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Apple MacBook Pro with M5 Review: The Best Laptop for Photographers https://petapixel.com/2025/10/21/apple-macbook-pro-with-m5-review-the-best-laptop-for-photographers/ #applemacbookproreview #macbookproreview #computerreview #laptopreview #macbookpro #Equipment #computer #notebook #Reviews #applem5 #macbook #laptop #apple #m5

M4 Pro Mac mini Review: Pro Performance in a Tiny, Affordable Package https://petapixel.com/2024/11/07/m4-pro-mac-mini-review-pro-performance-in-a-tiny-affordable-package/ #computerreview #macminireview #Technology #applem4pro #Equipment #computer #Reviews #applem4 #desktop #macmini #review #apple #mac

Asus ProArt Station PD5 Review: Not Much More Than a Pretty Face https://petapixel.com/2023/12/23/asus-proart-station-pd5-review-not-much-more-than-a-pretty-face/ #asusproartreview #computerreview #asusproart #computer #Reviews #windows #tower #asus #pc

HP ZBook Studio G8 Review: Rock Solid Performance, Painful Price Tag

HP's ZBook lineup -- which encompasses the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the affordable ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best-of-all-worlds ZBook Studio brands -- doesn't attract a lot of attention. As a mobile workstation-class device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most "creator" laptops, but in many ways, it's better than both.

In the parlance of the tech nerd, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a "mobile workstation." On the hardware side, that typically means that you're getting a Xeon processor, error-correcting (ECC) RAM, and an A-series or Quadro graphics card, paired with some sort of reliability testing (MIL-SPEC or MIL-STD), software certifications from major developers like Adobe, and an extended warranty. All of this usually comes attached to a price so high you'll get altitude sickness if you stare at it for too long.

We don't normally review mobile workstations on PetaPixel because the price increase associated with things like ECC memory and an enterprise GPU doesn't translate into a measurable performance gain for photo and video editing, but HP did something interesting with the ZBook Studio G8: the company sort of split the difference.

The Studio G8 doesn't use ECC memory or an Intel Xeon CPU, and it can be configured with a normal GeForce RTX 30-series GPU, but it still comes with all the other workstation perks. In other words: it offers the same performance as a high-end gaming laptop and the same sleek, professional design as a high-end consumer laptop, with better build quality, guaranteed reliability, and a longer warranty than either of the other categories. As a result, it comes in a little cheaper than similar options from, say, the Dell Precision lineup.

That's not to say it's cheap. The model HP sent us for review still costs an eye-watering $4,400:

Even if you downgrade some of the components, you're still going to spend a lot of money. We actually asked the folks at HP to send us "Good, Better, Best" configuration options that they would recommend, and the most affordable of the bunch will still run you almost $2,800:

But that's not to say that the price isn't justified, or at least justifiable. From design to usability to raw performance, this laptop is fantastic. It's just important to set expectations from the get-go: We're not talking about a budget laptop today. We're not even talking about a semi-affordable laptop. We're talking about a mobile workstation that charges a substantial premium in exchange for professional-grade reliability and guaranteed performance.

If paying a $1,000 premium for MIL-STD reliability testing, software certifications, and an extended warranty sounds crazy to you, then a mobile workstation is the wrong choice and there's no reason to read on. However, if that sounds like a reasonable investment and you like the fact that HP isn't forcing you to throw additional money away on certain enterprise-grade specs you don't want or need, then read on, because the HP ZBook Studio G8 turns out to be an excellent laptop for creative professionals.

Design and Build

There are only a few laptops that can compete with the likes of Apple and Razer when it comes to chassis design, but the HP ZBook Studio G8 is right up there with the best. The magnesium-and-aluminum alloy chassis is as rigid as a tank, extremely thin, and carved into a sharp design language that I loved from the moment I set eyes on this laptop.

Build quality really is top-notch. HP's workstation-grade "Z" devices all undergo MIL-STD-810 testing, ensuring a level of reliability that surpasses anything you can expect from a standard consumer laptop. The MIL-STD-810 standard includes a suite of tests that check for resistance against vibration, dust, sand, humidity, altitude, drops, temperature shock, and even a "Freeze/Thaw" test.

Adding to the laptop's reliability quotient is a three-year warranty direct from the manufacturer, a perk that usually costs extra (if it's available at all) when you buy a consumer laptop.

Crack the ZBook Studio G8 open, and you'll reveal an excellent keyboard that combines a satisfying click with a good amount of travel, zero mush, and per-key RGB lighting that gives the laptop just a little bit of gaming flare. The lighting is controlled by HP's "OMEN" dashboard, and it's a fun touch on an otherwise very professional-looking laptop.

This is accompanied by a slick, glass-topped trackpad that provides a precise and extremely well-optimized experience that can compete with the best-of-the-best. Because the speaker grill is positioned above the keyboard, the trackpad isn't quite as big as the ones you'll find on the latest Apple and Dell computers, but it was plenty big enough for me.

Port selection is solid, with only a little room for improvement. On the left side of the machine is an audio-combo jack, a USB Type-A port, and a Kensington lock; on the right side, you'll find a sealable SD card slot, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4 port that's connected directly to the GPU, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports that can carry 40Gbps of data, power, and a display signal.

My gripes are minimal. Mainly, I was annoyed that the Thunderbolt 4 ports are connected directly to the iGPU with no way to re-route that signal in the BIOS (this is according to HP). As a result, anyone using a high-end 4K external display will want to use the Mini DisplayPort for true 10-bit color or high refresh-rate gaming.

For that reason alone, I really wish that HP had included an HDMI 2.1 port in this configuration instead of the MiniDP port. None of the monitors I've ever reviewed came with a MiniDP to DP 1.4 cable in the box, wihch forces me to buy a new cable in order to get full performance out of the ASUS ProArt PA32UCG I was using when I reviewed this laptop and eliminates the option of using this as a "single-cable" setup with Thunderbolt providing data, display, and power.

Fortunately, the included display is more than good enough to do professional creative work. The model we're testing includes a touch-enabled 4K AMOLED screen that was able to hit well over 100% sRGB, 99.9% DCI-P3, and 91.6% Adobe RGB with an excellent Delta E of less than 2 and a maximum brightness of ~400 nits.

If OLED isn't your thing, the ZBook Studio G8 is also available with a 4K 120Hz "HP DreamColor" LCD display with an advertised peak brightness of 600 nits and 100% coverage of DCI-P3, or an even more affordable Full HD model that promises 100% coverage of sRGB.

It's nice to see a manufacturer offer both a 4K LCD and a 4K OLED option with identical gamut coverage, as well as a more affordable (but still acceptable) Full HD option. If you're sold on the peace of mind of a mobile workstation but hate the price tag it carries, the lower-end screen option opens the door to get creative with your configuration, especially if you plan to use an external display much of the time.

As for our 4K OLED unit, you can see the results from our DisplayCAL tests below:

The HP ZBook G8 covers 99.9% of DCI-P3 (left) and well over 100% of sRGB (right).

If there's a big downside to the high-res screen on our model it's probably battery performance, which is decidedly middle of the road.

As with other high-performance notebooks, the ZBook Studio's 83WHr battery can't support the computer's full 110W TDP (30W to the CPU, 80W to the GPU), and when you're pushing the computer to its battery-powered performance limit, you can expect no more than about two hours of intense photo editing. In a more reasonable, battery saver or balanced mode, I was able to get about six hours of use for writing, occasional content consumption, and light photo editing, but don't expect this laptop to compete with something that's powered by AMD.

Overall, I found a lot to love and very little to complain about when it comes to the design and build quality of the ZBook Studio G8. It's an excellent laptop that felt like a little piece of military equipment with just enough design flare. The excellent keyboard and trackpad, the professional-grade display, and the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports all make it a solid contender for serious creative work.

Photo Editing Performance

Given the extremely thin design, I was skeptical that the HP would be able to squeeze every ounce of performance out of its Core i9-11950H and NVIDIA RTX 3070. I was only kind of right. In most of our benchmarks, the ZBook couldn't quite out-perform the latest Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which technically uses an ever-so-slightly slower Core i9-11900H, but the thinner ZBook Studio was still able to churn out top-shelf performance numbers.

Whether you're running Photoshop, Lightroom, or Capture One, you can expect the Studio G8 to fly through most photo and video editing tasks with ease, all while staying remarkably quiet compared to some of the gaming laptops I've tested.

For our comparisons today, we're showing the results from the HP side-by-side with the same tests run on an M1 iMac, an AMD-powered ASUS Zephyrus G14, and the aforementioned Blade 15 Advanced. Full specs below:

Lightroom Classic

In our standard import and export tests, the ZBook clocked in a tiny bit slower than the Razer Blade, but faster than our other test machines. As a reminder, these tests consist of importing 110 61-megapixel Sony a7R IV and 150 100-megapixel PhaseOne XF RAW files, generating 1:1 (Lightroom Classic) or 2560px (Capture One Pro) previews, applying a custom-made preset with heavy global edits, and then exporting those same files as 100% JPEGs and 16-bit TIFFs.

You can see the results for Lightroom Classic below:

Capture One Pro

The story is even better in Capture One, where the computer's RTX 3070 finally gets to flex its muscle.

As we've mentioned in several of our past reviews, Lightroom does not use any sort of GPU acceleration during import or export, relying exclusively on the performance of your CPU and RAM to generate the numbers you see above. However, Capture One does take advantage of the GPU, so when it comes time to export the heavily-edited Sony a7R IV and Phase One XF variants in C1, the HP ZBook Studio G8 was able to close the gap with the Blade and trade blows at the top of the pack.

The results are essentially a wash between the three PCs, all of which benefit from NVIDIA RTX 30 series GPUs, with the M1 iMac falling way behind:

Photoshop

Finally, we ran our usual Photoshop test: Puget Systems' industry-standard PugetBench benchmark.

PugetBench assigns an Overall and four Category scores after timing a wide variety of tasks including basic stuff like loading, saving, and resizing a large .psd, GPU-accelerated filters like Smart Sharpen and Field Blur, and heavily RAM-dependent tasks like Photo Merge. As we have in the past, we ran version 0.8 of this particular benchmark, because it was the last version to include a Photo Merge test.

As you can see, the powerful GPU, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, and the NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU come together to put up impressive numbers in every category tested:

Performance Takeaways

There's no questioning the HP ZBook Studio G8's performance chops. Is it the most powerful laptop money can buy? Definitely not. HP's own ZBook Fury lineup, the Alienware x17, and the Lenovo Legion 7i (to name a few) can all be configured with more powerful (and power-hungry) CPU/GPU combinations that would no-doubt outperform the ZBook Studio. However, it's awesome to see this kind of performance across the board from such a thin device.

This is seriously impressive photo editing performance packed inside of a chassis that's thinner than we previously thought possible for an Intel-based workstation.

Excellent Design, Great Performance, Painful Price Tag

If you can stomach the price, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a phenomenal laptop for photo and video editors who want great performance paired with guaranteed reliability. That latter point really matters to working pros, who often opt for high-end gaming laptops with less-than-ideal build quality and lower-quality displays in order to achieve this kind of performance.

However, even when you understand the benefits, the Studio G8's price is really hard to swallow. The variant I tested here costs about $1,000 more than you would spend on an (already expensive) Razer Blade 15 Advanced with basically the same core specs, a more powerful GPU, faster PCIe Gen 4 storage, and a next-gen OLED display that covers 100% of both DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB.

You really have to value those un-sexy mobile workstation perks if you're going to justify that kind of price hike.

Pros

Excellent performance
Thin, light, rugged design
Fantastic trackpad and keyboard
Multiple color-accurate display options
Solid port selection with two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an SD card slot
MIL-STD-810 tested
3-year warranty included

Cons

No HDMI port
SSD is PCIe 3.0, not 4.0
RAM is not upgradable
Sky high price

I hate to spend so much time addressing a computer's price since a lot more goes into judging the real-world value of a computer than the cost of its components, so in most cases, I'll focus on performance and usability and leave the economic calculus to individual readers who have individual budgets and don't give an individual damn whether I think a laptop is "reasonably priced."

However, "mobile workstations" like the ZBook Studio G8 exist in a different economic reality, and it's important to understand the benefits and drawbacks of that reality before you either a) spend way too much on a laptop you don't need, or b) ignore features and benefits that could make the laptop worth every last penny.

For me, a well-built consumer laptop is reliable enough. I simply don't use my computers hard enough to justify the price jump and there are some really fantastic options out there. But if you're a professional photographer or video editor who needs a well-rounded, rock-solid machine that will go with you everywhere for the next three to five years, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is worth a very close look. It's cheaper than many of its direct competitors in the workstation-class, gives you a wider variety of configurations to choose from, and it churns out better performance than we expected from something so sleek.

Are There Alternatives?

Several major laptop makers have a workstation brand that offers similar benefits to the ZBook Studio. The most popular are probably Lenovo's ThinkPads and Dell's Precision lineup. As I mentioned earlier, these laptops usually swap NVIDIA's GeForce graphics for a mobile Quadro or A-series GPU, sometimes they use error-correcting "ECC" RAM, and often they include longer warranties, the aforementioned military-grade certifications, and displays that put an emphasis on color and/or battery life over speed and/or gaming performance.

For photographers, we'd recommend avoiding anything with ECC memory, an Intel Xeon processor, or an A-series/Quadro card, simply because these upgrades tend to increase the price significantly without adding much to real-world photo and even video editing performance. An 11th-gen Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, DDR4 RAM and a GeForce RTX 30 series GPU is just fine. Instead, if you're interested in a mobile workstation, focus more on features like a solid manufacturer warranty, standardized reliability testing, and a killer LCD or OLED display with close-to-100% coverage of either AdobeRGB or DCI-P3.

Many of HP's ZBook-branded laptops, Dell's Precision laptops, and several of Lenovo's ThinkPad models trade blows here in a variety of price brackets and configurations, depending on the kind of CPU, GPU, and display performance you need.

If you're not interested in a mobile workstation, you can find similar performance and solid build quality for a lot less money by purchasing a high-quality consumer or gaming laptop like the Dell XPS 15/17, the Razer Blade 15 Advanced and Razer Blade 17, or the ASUS Zephyrus G14/G15 (just to name a few). You'll get a lot more performance-bang-for-your-buck by going with a "consumer" or "creator" laptop vs a proper "mobile workstation," just be aware of what you're giving up.

Should You Buy It

Yes.

The caveats above apply, but other than a few minor gripes that I mention above, I cannot fault this laptop. For creatives, it's a workhorse. The ZBook Studio G8 delivered a lot more "umph" than I expected from such a thin and light chassis while staying relatively quiet, it looks and feels great, and it offers a good variety of configuration options that help you dial in a ratio of price-to-performance that works for you.

It's ultimately up to you to decide if the un-glamorous benefits of a mobile workstation are worth the inflated price tag. But if they are, then I have no qualms recommending this laptop.

#equipment #reviews #computerreview #g8 #hp #hpzbook #hpzbookstudio #hpzbookstudiog8 #laptop #laptopreview #photoediting #review #studiog8 #videoediting #zbook #zbookstudiog8

Razer Blade 15 Advanced Review: Small Update, Huge Performance Gain

When Razer announced the "mid-2021" Blade 15 Advanced back in May, it seemed like a standard refresh. The company swapped out the 10th-Gen Intel CPUs in the "early-2021" model for 11th-Gen processors and added a new anti-fingerprint coating to the chassis. No big deal, right? Wrong -- that 11th-Gen processor has allowed Razer to upgrade just about everything under the hood of the latest Advanced model, leading to a huge performance uplift.

The switch to 11th-Gen Intel adds support for faster storage, faster RAM, and better connectivity, all while improving overall performance in every single benchmark that we've run.

Since we've already reviewed several Razer Blade laptops on PetaPixel in the past -including the AMD Ryzen-based Blade 14 just last month -- this is going to be a fairly straightforward review. I won't spend much time on the Blade's build quality or explain (again) why I approve of Razer trading a little bit of performance for a thin, sleek design that is, therefore, harder to cool.

The main point of this review is to compare the latest Blade 15 Advanced with the 11th-Gen Intel Core i9-11900H against the previous model that maxed out at a 10th-Gen Core i7-10875H and the ASUS G14 with the excellent AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS. I was lucky enough to have all three laptops on hand during this review, which allowed me to evaluate just how much the Blade 15 Advanced has improved with this one internal upgrade, and whether or not that upgrade alone makes the Blade 15 Advanced a worthwhile purchase.

The mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced comes in several different configurations depending on the CPU, GPU, and display that you go with. We reviewed the $3,400 variant with the 4K OLED display. (click for high res)

Our review unit is the most expensive variant of the Blade 15 Advanced, which comes with the aforementioned Core i9 processor, NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU with 16GB of VRAM (95W variant), 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 storage, and a 60Hz 4K OLED display that supposedly covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

Weighing in at $3,400, it's definitely not a cheap computer, but it's also not outrageously priced given the quality of the hardware and the build quality of the computer itself.

Design and Build Quality

In terms of design and build quality, the latest Blade 15 Advanced is essentially identical to every other Razer laptop we've reviewed. Check out our review of the Blade 14 or the Blade Studio Edition if you want a deeper dive.

Suffice it to say that Razer puts a lot of emphasis on the strength and sleekness of this aluminum unibody design, opting for high-end components and a thin, rigid chassis that I personally quite like. I'll touch on the performance trade-off further down, but in terms of design, the keyboard is still excellent, the trackpad is still one of the smoothest and most responsive on the market, and the overall fit-and-finish is still Apple-esque in its attention to detail.

As such, I'm only going to call out four design elements from the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced. In order of importance, we have: the excellent OLED display, the improved port selection, the Full HD webcam, and the new anti-fingerprint coating.

The Display

The most expensive (and only the most expensive) variant of the Blade 15 Advanced comes with an excellent 4K OLED display that claims 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. In our testing, the display only fell 1% short of that claim and did so with an excellent Delta E 2000 of less than 1. Anything below a Delta E of 2 is considered invisible to the human eye, and less than 1 is on par with the best displays we've ever tested.

As a bonus, it also covers nearly 98% of the AdobeRGB color gamut, making this one of the best laptop displays we have ever tested, even among 4K OLEDs.

This is a significant improvement over the previous 4K OLED in last year's Blade, which managed a full 100% of DCI-P3 but only 90% of AdobeRGB in my testing. That's significant for photographers who prefer to work in Adobe's color space rather than the cinema-standard DCI-P3.

Improved Port Selection

Razer also improved the port selection on the new Blade Advanced. You're still looking at three USB Type-A ports, two USB Type-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, an audio jack, and a UHS-III SD Card slot, but instead of one Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, you now get two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one on each side of the computer.

That gives you two ports that can transfer data at 40Gbps, charge the device, and/or drive external displays up to 8K resolution at 30Hz uncompressed or 60Hz with Display Stream Compression (DSC).

For professional, color-critical workflows that rely on Thunderbolt, having two TB4 ports is a huge benefit. I also like it because the previous model had no markings on the chassis to tell you which USB-C port was Thunderbolt and which wasn't. Consider this the best way to say the problem has been solved.

Full HD Webcam

The vast majority of laptops, including extremely expensive top-shelf models, still use god-awful 720p webcams that have no business existing in the year 2021. I understand not spending a ridiculous amount of money putting a nice camera inside of a thin laptop bezel, but given the massive shift from office work to work-from-home, a nice webcam is practically a necessity.

The mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced trades that poor 720p webcam for a 1080p Full HD camera that looks significantly better, without giving up nice-to-have features like Windows Hello facial recognition.

Anti-fingerprint Coating

The last and least important update was the addition of an anti-fingerprint coating. It seems silly to even mention it, but the previous model was just SO bad that I have to call this out. The moment you started using any previous Blade laptop with a black coating it was covered in smudges and fingerprints, making me wish that Razer offered a silver version of the Advanced model.

The new anti-fingerprint coating is not perfect, and I do still wish that there was a silver version of the Blade 15 Base and Advanced models, but the new coating represents a huge improvement over that fingerprint magnet that Razer used to use.

Photo Editing Performance

The main criticism leveled at Razer over the years is that it prioritize style over substance. By choosing to make the Blade laptops ever thinner, it is difficult to properly cool the components inside and so you either have to thermally throttle your CPU and GPU, or you have to go with a less powerful variant of the same.

To some extent, this is still the case with the latest Blade 15 Advanced.

In exchange for that sleek aluminum unibody design, you're limited to a Core i9-11900H instead of the more powerful i9-11980HK you'll find in top-tier gaming laptops, and the Blade uses the 95-105W variant of the NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU instead of the maxed out 155-165W card that some beefier options are able to support. Personally, I've always thought that this trade-off is worth it (possibly because I've used Apple computers for so long), but still wanted to mention it.

If you're looking for a laptop that prioritizes performance above and beyond all else, there are other options out there. Just be prepared for a bulkier, louder laptop that won't put as much emphasis on design and build quality.

That said, the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced is no slouch in the performance department. In fact, it's downright excellent. The upgrade to 11th-Gen Intel doesn't just mean a faster CPU with a larger built-in cache, the new Blade 15 also supports up to 4TB of faster PCIe 4.0 storage and up to 64GB of faster 3200MHz RAM. And since the 11th-gen chips run a little bit cooler, the mid-2015 Blade is able to push the GPU a little bit harder, boosting to a TGP of 105W instead of 95W.

All of this together translates into a huge performance uplift in every benchmark we've run: Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Capture One 21 all benefit. For the benchmarks below, we tested three machines: the early-2021 Blade 15 Advanced, the 2021 ASUS Zephyrus G14, and the new mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced.

Full specifications below:

Lightroom Classic

Import, preview generation, and export all see big gains with the latest Blade 15. Previously, the ASUS G14 was the fastest laptop we'd tested in Lightroom Classic thanks to the AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and that laptops's support for faster 3200MHz RAM. Now that Intel has caught up, the latest Blade 15 doesn't just match the Ryzen 9 5900HS, it exceeds it.

First, we imported and generated 1:1 previews, using 110 Sony a7R IV and 150 PhaseOne XF RAW files:

The results were kind of shocking, but we ran these tests a minimum of three times in a row on all three machines using the exact same settings. Ultimately, import and preview generation is heavily dependent on raw CPU performance, and the 11th-Gen i9 flexes serious muscle here.

We then applied a custom preset to each batch of RAW photos and exported them as both full-res 100% JPEGs and 16-bit TIFFs:

As you can see, the early-2021 Blade 15 can't quite keep up with the ASUS G14 despite the Core i7-10875H's crazy 5.1GHz boost clock. Being limited to 2933MHz RAM and struggling to stay cool inside the Blade's thin aluminum chassis, it falls short. According to Adobe, import, preview generation, and export do not use GPU acceleration in Lightroom Classic, so these numbers are all down to CPU, RAM amount, and RAM speed.

Capture One 21

When we run these same tests in Capture One 21, the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced yet again steals the crown from the ASUS G14 in all but one test, and outperforms the early-2021 model by a lot more than we initially expected.

As before, import generation sees a substantial boost. Although it's worth pointing out that Capture One is creating smaller 2560px previews, so these results are not comparable between programs:

In terms of export performance, the Blade makes a much bigger leap when encoding TIFFs as opposed to JPEGs. Exporting 100% JPEGs still saw a big jump, helping the Blade to (almost) match the ASUS G14, but when it comes to TIFFs the Blade reigns supreme:

Because Capture One is using hardware acceleration for both import/preview generation and export, the Blade 15 was always supposed to win this contest -- it contains a beefier NVIDIA RTX 3080 with way more VRAM and at least 25W more power. Surprisingly, the early-2021 model lost to the ASUS G14 in every category, but now that the Intel CPU is pulling its own weight, we see the results we've always expected.

Photoshop

Last but certainly not least, Photoshop performance also benefits significantly from the faster CPU and faster RAM in the latest Blade 15 Advanced. We ran Puget Systems' excellent PugetBench benchmark (v0.8, the last version to include Photo Merge), and saw a significant improvement in every single category.

Despite the lower TurboBoost clock speed of the i9-11900H (4.9GHz instead of 5.1GHz), the new CPU's faster base clock (2.5GHz instead of 2.3GHz), increased CPU cache (24MB instead of 16MB), and support for 3200MHz RAM helps the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced earn the highest score we've ever seen from any computer we've tested, including the M1 Mac mini.

As a reminder, the scores break down into an Overall scores and four category scores: General, GPU, Filter, and Photo Merge:

I'm no huge fan of the Intel versus AMD discussion -- just give me the one that works best -- but it's not an exaggeration to say that the 11th-Gen Core i9 has transformed the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced into a much better value than the early-2021 model. The new CPU has allowed Razer to produce a lot more performance out of the same exact chassis. That's no small feat.

As a bonus, it puts some pressure on AMD, who has been kicking Intel's butt all over the playground for the last couple of years. If the performance above is anything to judge by, Intel is finally ready to strike back.

A Huge Performance Leap

On the surface, the upgrade from the "early-2021" version of the Blade 15 Advanced to the "mid-2021" version seems pretty minor -- jumping up to the latest generation of Intel processor doesn't always mean much. But in this particular case, it has totally transformed this computer.

We were already fans of Razer's design and build quality, and occasionally cut the Blade series a bit of slack on that account, but this latest build doesn't really require us to do that. Thanks to the faster CPU, faster RAM, faster storage, better display, and better ports, there is very little to legitimately complain about.

Pros

Much faster CPU
Support for up to 64GB of 3200MHz RAM
Support for up to 4TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage via two M.2 slots
Exceptional 4K OLED display with excellent coverage of both DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB
Extensive I/O with HDMI 2.1, two Thunderbolt 4 Ports, and a UHS-III SD card slot
1080p Full HD webcam with Windows Hello support
New anti-fingerprint coating

Cons

Poor battery life when doing serious computing
OLED display only available on most expensive model
Core i9 CPU only available on most expensive model
Expensive

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you're looking for the best combination of price-to-performance, then a Blade laptop probably isn't for you. You can almost always cobble together the same CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, etc. in a cheaper chassis for a little less money. But you're going to give up a lot more than you realize when you chase affordability or prioritize specs like a 165W TGP and an ever-so-slightly faster CPU.

To me, a slight decrease in overall performance -- probably meager when it comes to photo and video editing application -- compared to the top-shelf gaming PCs on the market is worth it when you factor in the quality of key components like the display, the keyboard, the trackpad, the webcam, and the I/O.

But the TL;DR comes down to this : with the release of the mid-2021 Razer Blade 15 Advanced, Razer has added way more than $100 worth of performance for only $100 more in MSRP.

Are There Alternatives?

Every time Intel unveils its latest generation of CPUs, you can expect most PC makers to release updated versions of flagship laptops. That's what happen with the "mid-2021" Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which was joined by alternatives like the latest [MSI GS76 Stealth](https://www.adorama.com/msigs7611078.html?kbid=67085” rel=“norewrite sponsored”) or the latest Dell XPS 17. These two models in particular feature 4K UHD displays that claim 100% coverage of Adobe RGB, making them both a solid choice for content creation.

If you want to go even more powerful, you can go with something like the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 6, Alienware x17, or MSI GE76 Raider, which all feature the more powerful i9-11980HK CPU and an NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU that can handle 155W - 165W of juice -- that's pretty much the most powerful GPU you can currently put in a laptop until you start cramming in desktop components and adding a second AC adapter. Unfortunately, of these three options, only the Alienware x17 features a color-accurate 4K display; the other two use high-refresh-rate Full HD displays that are aimed at gamers, not creative professionals.

Finally, another great option is to go with an AMD Ryzen system like the ASUS Zephyrus G14 we tested, its big brother the ASUS Zephyrus G15, the Lenovo Legion 7 or Legion Slim 7, or Razer's own Blade 14. All of these are fantastic options, but pay attention to the display configuration since most offer a choice between a high-refresh-rate Full HD display with 100% sRGB coverage, or a slower but more color-accurate QHD display that can covers 100% of DCI-P3.

Should You Buy It?

Yes.

With the early-2021 model of the Blade 15 Advanced, we were on the fence. With faster, cheaper, cooler processors like the Ryzen 9 5900HS and HX often selling in computers there were $500 to $1,000 cheaper, the entire justification for going Razer came down to design, build quality, and usability.

With the addition of an 11th-Gen Intel CPU, an even better OLED display that covers over 97% of both DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB, faster memory, faster storage, and a killer port selection, the mid-2021 Blade 15 Advanced is no longer "on the fence." It's actually a great value for the hardware that's packed inside.

At the time of publication, I have no problem recommending the $3,400 model to any creative who wants a professional-grade laptop and/or desktop replacement.

#equipment #reviews #adobergb #blade15 #computerreview #dcip3 #laptopreview #oled #pc #photoediting #postprocessing #razer #razerblade15 #razerblade152021 #razerblade15advanced #razerreview #review #srgb

Razer Blade 14 Review: Made for Gamers, Great for Creators

The Razer Blade 14 released just a few short weeks ago is aimed squarely at gamers. The headline on the Razer website is "the world's most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop." But don't be fooled by the glowing green logo and the RGB-backlit keyboard: with its AMD CPU, NVIDIA GPU, and color-accurate QHD display, the Blade 14 is an ideal choice for photo and video editors who are looking for a PC that's portable and powerful.

Many factors came together to make a laptop like the Razer Blade 14 possible in the first place. Just a few years ago, this much power in a chassis this thin and light would have been impossible without serious thermal throttling or some crazy cooling solution. Razer kept the crazy cooling solution, but thanks to AMD, there's less worry about thermals.

The Blade 14's claim to fame is that it's Razer's first laptop to feature an AMD Ryzen CPU: the unlocked 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 9 5900HX with a base clock of 3.3GHz and a maximum boost clock of 4.6GHz. Thanks to AMD's 7nm Zen 3 architecture, the 5900HX can deliver all of this performance while consuming less power and therefore generating less heat than the Intel Core chips that Razer has traditionally relied on.

The more efficient CPU, combined with a vapor chamber cooling solution, has enabled Razer to spec this machine with a lot more power than you could previously run inside a 14-inch chassis that's also extremely thin. The Blade 14 comes in three flavors depending on your preferred GPU, display, and budget, but all of them manage to cram in the 5900HX, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of fast SSD storage:

The variant we're testing in this review is the "midrange" $2,200 model with the QHD display and RTX 3070 graphics card, and honestly, that's probably the version I would recommend to most creators. The downgrade to the RTX 3060 probably wouldn't hurt photo editing performance very much, but the 3060 variant is limited to a Full HD display with "up to" 100% sRGB, so it's a no-go for many creatives.

Design and Build

No matter which variant you buy, you won't be disappointed by the build quality of this laptop.

The Bade 14 lives up to Razer's reputation for crafting some of the sturdiest and sleekest laptops on the market. Every detail is top-shelf: from the rigid aluminum chassis, to high refresh rate QHD display, to the port selection, to the responsive low-profile keyboard and the ultra-smooth glass trackpad that rivals, nay, exceeds the high bar set by Apple in the MacBook Pro.

Admittedly, Razer's gaming DNA does (literally) shine through on a few details. The backlit keyboard with per-key RGB lighting and the single color option -- Razer's trademark matte-black-with-glowing-green-logo -- are high quality, but a bit of a letdown if you want to give off "clean-cut professional" vibes. I'd have loved to see a silver version like the Razer Blade Studio, especially since the matte-black finish is a horrendous fingerprint magnet. But I'll forgive the focus on flare because there's plenty of substance under the surface.

Most obvious from a daily use standpoint are the screen quality and the robust battery life.

Going in, I was worried about the color accuracy of a high-refresh-rate screen designed for gaming, but the 165Hz QHD display on the Blade 14 performed admirably in our tests. We profiled the display using an i1Display Pro Plus through DisplayCAL and found that it lived up to the (somewhat hedged) promise of "up to" 100 percent DCI-P3, covering 96.7 percent of the cinema color gamut. It was also able to hit a respectable 83.5 percent AdobeRGB, a max brightness of 350 nits, and it did it all with a maximum Delta E of less than two in our extended color patch test.

It's good, but admittedly not on par with the excellent 4K OLED display available in the Blade 15 models. Additionally, I had to keep the display at 100% brightness during photo editing sessions, as white balance shifted noticeably with dimming. But for a 165Hz display in a 14-inch gaming laptop, it's more than good enough for color-critical work.

Blade 14 color gamut (colored outline) overlaid on the DCI-P3 gamut (dashed gray line)

The (relatively small) 61.6WHr battery also surprised me. Thanks in part to the more efficient AMD CPU, I could stay unplugged for six hours during a regular day's work. If tasks got a bit heavier and I wanted to take full advantage of the CPU/GPU combo I usually plugged in, as battery life would plummet to about two hours under heavy load, but that's to be expected when you're running such powerful hardware and a high refresh rate display.

This is the first PC laptop I've used that properly competes with Apple's Intel-based MacBook Pros when it comes to battery life without sacrificing performance, especially if I took the refresh rate down to 60Hz in the display settings. It can't match the ultra-efficient M1 MacBook Pro with its insane battery performance, but if you want an Apple laptop with a discrete GPU there isn't an M1 option anyway -- you're stuck with the much larger 16-inch until Apple releases the rumored M1X.

Finally, in terms of input options, the tiny laptop has a surprising number of ports. There is no SD card slot ( shakes fist at the heavens ) but you get two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports (not Thunderbolt) with power delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 protocol, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.1mm headphone and mic combo port. It is a very solid complement of ports for a device this small.

All in all, I'm confident in saying that the Blade 14 is the best-built 14-inch laptop on the market. Razer gets a lot of flack for making such expensive laptops -- you can usually get similar specs for a bit less if you go with a brand like ASUS or MSI -- but the devil is in the details. Details like a great keyboard, a great trackpad, a premium display, and a rock-solid chassis.

It's these details that make a laptop a joy (or a pain) to use, and Razer continues to set the bar for premium PC laptops.

Photo Editing Performance

When it comes to performance on our Lightroom, Photoshop, and (new) Capture One benchmarks, the Blade 14 excels in some tasks and falls short of our hopes in others. We'll get into "why" in a second, but first, let's just look at the raw numbers.

As always, every benchmark was run with the laptop plugged in and fully charged, with the power settings configured to the most aggressive performance mode. Apps were configured to take full advantage of GPU acceleration where available, and all of the times in the charts below are the average of at least three consecutive runs ("at least three" because, if there's a weird outlier, we throw it out and run the test again right away).

For today's comparison, we tested the Razer Blade 14 against an M1 iMac (times should be nearly identical to an M1 MacBook Pro), an Intel-based 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a 2021 ASUS G14 that boasts similar specs to the Blade 14 with a slightly downgraded CPU and GPU, a lower resolution screen, and lower price of $1,500.

You can see the specs of our test machines below:

In Lightroom Classic, we ran our usual import/export tests. 110 Sony Alpha 7R IV and 150 PhaseOne XF raw files were imported with 1:1 previews, heavily edited using some custom-built presets, and then exported twice: once as 100% JPEGs (sRGB) and once as 16-bit uncompressed TIFFs (AdobeRGB).

As you can see, in Lightroom, the M1 still reigns supreme:

We then ran these same import/export tests in Capture One 21. The only difference is that C1 has no 1:1 preview setting, so previews were rendered at the default resolution of 2560 pixels on each machine.

In theory, this should speed up preview generation and slow down export times compared to Lightroom Classic, but as you can see, Capture One is actually faster at both tasks. Unlike Lightroom, C1 can actually take advantage of the NVIDIA GPU inside the Blade 14 and ASUS G14. That translates into much faster export times, despite applying identical edits in both programs.

Note : The import times for the Intel MacBook Pro are not a typo -- for whatever reason, the 13-inch MBP was much faster at importing the 150 PhaseOne XF files than the 110 Sony Alpha 7R IV files.

Finally, for Photoshop, we ran the beta version 0.8 of Puget Systems' excellent PugetBench benchmark. We use this version because it was the last variant to include the Photo Merge test, and we've been using it since the beginning of our laptop testing. This allows us to compare scores across a wide range of machines if we so desire.

Keep in mind that the "GPU" score is based on the average speed of five different tasks: Rotate, Smart Sharpen, Field Blur, Tilt-Shift Blur, and Iris Blur. These are tools and filters that benefit most from GPU acceleration, but they still rely heavily on CPU performance, which is why the M1 is able to keep up despite having no discrete GPU.

The Blade 14 does very well in both Photoshop and Capture One 21, consistently clocking the best times in C1. And yet, this same computer loses (badly) to both the M1 iMac and the Intel MacBook Pro across all import and export tasks in Lightroom Classic. The question is "why?" and the answer is pretty straightforward: RAM.

As far as we can tell, import and export times in Lightroom Classic are based on three factors: CPU performance, the amount of RAM, and the speed of that RAM, with the speed of the RAM playing a much more important role than most people realize.

The Intel-based MacBook Pro we use for testing is my personal machine, which has 32GB of very fast 3733MHz LPDDR4X, giving it a leg up over the Blade in terms of both RAM speed and RAM amount. Meanwhile, the M1 Mac computers only feature 16GB of RAM, but it's blazing fast "unified" memory that "dramatically improves performance and power efficiency" according to Apple's own documentation. You can learn more about the technical details of Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) in this great article on How to Geek, but basically, it allows the CPU to access system memory much faster than the RAM you'll find in most computers.

The takeaway for Lightroom Classic users is this: a fast CPU isn't enough. You need fast RAM and, ideally, lots of it.

This is the Blade 14's Achilles heel, because the RAM cannot be upgraded. You are limited to the 16GB of DDR4-3200MHz that Razer soldered to the motherboard, and that's going to be a deal-breaker for performance fiends who are mainly working in programs that either can't or won't take better advantage of the GPU.

Portable, Powerful, Premium

If you're looking for an ultra-portable PC for photo and video editing, it doesn't get any better than the Razer Blade 14. Not only does the laptop maintain Razer's gold standard for build quality and refined design, but it does it while packing in a more powerful CPU and GPU than any other laptop in its class, alongside a color-accurate, high-refresh-rate display that can transition seamlessly from gaming to creative work.

This is a proper MacBook killer if you're using programs like Capture One that can take advantage of that GPU to speed up your workflow.

The only place where the laptop falls flat is the RAM limitation. Shipping it with 16GB is one thing, and preventing users from upgrading to 32GB -whether it's because of a limitation on the thermal design or a trade-off Razer made in order to achieve such a thin chassis -is going to be a deal-breaker for people working with lots of large RAW files.

Pros

Most powerful CPU and GPU in any laptop this size
165Hz QHD display with solid color accuracy
Premium build quality
Excellent keyboard and trackpad
Great battery life
Upgradable M.2 storage

Cons

Stuck with 16GB of RAM
No 4K option for resolution fiends
Matte-black finish is a fingerprint nightmare
Premium build = premium price

Every time Razer releases a top-tier laptop, PC buyers have to ask themselves a question: is a premium laptop worth the premium price? With Apple, there's no choice. If you want MacOS, you pretty much have to pay whatever Apple is asking. But PC users have a plethora of choices, often with similar or identical specs, at a variety of price options that fluctuate based on the build quality and other design elements that are included or left out.

For me, the answer is almost always yes. If I'm going to be working on a laptop day-in and day-out, I'd rather spend more on a machine that's been designed to delight and built to last. Razer always nails it on those two points, and the Blade 14 is no exception.

The fact that the Blade 14 comes with a slightly faster CPU and slightly faster GPU than competitors like the ASUS G14 is of no consequence to me. We're talking about saving seconds, not minutes, in popular photo and video editing applications. What wins me over is the trifecta of portability, power, and premium design -- a category that the Razer Blade 14 has all to itself as far as I'm concerned.

Are There Alternatives?

If you're committed to using Windows the main competition is the 2021 ASUS Zephyrus G14, which has a toned-down Ryzen 9 5900HS (not the HX) and a lower-wattage NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU with only 6GB of VRAM. However, it can still be configured with a QHD display that claims 100% DCI-P3 coverage, and ASUS lets you upgrade to 32GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM, which is a huge plus for creative work.

All of this, including the extra RAM, comes in at $2,000 -- that's $200 less than the Blade 14 variant we were testing with the RTX 3070.

If you're willing to switch to macOS, there's just no getting around it: Apple's M1 chip is shockingly good at both photo and video editing. Even without a discrete GPU, you can expect better performance from a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro in many editing tasks, and it'll cost you less: the 8-core CPU/8-core GPU variant with 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage is "only" $1,900.

Should You Buy It?

I'd venture to guess that most people reading this review are not considering a Mac, in which case, the answer is yes. At this size and weight, there is simply no other laptop that can compete with the Razer Blade 14 on both performance and build quality.

With more RAM, the ASUS G14 will undoubtedly outperform the Blade in most Lightroom import and export tasks, as well as in Photoshop, but you have to be willing to give up the premium design and build quality that makes the Razer Blade lineup stand out. I, for one, am not willing to make that trade just to save a couple of hundred bucks.

The fact that it earns me a slightly faster CPU and slightly beefier GPU in the bargain… that's just a bonus.

#editorial #equipment #reviews #amd #apple #asus #asusg14 #blade #blade14 #comparison #computerreview #intel #laptop #laptopreview #m1 #mac #nvidiagpu #nvidiartx3070 #photoediting #portable #powerful #razer #razerblade14 #review #videoediting

Unboxing New Apple Mac Mini M1 2021 Setup Review
https://youtu.be/xfhHb_f6Ilw
Aaron Garcia unboxes the new Apple Mac Mini M1 with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD from Best Buy. The new computer is incredibly fast using Apple's own silicon instead of a traditional Intel processor. He chooses a dual monitor setup with two Walmart 22" Surf Onn monitors, Bo
https://www.aarongarcia.net/2021/03/07/unboxing-new-apple-mac-mini-m1-2021-setup-review/
#Computers #Apple #computerreview #Computers #MacMiniM1

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