Review: The Razer Book 13 is a Decent First Try at a Productivity Laptop That Misses the Mark

At the end of 2020, Razer released their first ever productivity-focused laptops, the Razer Book. Razer was kind enough to loan me the base model Razer Book 13 and I’ve been playing around with it for a couple of weeks now. Long story short, this is a decent first attempt that looks the part. There’s quite a bit more to the story though, so read on for the full review.

First things first, the model I was sent has the following specs:

• 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 Quad-Core Processor

• Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics

• 13.4" Full HD Matte 60Hz

• 256GB NVMe SSD

• 8GB dual-channel (fixed) RAM

• Per-Key RGB, powered by Razer Chroma™

• Anti-Ghosting

• Intel® Wireless-AX 201 (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax)

• Bluetooth® 5.1

• 2 Speakers + Smart Amp

• THX® Spatial Audio

• 4 Mic Array

The laptop measure in at 0.60”x 7.80” x 11.60” according to the site and when I weighed it on a digital scale it came in at 2 lbs 14.625 oz or 2.914 lbs instead of the advertised 2.95 lbs. Close enough.

I went ahead and ran some benchmarks using Geekbench 5. The single-core benchmark returned a score of 1412 while the multi-core benchmark gave us 5168. That’s not too bad and set it a little below the score listed for the Macbook Air from late 2020 that uses the fancy new M1 chip. I also ran the OpenCL benchmark and got a score of 14944.

Of course, since this is a Razer machine, I couldn’t resist putting a couple games on and seeing how they fared. Civilization VI has a built in benchmark tool, so I ran it twice. I ran it on the default loaded settings which returned an average of approximately 58fps and then I cranked up the graphics settings to max and got approximately 22fps. I also loaded up Guild Wars 2 since it’s more reliant on CPU than GPU and thought I’d give it a try. I went to a less populated space and found that on the autodetect settings I could get between 70-100fps as long as nothing was around and it would drop to about 50-60 when I actually went to engage something. When I maxed out the graphics, performance plummeted and was almost unplayable in an empty part of the map. I can only imagine how bad somewhere like Lion’s Arch would be. If I went to lowest graphics setting though, I could easily get 175+fps in the small part of the map I went to.

Now that I’ve thrown a bunch of numbers and specs at you, how does it actually feel to work on it? Overall, it’s a pleasant experience. There is a part of the design that is a pretty big problem, but I’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s talk about the good. I didn’t think I would like the 16:10 screen as much as I did. For gaming, it’s not a big deal to have the extra height. However, when trying to do work and read articles, I was shocked at how much I enjoyed having that extra bit of height. In addition, the screen is very clear and crisp. The input selection is good and I always love it when a laptop uses the USB-C ports for charging. It just makes life easy. The very thin bezels really make the laptop gorgeous to look at as well.

I’m not a big fan of trackpads personally and the one on the Razer Book 13 didn’t wow me. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great.

Another big win for the laptop though is the speakers. These speakers are actually really good and watching a show or video on them is great. There’s enough bass where the sounds aren’t super tinny like other laptop speakers. That being said, external speakers or headphones would still provide a superior experience. That being said, they’re some of the best laptop speakers I’ve heard in a while.

The built-in webcam clocks in at 720p and I don’t like it that much. It looks blurry to me even when I compare to my 5-year-old Logitech 720p external webcam on my desktop or my wife’s laptop’s 720p built-in webcam. I took a picture and short video using the built-in Camera app for Windows 10, so there’s nothing fancy going on. This is how the camera reads with basic software you can use as a comparison.

The keyboard says it’s anti-ghosting, but I had some problems while typing. The keys felt okay and with some more time I could’ve gotten more used to it, but it always felt a little odd. I felt like the L-key wouldn’t press when I could’ve sworn that I hit it and there were a few instances where I’d hit a key and it would register twice for some reason. Not the best experience when my job is writing. I also just simply don’t like the power button being implemented as part of the keyboard. I would rather have a separate power button.

My final point has to do with the design of the body. It is sharp and not in a good way. On the edge that goes from the top to the side, it is not rounded or smoothed, it is very angular and sharp which makes typing uncomfortable. Also, the little notch by the trackpad that’s supposed to help you open it is not very deep and therefore not very useful and the corners of that are also very sharp and uncomfortable if you glide your wrist over them.

All in all, the Razer Book 13 was a good first try. Overall, the screen is great, the aesthetics are amazing, and the speakers are really good. The specs are what you’d expect for a $1199 machine as well. Unfortunately, it strikes out in some areas of design when in practical use and the keyboard seemed a little too finicky for me. Those two strikes are more telling to me since this is supposed to be a productivity laptop for professionals to do work on. If it’s not comfortable to work on due to those sharp edges, it’s not a very productive design.