Razer’s Blade 15 Base is $ 500 off today, but this Asus Zephyrus G14 deal is the one I would choose

Pop quiz: what’s the best price, $ 500 for a Razer Blade laptop, or $ 150 for an Asus Zephyrus G14? This may depend on whether you need a webcam, because the Asus is in every other way the laptop I would buy today.

That’s not to say there’s anything specifically wrong with the Razer Blade 15 Base at the unprecedented price of $ 1,099 at Amazon (regularly $ 1,599): aside from the meager 256 GB of fixed storage, you’re looking at a fast 6- core Core i7 -10750H processor, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics capable of tackling the greatest titles of all time, a 144Hz 1080p screen, plus plenty of ports packed in a sleek black CNC aluminum chassis with single-zone RGB -lighting. The agreement at midnight PT Sunday.

But for only $ 100 more, you can currently get the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 at Best Buy for $ 1,199, which happens to be our choice for the best ultra-portable laptop you can buy. While its Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics may actually be slightly slower than the 1660 Ti (depending on the game) and there are no Thunderbolt ports, you probably see almost double the battery life of its 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS chip – plus a 1TB SSD that should actually be able to hold a decent range of games. It weighs much less at just over 3.5 pounds; compared to £ 4.7 for the Razer.

It’s just based on the spec sheet: you can read our entire review for more, or our Razer Blade Stealth 13 review, where the Asus still managed to blow a newer and lighter Razer laptop out of the water.

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14

Prices obtained during publication.

The ROG Zephyrus G14 is an amazingly powerful laptop. Its AMD Ryzen 9 processor and RTX 2060 Max-Q can deliver powerful, smooth graphics performance in games with its 120Hz refresh rate display, while also being surprisingly efficient for other tasks.

That being said, I could still easily see you choosing the Razer for the slightly more powerful graphics, the $ 100 cheaper price, the sleek profile, the obscure design or that all-important webcam.

And remember, none of these machines have the latest and greatest graphics: Nvidia’s RTX 30 series laptop GPUs are starting to run low. If you do not need a new machine soon, it may be worth waiting a while to see what an RTX 3060 laptop can do for you – like the upgraded Zephyrus G14, at $ 1499, on a new order.