As with all laptop computer assessment at PetaPixel, we run by way of numerous benchmarks to gauge general efficiency. The Razer Blade 16 (2024) and Lightroom Traditional proved to be one thing of a thriller within the course of, yielding unsatisfactory outcomes that required additional investigation. Replace 7/20: This text was written by Ted Kritsonis. An earlier model had the inaccurate byline. Why would it not take two hours to import 163 RAW photographs in 1:1 previews on the primary go-round? Why would adjusting sure settings result in wildly completely different outcomes? For a sturdy laptop computer sporting an 14th-gen Intel Core i9 14900HX Raptor Lake CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX4070 GPU, one thing didn’t add up. The facility is technically there, as evidenced by how the laptop computer might run Adobe’s photograph and video modifying apps in real-world conditions. Sure, the machine will get loud and scorching doing it, nevertheless it ought to do the job properly. It wasn’t a pre-production unit, nor one working experimental or beta software program. Razer’s Blade laptops are, in impact, gaming machines by design. However Razer additionally sees creating content material as a vital worth proposition each time one lifts the lid and gazes on the beautiful OLED display. Razer Blade 16 A Take a look at of Time There have been two checks. The primary concerned importing Sony a7R IV RAW photographs into Lightroom Traditional. The second was to import Part One RAW pictures. Doing it thrice every with a stopwatch offered a mean. I saved all photographs on the laptop computer’s personal storage, negating any want for any cloud connectivity, in addition to eliminating any attainable corruption from an exterior SSD or reminiscence card.
Whereas exporting all these photographs as JPEG and TIFF information from Lightroom Traditional to the desktop appeared to fall largely in step with expectations for this laptop computer, the import instances had been sluggish and terribly inconsistent. To make sure a clear slate for each import/export, I deleted the pictures and purged the cache underneath Preferences -> Efficiency earlier than restarting the app once more. Razer engineers first surmised that the Blade 16’s Sport Prepared driver may be the instant perpetrator. Besides, switching to the Studio driver not solely did nothing (imports really took longer), it additionally crashed the system on two import makes an attempt. Switching again to the Sport Prepared driver and turning off GPU help in Lightroom Traditional’s preferences helped significantly, bringing the Sony import down from a glacial 54:12 common right down to an 18:21 common. Ditto for the Part One pictures, clocking in at 30:02 — a lot better than the two-hour marathon within the first spherical. Whereas clearly higher, these numbers nonetheless didn’t add up. Regardless of sending logs, BIOS, and firmware data to Razer, there needed to be one thing else. The following step was to go to the Nvidia Management Panel and over to Handle 3D -> Program Settings and toggle on Excessive-Efficiency Processor. Underneath these adjustments, the Sony Lightroom Traditional import averaged 16:39, inching nearer to a extra palatable rating. But, the Part One import didn’t observe swimsuit, going north of 40 minutes — at the very least 10 minutes longer than the earlier collection of checks. The following step was to attempt uncovering a possible Adobe trigger. In Lightroom Traditional, going to Edit -> Preferences -> switching Use Graphics Processor to Auto after which toggling off Generate Previews in parallel made up the most recent settings changes. On this case, toggling off Generate Previews had a discernible impact. The Sony import fell to a 12:40 common, whereas the Part One import got here again right down to 24:36. Higher figures for certain, however merely not what you’d count on from a premium Blade laptop computer. Much more so when evaluating these figures to different laptops examined and reviewed at PetaPixel. A Sluggish Course of Aside from the troubleshooting examples I laid out above, I tinkered with all kinds of settings changes and workarounds alone to attempt squaring issues up. Nothing changed into a eureka second, and all of this stays a thriller as of this report. It’s unclear whether or not a defective driver or shaky handshake are why issues decelerate to a crawl. Is it a consequence of Raptor Lake HX chipsets, or one thing in how Adobe’s software program works with Nvidia’s {hardware}?
Both approach, these numbers aren’t conducive to speedy workflows for photographers. It’s laborious to make the case the Blade 16 is a better option than a MacBook Professional when the latter crushes it with sooner imports. Even earlier tricks to optimize Lightroom Traditional didn’t change the calculus sufficient when coping with 1:1 previews. It’s definitely attainable the issue is particular to my assessment unit, although on-line boards abound over troubleshooting points with importing batches in Lightroom Traditional with a Blade laptop computer. Some additionally range in focus, involving computer systems from numerous manufacturers and workflows, not simply Razer. Lightroom Traditional is a standard denominator, solely there’s no obvious fast repair in rushing issues up with the Blade 16. So, for now, customers needs to be cautious, even when there are methods to enhance efficiency. There aren’t usually any hoops to leap by way of, not to mention this many.
