Are you always running out of power but never remember to pack a cable before leaving the house? Razer reckons its smart laptop sleeve can solve that problem: it’s packing dual wireless charging pads to keep your other devices topped up while you work. After taking one on a few work trips both near and far, I’m sold on the convenience factor – but think it falls just a little short in one or two places.
Two tiny strips of green stitching aside, the Razer Laptop Sleeve 16in with Wireless Charging for Devices (yes, that is indeed a mouthful of a name) is an all-black affair that’ll happily swallow most 16in laptops. Naturally that includes Razer’s own Blade 16, but I also had no issues with a MacBook Pro or Asus Zenbook. Only considerably thicker or deeper machines – think 16in desktop replacement gaming laptops – are out of bounds. Once holding my laptop, it had no trouble sliding into the laptop compartment of my Mous backpack.
It’s very inconspicuous on the outside, with just the Razer name embossed on the lid and a “For Gamers. By Gamers” slogan on the back. A microfibre interior ensures your laptop avoids scrapes and the edges are reinforced in all the right places to add some welcome protection against drops, without adding a whole lot of bulk or weight. The outer woven texture hasn’t gotten grubby even after multiple trips and remote working days. That’s doubly impressive because I’m using the sleeve as a desk mat to protect my laptop from whatever surface I rest it on.
Flipping open the lid reveals the two charging plates; the bottom one maxes out at 15W, making it better suited to phones. The top one delivers 5W so is the choice for true wireless earbuds and the like. They’re both MagSafe compatible and played nicely with the Google Pixel 11 Pro XL I was testing at the time.
There’s no built-in power bank here, so you’ll need to plug the charger into a power source. Razer includes a short USB-C cable in the box that’s good for 60W; I like that it’s not a captive cable, so you can swap it out for a longer one if you can’t sit directly next to a plug socket. Annoyingly there’s no dedicated compartment to store it, though.
You’ve also got to supply the power brick. It can only charge one device when plugged into a laptop, and do so at a much slower pace than it otherwise might when plugged into the mains via a beefy adapter. With nowhere to store it in the sleeve itself, the plug becomes another thing to remember to pack before heading out the door.
Had Razer included a potent yet compact GaN wall charger like this skinny Ugreen Nexode Pro, and a tiny pouch to hold it, this sleeve would be pretty much perfect.
That bit of DIY power supply aside, the Sleeve charged my smartphone at a decent lick and didn’t get too hot in the process. It’s a great backup for those coffee shop stops where you only have one plug socket within reach, and can get you out of a bind purely on laptop power if you’ve not packed any other cables.
It’s hardly a bargain, though, at £130/$130. A drop in the ocean for someone willing to spend over $5000 on a fully tricked out Blade 16, perhaps, but a hefty chunk of change for the rest of us. Popping a few extra charging cables in your bag and sticking with a simpler sleeve is undoubtedly easier on the wallet, but for minimalist convenience it’s hard not to like.
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