Razer Book 13 review: Built for productivity

The new Razer Book 13 is the gaming firm's second attempt at building a laptop for work, not gaming. It feels like a follow-up to the original Razer Blade Stealth (2015), which started off as a ultrabook, but has since evolved into a thin-and-light gaming ultrabook with a dedicated Nvidia graphics chip. In comparison, the classy-looking Razer Book (not a hint of green anywhere) will not look out of place in a boardroom.

Quick specs

13.4-inch 1,920 x 1,200-pixel touchscreen
Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor with 16GB system memory
1.4kg
55 watt-hour battery

With a 13.4-inch near-bezel-less display and compact footprint, the Razer Book 13 reminds me of the premium Dell XPS 13 notebook. Both laptops feel incredibly sturdy and well-built. Personally, I prefer the Dell's carbon fibre palm rest, which feels more comfortable than the Razer's cool metal finish. Dell also offers 512GB/1TB options for its solid-state drive (SSD) compared to 256GB/512GB for the Razer. But Razer gets my vote on the connectivity front. It has HDMI, USB Type-A and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, while the Dell only has two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The only concession to Razer's gaming roots is in the keyboard backlight. You can customise the colour of each key's backlight with the preloaded Razer Synapse app. Warning: the backlight is extremely bright at its maximum setting. More importantly, the keys feel tactile, not mushy. The touchpad is relatively large so there is ample space for Windows 10's multi-touch gestures. Sandwiching the keyboard are the stereo speakers. They are plenty loud, but there isn't much bass to speak of.

Like the Acer Swift 5 and the Asus ZenBook Flip S, the Razer Book is an Intel Evo laptop. These Intel-certified notebooks are touted for their responsiveness and long battery life. The Razer Book certainly lived up to its billing. The laptop breezed through typical scenarios such as Web browsing and office productivity tasks. It scored 4,909 in the PCMark 10 benchmark, which is similar to the Acer Swift 5 (4,974). However, the bottom of the laptop gets pretty warm while running benchmarks. In addition, the Razer is also not built for gaming. While an upgrade over its predecessor, the integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics is not quite as good as a dedicated one. It is decent enough for casual and older games, though. On the other hand, the Razer clocked an impressive 10hr 27min in a video-loop battery test at maximum screen brightness.

My S$2,649 review unit comes with a 1,080p touchscreen with a 60Hz refresh rate (definitely not for gamers). If that is too rich for you, Razer offers a S$1,899 Core i5 version (with a 1,080p non-touch screen and 8GB of RAM). Conversely, the top of the line model (S$3,299) upgrades the screen to a 4K touch version and a 512GB SSD. All three models are available from Razer's Singapore store, as well as e-commerce platforms Shopee and Lazada

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Note: Review unit provided by Razer.

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