Hi everyone,

After being an Alienware customer for over a decade I recently decided to switch teams and bought my first Razer laptop about a week ago. I’m fairly satisfied bar a few oddities I’d like to report/discuss, hopefully for the development team to consider. Please be aware I will be making comparisons to your (nearest) competition (Dell/Alienware) as this is the only other reference point I have.

The first and probably the biggest issue I have is with the RGB behaviour upon pressing either of the Fn keys. For those unaware - it seems to be the default to turn the entire backlight off and light only the F1-F12 and arrow keys in white only for the duration of the Fn key being pressed down, regardless of any personalised chroma settings. While I understand the initial logic behind this - to have you focused on the secondary functions usually associated with F1-12 keys, it’s very clear that it’s one of those ideas that sounded good on paper. In reality, and especially for non-US keyboard layouts where secondary functions on F keys are NOT lit, it becomes a huge headache. US customers can at the very least see which white-lit F key does what as a secondary but that doesn’t change the absolute awkwardness of any other binds (like those used by synapse i.e. Fn+P, Fn+R) where you have to start the sequence from the actual key the desired function you want to enable is tied to AND then press Fn cause you’re working blind if you start the sequence in a normal fashion. That is to say if I want to, for instance, switch the refresh rate using Fn+R and I’m in a dark environment, I have to press R first and Fn second, otherwise I have trouble finding the R button when Fn press disables the entire backlight. It’s hugely counterproductive, the default white the F1-12 and arrow keys change to cannot be configured either and I wonder - why ?? Full RGB gaming laptops are supposed to be customizable and give the customers the freedom to do what they want and this is the exact opposite, except with drawbacks only. It seems such an easy fix too - Razer doesn’t need to program anything, just release a bios update disabling that behaviour and allowing customers to enjoy their personalized Chroma settings 100% of the time. This would be a blessing for non-US keyboard users too, as more light coming from the rest of the keyboard makes the unlit secondary function icons on the keys a little more visible. Please consider changing this in future updates folks.

Let’s talk about Synapse. I’ve seen opinions on both sides of the spectrum - some love it, others hate it. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. This type of OEM software is on constant feedback-development cycle so I hope my two cents can help to improve it. Issues I’ve encountered are as follows:

Performance Mode doesn’t save between profiles i.e. if I set two profiles, say “default” and “gaming” and try to set balanced mode on my default and switch the dropdown to the gaming profile to set a custom mode with max fan speed there, the last setting applies to both profiles. Strangely enough it is not the case for Chroma/Lighting settings across the profiles. There the different profile settings save to their individual profiles just fine. Awkward. (I have tried a clean Synapse reinstall - still the same thing) Please look into it.

Automatic switching of performance modes is convoluted and doesn’t work most of the time. What I mean by that is in order for a hassle-free automated switch of PMode upon firing up a game, you have to make a separate device profile and link it to a game. Why? As a comparison, in Alienware’s Command Center all you need to do is link a game to a library inside the AWCC and you can even set different performance modes for different games if you want to. After that, you don’t even have to use AWCC library to launch the game from - as long as AWCC is running in the background, clicking a game shortcut will enable the same performance mode set for that specific game in AWCC anyway. Bigger issue however is that the performance profiles tied to device profiles with linked games don’t seem to switch back to your default non-game-linked profile when you exit the game/s. All together I think Synapse managed a seamless transition from a game-linked performance device profile back to a non-game-linked default balanced profile automatically a just a single time during the entire week and a half of me using it. I have to rely on manual switching i.e. Fn+P which is infuriating due to the first issue I’ve reported at the very top. Can you look into tying P states to Nvidia Optimus being enabled when a game starts? Honestly, ANY other way of doing this would be better. Creating a thousand profiles, linking games to them manually is an absolute fun killer at the moment. AWCC just has a Library tab that lets you scan your system for games in seconds and lets you manually set a performance mode for each game, individually from the default system performance profile that it goes back to whenever you exit a game. So simple.

Last thing I wanted to mention is about the battery/power settings and behaviour. I know that Razer has been having some looong standing issues with batteries bulging left right and center. It’s not uncommon in the “thin-and-light” space. I’ve had this issue occur once in my AW laptop as well. It’s not so much your fault or the fault of the battery manufacturer but the constrains of the current laptop form factor combined with increasingly powerful Intel and Nvidia hardware. Where Razer adds to this with your design language is the material of the case. While it is absolutely gorgeous it doesn’t help the issue. I understand that marketing your cases as additional heatsinks has some benefits for the brand, in reality there is no hardware to move air around the case so it just acts like a frying pan (literally, this is the material used by the best stainless steel cookware producers because of how fast it conducts heat) and combined with the standard heat generated by the battery during charge/discharge cycles, results in bulging that’s much more accelerated in comparison to the competition. I am aware that Razer, along with other companies, is moving away from the ultra-slim form factor for several reasons including this one, but the Blade 15 and 14 will still be around for some time I imagine. It’s nice to see you implement stop-gap measures like the custom battery charge limit in Synapse but I don’t think it’s enough. What is missing is the option to also set when the battery charging should kick in. What I mean by that is that users should be able to chose the % below which the battery STARTS to charge as well as when they’d like it to stop. This should be combined with a BIOS update that disconnects the battery from the loop when the AC is turned on and the lower battery percentage charge limit is set. This would allow the battery to discharge veeeery slowly when AC is turned on actually saving power cycles in the process since now it just charges back up to the desired upper limit regardless if it was only a couple of % down when the AC gets plugged  in. The limit should be increased to 90 - I know Razer isn’t a bunch of fools, you’ve most likely ran a lot of tests and decided the upper limit based on that plus an additional little safety margin but foregoing 1/5th of your battery capacity for the sake of additional component longevity is a steep price and impacts the portability a bit too much imo. If you allow it to trickle down on its own while AC-plugged, it will move away from that 90 that I think you’re still uncomfortable about in terms of RMA’s to do with bulging. All Dell and Alienware laptops have these options/work like that and in my case it allowed me to maintain a pristine battery capacity with no bulging issues for 4 years straight until I bought my Blade 15 this year. Consider it please, it costs adding an option to Synapse and having everyone update their BIOS as far as I’m aware.

Another issue is the failure to boot from hibernation. A lot of people prefer it because it uses much less power than sleep and you can just leave your laptop alone once you’re done with it for the day, go to sleep, wake up the next day and you don’t have to worry about having to charge it before work or school. It’s simply a shame to have to disable it just to be able to get into the system when you wake your laptop up. Anyways …

These are all my thoughts/feedback for the moment. I’d just like to say that I am generally very pleased with your product and I think I can attempt to speak for everyone who is having any minor issues with Razer - if there’s frustration it comes not from the fact that we instantly hate you guys if something goes wrong but that we like your products so much we would love to see them perfect!

Regards,

Marcin