2  Tomb Raider which is made for x86 base Intel Max   and it's it's cranking out 58 frames a second  sent to its highest I mean God that is really   impressive I will say arm on PC not impressive at  all armor on Mac is very impressive and the fact   that Apple's arm chips can push out um 58 frames  a second at 19 by 12 at highest quality settings   is very impressive I'm Blown Away by that I do  want to say I would not want to play a game like   rise of the Tomb Raider at 1900 by 1200 especially  if I have a super beautiful high resolution screen   the Mac monitor is 34 56 by 2234 the Razer Blade  is 3840 by 2400. why would you want to play at low  

resolutions this game is not an Esports game  you really don't need 400 frames a second or   200 frames a second so here's what it actually  looks like on these laptops running at their   native resolutions uh the MacBook Pro with the  M2 Pro is pushing about 21 frames a second the   Razer Blade 16 is about 140 frames a second again  I do have dlss on and set the balance but that's   about a 567 percent Advantage for the Razer Blade  with the GeForce RTX 4090 laptop and that 13 gen   I turn off dlss but here's what you get you see  the Razer Blade now kicking it down to about 9   92 frames a second the MacBook of course is still  21 frames a second because you can't turn dlss on   or off because Apple doesn't offer that on this  laptop that's about a 338 Advantage for the razor   blade so yeah you're talking 4K Plus at 92 frames  a second with dlss off on the razor blade I'm   still stupidly impressed that it runs as fast as  it does on the Mac because it's essentially being   translated in real time using the Rosetta on the  Mac so you got to give it to Apple but no if you   want to play games primarily play games do not buy  a Macbook it just does not make any sense the PC   is the new Superior gaming platform this proves it  even if we're not dealing with all the other stuff   of having a translation stuff all right so I I  actually tried a couple games that were Mac native   to the M1 uh I really again I felt kind of weird  because you're there's no Benchmark that you can   simply run through and get reliable you have to  rely on making sure you have not screwed something   up doing a run through in a game and I just didn't  trust myself to do it with the amount of time I   had to do here um so I but I do want to get a feel  like how much is that translation layer killing   Mac graphics performance from we saw that on Tomb  Raider how it wasn't looking so hot so for that   I'm actually going to use base Mark it's actually  a free Benchmark that's out there we'll upload the   results folks it's a cross-platform runs on iOS  Android Windows and Mac this is a base mark Sacred   Heart the official run which runs at 2560 by 1440  resolution I run on DirectX 12 on the Razer Blade   I'm running it on metal on the MacBook and as  you can see the score for the MacBook Pro with   the with the M2 Pro it's about about six thousand  three hundred and thirty the the GeForce RTX 4090   laptop is twenty five thousand six hundred and  eighty nine that's a 306 percent Improvement   for the GeForce RTX 4090 again that is uh native  to M silicon you know M2 and it's also native to   x86 it's also running on Apple's own metal API and  again yeah I I say M1 Max 30 M1 Max 38 definitely   going to improved performance I mean 38 basically  doubles the the GPU cores you also increase the   memory bandwidth to 400 gigs from 200 gigs let's  give you say 15 000 for the MacBook Pro 16 with   an M2 Max 38 in it um that's not better than 25  600. so the GeForce RTX 1490 laptop GPU is all   kinds of incredibly fast and I don't think Max is  gonna beat it I would love to see it and honestly   prove myself wrong but I don't see it beating  the uh the GeForce RTX 4090 anytime immediately   and this next one of course is just simply  the actual scores in fps the same percentage   you're looking at 256 frames a second at 1440  for the GeForce RTX 490 versus that M2 Pro so   all of that is is all of the performance stuff  and I'm going to tell you if I were a Mac fan   and I know they're all doing this every single  Mac fan in this world is sitting on their hands   and biting their insides of their cheeks and  just fighting on their fingernails and they're   hammering the desk saying this is ridiculous you  are comparing a laptop that uses way more power   to one that uses way less I mean they're basically  about the same size although that one's heavier   okay I get it more power consumption so let's  actually look at a little bit at power consumption   I'm going to do this probably in a way you don't  normally see I think it's an easy way to do it   especially given the amount of time I had to do  this I basically hook up logging watt meters to   both of these laptops this baby by the way has  a 330 watt Gan power brick it's actually really   small but it's 330 Watts the MacBook Pro 16 has  a 140 watt USBC power brick so considerably less   power for the Mac I basically set the screen  brightness to the same brightness about 450   nits and then I did some testing of this pure  CPU pure GPU to see how much power it would   consume with the my theory and this should work  out right is if the battery is full none of the   power is going into the battery so any of the  power that the laptops are using are directly   going into the Silicon the GPU the CPU as  well as a panel but that's pretty constant   so we basically see how much power these laptops  will consume when they are plugged in well running   the particular benchmarks and because I'm doing  externally there's no observer effect I'm not   actually slowing down the benchmarks because I'm  trying to record what things are doing so I'm   doing this completely independent of the laptop it  has no idea that I'm recording what's going on so   you're seeing Max on cinebench R23 it's a familiar  benchmark it is the default 10 minute Loop that   blue line on top because this is a CPU Benchmark  is Center bench running that razor blade up from   you can see the idle with cinebench open is about  maybe 30 32 watts 33 Watts it kicks all the way up   uh until about 190 watts and you can see it kind  of climbs up for a little bit drops a little bit   climbs up a little bit and then drops and then is  constant the Mac meanwhile with Center bench open   it's idling in about 16 to 18 Watts it's actually  a very low idle pretty amazing right so very low   idle you fire off cinebench R23 it basically  tops out at about 60 63 Watts maybe 65 watts and   basically sits there the whole time so the razor  blade to get its performance while running Center   bench is roughly you can look at most of the time  consuming in about 175 Watts whereas the uh the   MacBook Pro 16 is about 60 watts so considerably  less power for the MacBook Pro so you know if   you want to conserve energy that MacBook Pro 16  is going to conserve quite a bit of energy I do   want to point out though if you're wondering what  those little squiggly lines are the way cinebench   R23 runs is it renders a frame when it's done it  goes back to the beginning and renders it again   it does this for 10 minutes once the 10 minute  timer hits it finishes the last frame so every   time you see one of those squigglies drop or  rise is when the clock when The Benchmark is   done and it resets everything so you can see that  in the time that this Benchmark is run the Razer   Blade 16 renders 20 frames because there's 20  little squiggly drops for the razor blade with   the core I9 3950 HX the MacBook Pro 16 with the  M2 Pro renders about 11 frames so if you're a   3D rendering artist and you're rendering a lot  of Art in you know Cinema 4D you're basically   getting almost twice the amount of frames rendered  on the razor blade than you are on the MacBook or   the M2 Pro chip in it so that is something to  consider so significantly more power consumed   by that core I9 and also significantly more more  performance here it all kind of depends on what   you're really looking for so that previous test  was looking at power consumption of the core I9   that 24 core CPU under and all CPU core load this  next one I kind of want to look at the GPU so I   use base mark running Sacred Heart and I'm looping  it 10 times unlike some other benchmarks the way a   Sacred Heart base mark works is it basically jams  through the The Benchmark as fast as can if it's   hitting 100 frames a second it does 100 frames a  second say if you're running that 10 times it's   going to render you know a thousand frames and  then it's done so basically fire it off as soon   as you're done you're finished and you're seeing  that here where the green line is again that razor   blade you can see where idle has changed a little  bit because with the base mark uh looks like we're   maybe about 35 40 40 Watts we climb all the way  up to the GPU by the way uses more power than   CPU just under 250 Watts so that GeForce RTX 4090  laptop GPU when plugged in will run it all the way   up to about 250 Watts it's so close let's call it  250 Watts the M2 Pro with its 19 GPU cores however   is you know similar we're looking at about 50  what 55 looks like maybe 60 65 Watts overall so   you know 250 Watts for the 19 core M2 Pro versus  the 250 Watts so significant less power for the   M2 Pro and you can imagine I would really love  to see the Max on this because an M2 Max 30 or   M2 Max 38 I do wonder if they would actually get  up to you know closer to 100 Watts on the M2 Max   38 it'd be pretty cool to see and I also do want  to point out the same thing you saw earlier with   cinebench you're seeing here the Razer Blade  basically fires up that Benchmark does 10 Loops   of it at 250 watts and then is just done Kickback  reading the paper meanwhile the M2 Pro with its 19   GPU cores is running and running and running and  running it takes considerably longer to finish the   exact same uh workload because it is considerably  slower it also does save considerably more power   too so again significantly more performance  versus significantly less power used moving   on to something a lot lighter we previously saw  something Hammer the GPU or Hammer the CPU those   are sort of worst case scenarios for these laptops  what does it look like on these laptops if you're   doing something really really kind of boring kind  of normal browsing the web for example so for that   I'm again recording the power consumption of  these laptops uh using Google Chrome version   1.10 we're going to run principal Technologies  web expert for and you can see that actually the   Razer Blade the power consumption with chrome  just fired up is just under about 40 Watts   and you can see this Behavior I've seen this  similarly on other Intel laptops looking at   sort of battery consumption Intel laptops are  very spiky they they like to really get on that   clock boost the clocks up as high as they can and  then let it drop off it's like getting on the gas   as fast as you can you can see all those kind  of boosts as something really needs the CPU to   clock up it clocks up uses power drops down you  can see all those boosts where you're seeing up   to 60 watts up to 80 Watts even up to 100 Watts  during this Benchmark where it basically says we   need more crank those clocks up maybe it's using  two cores Crank It Up will get up to 100 Watts   um you know but actually overall if you actually  run a razor blade like this in browsing it's   actually not as bad so you're not going to consume  the power you would under an all CPU core and all   GPU core so you know honestly the browsing  performance is not going to be horrible but   the thing that really should floor you though  is that black line because that is the MacBook   Pro 16 running the M2 Pro using the same load  again Chrome 1.10 we are browsing the internet   and you can see just having Chrome open doing  nothing it's idling at about 20 watts and that   damn thing never leaves 20 watts it's actually  incredible well that Intel chip is like hey I   need 80 Watts I need 60 watts of boost it's just  I need a hundred watts of boost it's just simply   running it up that M2 Pro is almost 20 watts the  entire time I will say that's incredible there   are a few spikes where it'll push it up to 30  Watts but look at that thing it's just basically   browsing the web humming along never using any  power this performance is shockingly amazing and   it is something that I as a PC fan and I I think  things all PC this is very very impressive it's   something the PC should strive for um so hey  hooray yeah it loses honestly in the actual   performance we'll look at that later but it's just  amazing that the Mac can do the mundane stuff and   this is why people say when they can get on their  MacBook and just sit there all day and brow the   web the battery lasts forever that's the kind of  thing is going to make you think it's going to   last forever all right our last actual practical  performance test where we only look at Power is   something again something important I think Adobe  Premiere is something everybody really does care   about because the world is about internet  somebody's going to edit this on a computer   although it'll be da Vinci but they're going to  edit on a computer they're going to put on the   internet so if you're doing this on a laptop  on battery what does it look like so again I   basically recorded the power consumption of these  laptops the same way I did before running Puget   bench Premiere Pro this is just the standard run  I didn't do the extended run again you could see   uh the razor blade and I colored it blue and  green because it is a combination of Intel   CPU and Nvidia GPU you can see we're spiking up  to 150 watts 200 Watts 250 Watts the reserve in   times were pushing 300 watts and an occasional  amazing to me we're pushing the absolute Max   wattage of the power supply it is a it has a 330  watt power supply on the Razer Blade you see it   actually spikes above 300 watts probably running  into basically oh there's no more power to come   from that power brick so it's just actually  amazing to me that the power the amount of   power that the Razer Blade is is using here um and  again look at the look at that black line for the   the MacBook Pro it's it's like it's it's under 50  Watts it's actually truly amazing if you're gonna   edit all day in Premiere or the MacBook Pro 16  is going to clean the clock of that razor blade   probably if you're going to be running it on  battery and I do want to point out though there   I pointed out on this chart there's a section  where it says GPU heavy effect section and a part   where it says GPU heavy effect section for the Mac  that's the same thing we saw previously basically   the future bench is running the GPU effects  section and then it's done and we can clearly   see the advantage that's where you're running GPU  heavy effect section on a GeForce RTX 4090 laptop   it's done really fast it's done in a  quarter less than a quarter of the time   of the MacBook that takes considerably more so  it's very interesting to look at because uh the   performance that you're getting there on the  Razer Blade is amazing but it comes at a huge   price cost and of course you've seen how much  power the Razer Blade consumes running on AC   when you're in a thin laptop like that that also  means fans fans mean noise thin laptops with fans   mean more noise so I did want to try to find out  how much noise it makes because you know MacBook   MacBook Pro people like to get in our face about  how quiet the MacBook Pro is it would be flatly   unfair to not also look at the noise levels of the  MacBook Pro 16. so um I again I'm doing the same  

test as previously in a way because the purple  line represents the power consumption of the Razer   Blade we are pushing on that CPU you know up over  150 watts we actually pushed up to about 180 Watts   until it burns off the Boost squigglies for the  how fast it is yay how fast it is but I also at   the same time measured the sound level of the fans  I did this in my garage I do not have an anechoic   chamber that would be the ideal way to do it and  the noise floor in my garage is about 33 DBA you   can see if you're looking at the on the left is  Watts on the right is the audio levels and you   can see we're basically at about 33 DBA and that  red line on the left we start running cinebench   there's a delay as the laptop heats up it then  tells hey by the way I need more cooling yay   fans turn on so the noise actually comes on after  the performance is going and you can see actually   the way the core I9 13 gen runs is it runs it  really hard and then it realizes oh I'm running   really hot it comes back down the fans actually  kick up to a higher level we're actually pushing   about 52 to 53 DBA with the fans going Full Tilt  but because the CPU in the Razer Blade has now   said you know what I'm not going to run the rest  of this load at that higher boost because it's   too much for us we're going to run it at a lower  lower uh clock speed lower TDP so now the actual   fans two down so most of the run is actually about  51 DBA versus 53 to 54 DBA so most of the time   51 DBA for the razor blade I will say I've heard  far more offensive laptops especially when you get   that thin especially with previous gen Hardware  in it that is not bad 51 db8 though is still   considerably louder than no noise so I just want  to mention that that's how I recorded it for the   Razer Blade so let's do this for the Mac now so  we're going to reset the graph you're going to see   the same thing we just did for the Razer Blade 16  with the MacBook Pro 16 and it looks quite a bit   different because again that purple line is the  power we're actually pushing over 50 Watts for   cinebench for this all CPU run the squigglies are  for all the times that it resets and runs again   okay you see that it's considerably shy of that  you know 150 or some odd watts of the Intel CPU   definitely better you know in power consumption of  the red line again just like we saw with the razor   blade is the sound level remember I said my rods  in the daytime the floor level is about 33 DBA   well if you're living in a metropolitan area and  you're in your garage there's going to be other   sounds so the red line is basically the sound 33  DBA that Spike you see I've labeled that's the   sound of a crow in the street there's some sound  of a car going down the street there's that Crow   again and then at some point my wife started to  wash the dishes upstairs every time you turn every   time there's that weird Spike she turned on the  water to get water in the sink and then at the   end there's Street traffic basically the MacBook  Pro 16 M2 Pro the fan never comes on and that is   under a very heavy all CPU load that has a razor  blade kicking it up to you know 54 DBA 51 DBA it's   I mean it's basically dead silent whereas the  razor blade is making quite a bit more racket I   mean obviously 50 1 DBA versus no noise is a huge  win for the Mac if you care about noise macbook's   got a big Advantage all right home stretch folks  if you stuck with us we got a couple good things   I think you want to care about and this is  something again Mac fans have been like hey   I want to know about performance on battery if  you unplug the razor blade there's no way that   sucker is going to give you all that performance  running on battery that it does running on its 330   watt power brick and I will say yeah that makes  sense I agree one thing you need to note though   is that's not the same for everybody every laptop  vendor Tunes how their laptop will run on battery   life if they've decided on the Razer Blade to only  give you balance CPU and GPU performance kick on   whisper mode that's different than what Dell or  Lenovo or HP or Asus or MSI may do some laptop   vendors may say hey we will give you control if  you want to crank that sucker up you can do it   I will say the Razer Blade does not it gives you  basically balanced and no options to increase the   power under AC I think that's kind of a bummer  some other vendors may do that but when we're   looking at Razer Blade 16 versus MacBook Pro 16  unplugged performance still actually matters so   first up you're seeing the results of the Razer  Blade 16 and the MacBook Pro 16 running Max on   cinebench R23 I know there's a lot of cinebench  but the reason I like to use it is everybody's   familiar with it it's very predictable this  obviously would be similar to other benchmarks   um you see we got that amazing score of 26  424 running when it's plugged into the wall   unplug that razor blade though and you have no  control over it at least right now they may change   that later because if they hear some belly aching  from people who want Max performance on battery   you unplug it and you drop down to 12 631 that  is a 52 decrease for the core I9 13 950 HX and   again let me remind you that is decision by Razer  some other laptops may say like go for it either   more power less power or do as you will to your  battery so considerably less and actually at 12   631 we're actually below the performance of  the M2 Pro which does not change in fact it's   almost going up a little bit but honestly that's  just simply run to run variances it's basically   no different MacBook Pro 16 plugged in unplugged  same thing uh very amazing because you're seeing   a 52 percent drop for that core I9 let's do the  same thing for the GPU though that green bar we   saw that incredible 25 689 you unplug that GeForce  RTX 4090 laptop GPU by the way with a 175 Watt tgp   and performance falls back by 75 to  6483. so 75 power Nerf going to battery   um I will say though that's actually the same  score as that M2 Pro uh basically it's actually   a little bit faster 6483 is still faster  than 63.33 but basically the the M2 Pro and   the MacBook Pro 16 just don't change so yeah you  will if you're going to run on battery life you   will lose considerable amount of performance but I  will note the core I9 is actually pretty close in   performance to the M2 Pro and that GeForce RTX  4090 even with this unplugged power Nerf it's   actually still faster than the M2 Pro so that's  something worth noting as well and I also want to   point this out uh that's because you're running  all cores or all CPU all GPU if you're actually   running very light loads the performance isn't  as bad in fact here I'm going to run cinebench   R23 using a single thread on the Razer Blade and  you see we only see about a 3.3 percent difference   it's basically almost within the margin of error  so so on single threaded performance the razor   blade is not going to change so a lot of lightly  light editing office Chrome even Photoshop very   lightly threaded a lot of things in in Lightroom  when you're just editing things not going to   change when you do those exports though you hit  all the cores or you hit that GPU hard you're   going to take a big Power Nerf and also looking  at browsing you're looking at a 7.7 percent   decrease for the razor blade and web expert on  battery versus plugged in and its score of 300   is still better than the MacBook Pro 16 score of  266 on battery so it's actually still slightly   outperforming that MacBook even on DC so there is  Nuance you just simply can't say oh it takes a big   hit yeah it takes a big hit on their CPU heavy and  all GPU core heavy loads but if you didn't get to   light loads it can get a little closer okay I'm  going to close this off with actually the thing   that kind of surprised me and again this is part  one this is all performance stuff I'm going to get   to hopefully some battery testing at the end this  is one battery test that I had time to do late   last night I basically said you know what so let's  take these laptops charge them up to 100 percent   set the screen brightness to the same about  245 nits and I set the screen so they could not   change based on the environment turn off the  keyboard backlight put them in airplane mode   and then I basically set both of them to Loop  cinebench R23 for 9999 minutes so basically in   all CPU core load all the time until the battery  died you hear a lot of talk about the MacBook Pro   16 and the MacBook Pro having amazing battery life  I'm not seeing that here especially under an all   all core load I will say it still did win but you  know look you're looking at uh you know about 7   000 797 seconds before the battery Tapped  Out versus a 6863 it's about 13.6 percent   Improvement for the MacBook Pro 16 over the  Razer Blade but I you know 13.6 percent is  

that really that's kind of like you know  life-changing kind of experience I'm not   so sure it's there and I will also point out  the MacBook Pro has a you know 99.9 watt hour   battery the largest you can have and still  bring it on a plane the razor blade has a 95   watt hour battery so it's about you know five  percent smaller so that 13 Improvement earn   under an all-core load I don't think that's a huge  Advantage for the MacBook but I I will say I think   if you're sitting there browsing if you're sitting  there doing very light loads MacBook probably   gonna look pretty good if you're actually going  to sit there and basically Hammer this thing in   in encodes 3D rendering you know all core all  GPU rendering all things that really really   load up that M2 Pro is impressive as it is it's  still only a 100 watt hour battery and you know   the best you can get you know you might get you  know a couple hours you might get a couple hours   that depending on what you're doing so I think  the misconception people think that the the Macs   have this huge advantage over PC laptops over you  know in battery life from what I'm seeing from   this test and what I've kind of seen previously I  don't really think that's true I think people are   seeing certain things and running with it I think  there's a lot more Nuance to it because clearly   you know having 13 better battery life with the  five percent bigger battery is really not a big   deal so that's it for the testing I'm hoping to  do more battery rundown tests that takes quite   a bit of time because you got to charge them up  run them down hours and hours and hours of work   hopefully that comes later but let's do a quick  overview of the laptops what I think of them what   you should buy basically based on this first let's  go over the the shocking thing uh the price the   more expensive laptop here Macs have traditionally  been Sky High in pricing razor blade 16 would like   to tell you something about price because with a  13 gen core I9 13950hx GeForce RTX 4090 laptop GPU   4K Plus panel by the way that's neat because it  does 120 hertz mode and a 240 hertz mode at a   lower resolution and also mini LED 32 gigs of ddr5  two terabytes of Gen 4 storage that baby is going   to set you back four thousand and three hundred  dollars yeah that is a that is a premium priced   laptop uh of course you are getting all kinds  of ass kicking performance when plugged into   the wall that is no doubt but I mean compare that  to the MacBook this uh MacBook Pro 16 with M2 Pro   32 gigs of RAM two terabytes of storage the high  resolution screen mini LED they're the same on all   of them that's going to take you back 3 500 so the  Razer Blade is 800 more than the uh MacBook Pro   16 and what's even crazier if you go for the the  MacBook Pro 16 with the M2 Max say if you go for   32 gigs of RAM 2 terabytes of storage it's still  400 less at 3 900 than the Razer Blade you can   really jam up the razor blade of the the Mac 2 by  if you wanted to go up to 96 gigs of RAM because   of that unified memory design and go to eight  terabytes of storage you can get a real Apple   price of sixty five hundred dollars but that's  with eight terabytes of storage in 96 Megs 96   gigs of RAM so uh clearly the razor blade is not  for the faint of heart in price uh other specs   that I think are actually worth calling out I  love this uh again the laptop power bricks matter   this is very nice it's a USBC power brick 140  watts to be respected because it's just basically   a very Advanced USB PD charger very tiny the  laptop barely I've never saw this thing use   over 80 Watts but I also have to give it to Razer  because this is a 330 watt Gan power brick and   typically those are maybe twice the size of those  this is actually an extremely tiny power brick   considering that it is 330 Watts look this is 140  versus this 330 it's considerably smaller than   what you would expect because it is using very  Advanced Gan technology you got to give that to   Razer also the Razer gives you more type A ports  it actually gives you three type A I just want   to mention that only one Thunderbolt and one USBC  the other one is not Thunderbolt the Mac however   gives you three Thunderbolt fours and that's it  there's a headphone jack so in Jack in the Jack   Department it's losing I also should mention  it's in the weight this matters too the Mac is   considerably lighter the MacBook itself comes in  at about four pounds 12 ounces I just weighed it   with its power brick you're pushing about five  pounds seven and a half ounces the razor blade   16 however is pushing five pounds eight ounces  by itself you throw in that 330 watt power brick   and you are now pushing seven pounds and nine  ounces so I think if you really for if you're   thinking about portability the macbook's  gonna win it's just simply lighter it is   thinner which I don't think really matters  as much but it is lighter overall especially   when you're considering the total weight  of the package in your bag I think also   um one here's the answer if you're  looking for a laptop to use Final Cut   to use uh applications that only run on Mac OS by  the way buy a Mac because you have no choice if   you are looking for a an album Macintosh laptop  by the Mac that is actually the biggest reason   to buy this uh there are other reasons though  that a little bit of crossover if you're going   to run video editing mostly disconnected if  you're going to be say like in the field and   your ability to get to a a charger is going to  be very difficult I would definitely recommend   the MacBook Pro 16 over the Razer Blade  if you're gonna however the Razer Blade   is going to just give you all kinds of  incredible performance in gaming for   one thing yes you can play games sort of  on the Mac the performance is especially   much better than I would expect on a Mac but if  you are buying a MacBook to be a 90 gamer you are   simply doing it wrong it makes zero sense if you  want a gaming experience you buy the Razer Blade   there's just simply no comparison it doesn't make  any sense to buy a MacBook to play games the Razer   Blade simply cleans the clock in performance  in library and everything in mods that you can   do on PC gaming that runs on the Razer Blade so  clearly the razor blade better for gaming it's   also simply better for all-out performance you  saw those benchmarks if you're doing you know uh   3D rendering on the GPU you're doing rendering  on this CPU you're doing a topaz Labs video AI   there's just so many things that the Razer Blade  gives you in all out performance that the the M2   Pro in the MacBook Pro 16 simply really can't  get close enough to to Really justify I just   don't understand why I mean yes the M2 Max will  help it but you just simply saw the benchmarks   it's just going to be hard for it to compete  when plugged into the wall because you know   they're taking that power and they're giving the  performance a lot of Mac fans will say well look   performance really suffers when you unplug that  razor blade and if I are a razor blade fan and   said hey when I plug in my razor blade I get more  performance significantly more performance I plug   in my Mac and I'm no longer power limited why am  I not getting more performance and you're just   simply not getting it on the MacBook Pro 16 with  the M2 Pro in it so and that's very fair it just   depends on what angle you're coming from so for  gaming razor blade and if you actually just want   a laptop that gives you you know stupendous  battery life where you're just kind of doing   light tasks I I think actually the the MacBook Pro  16 is a good choice as well and of course it is   simply the bitter Mac OS based laptop so that's my  feeling right now based on the performance I hope   you think this was fair I know some mac fans are  going to say oh you should have the M2 Max X you   saw those numbers somebody get me an M2 Max 38 I  don't think it's going to be that razor blade but   hopefully we can find out in the meantime come  back to PC world's channel for more awesome PC   coverage and of course go to pcworld.com for  news of the day and Deals of the day [Music]

2023-03-13

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