Razer didn't surprise anyone when they released the new Razer Blade with better
hardware and identical build quality to its predecessor it was the massive price
drop that got me and a lot of others excited about it but apparently Gigabyte
doesn't think they went low enough Gigabyte figures they can do the same
thing for $600 cheaper for a 512 gig model wow and
this is it the arrow 14 or as I'm calling it The Poor Man's
blade Mast drop is currently featuring their exclusive k7xx red headphones
built by AKG learn more and buy one today at the link in the video
description let's start with specs it would be easy to put a core i5 with
onboard Graphics in this thing and say Hey look it's cheaper so you can't call
something a blade competitor unless it's similarly equipped so like the blade 14
my config of the Aro 14 more on that later rocks a core i7 6700 HQ 16 gigs of
ddr4 memory an m.2 SSD and a
gtx970m graphics card though it has 3
gigs versus 6 gigs of vram which leads
us pretty well into the differences because while raw system performance
should be pretty darn close in some ways
in others the experience will be pretty different for starters the SSD in my
config is SATA instead of NVMe in spite
of the product pages PCIe messaging
right at the top onto the power brick in
spite of its slightly lower rated output it's a touch bigger But it includes a
2.1 amp USB port which is a super convenient feature for regular Travelers
next is IO where it's hard to declare a true winner the arow 14 rocks three USB
3 5 GB typ a ports just like the blade
adds a USB 3.1 10 gbit port on its
type-c Port but it sacrifices
Thunderbolt on that same type-c connector and then it gets more
complicated they both have HDMI but the Aro 14 has HDMI 2.0 for 60 HZ 4K output
and a mini DisplayPort for easy conversion to anything including VGA
making up for some of the functionality lost by that Thunderbolt Port that's
missing and then finally and if this isn't a home run it's a ground rule
double for sure the AR 14 has an SD card
reader woohoo moving on to the display
the A14 has what Gigabyte very optimistically refers to as a free K
14in IPS display with an actual resolution of 2560 x440 which I've
usually heard referred to as 1440p or 2
1 12K which is only about
64% the number of pixels as the blade
14's 3K plus display but deceptive
product marketing aside I think this is a great move at this size it doesn't
appreciably affect the sharpness of text or other onscreen elements and it
contributes directly to better battery life and longer battery life when gaming
at the panel's native resolution it's not as bright as Razor's display and the
huge chin bar bar reminds me of notebooks from years past but it's got
DC backlight modulation that's why it's not flickering in RB roll and a matte
finish with strong contrast performance that makes it look really good in person
I did miss the touchcreen quite a few times and gsync or higher refresh rates
would be on the wish list for an arrow two but these features would add cost
and device thickness so overall I'm not complaining here on the subject of
thickness whatever Gigabyte might think about this the blade 14 continues to be
the obvious competitor here and while
you could convince me that the AR 14 is the same size if it had been a couple of
weeks since I'd seen Cena blade side by side the difference is noticeable the A1
14 is about 15% larger by volume most of
which is due to its increased thickness but once again this is a matter of
tradeoffs rather than an opportunity for me to declare a clear winner for your
extra thickness you get socketed memory slots two of them allowing the arrow 14
to be upgraded to 32 gigs of off-the-shelf RAM this apacer stuff that
I had lying around from an ad spot a while ago worked great making it a
shockingly well equipped workstation competitor you get a second m.2 slot for
an additional storage drive with raid support by the way and you get a
whopping 90 plus wat hour battery that translated into a huge realworld battery
life Advantage at the same screen and keyboard backlight brightness speaking
of the keyboard Gigabyte also makes a point of mentioning the super Long Key
travel in their marketing materials but frankly I don't think it contributed
anything here I mean the good news is that it didn't hurt the experience
either the force required to type is a little bit heavy for my tastes but I did
get used to it in a few days and at this point I feel like the keyboard uh with
the well positioned macro Keys contributing significantly here is a
strong point for this device in spite of its monochromatic backlighting and
missing right function key that makes one-handed volume adjustments a bit more
of a chore as for the touchpad it's not
the best I've ever used but I've been using this thing daily for over two
weeks now and it's yet to make me upset so very good marks for both of these on
to overall build quality the one finger 180 plus degree hinge is really nice the
speakers are very loud and very clear but sound like they're coming from
somewhere else due to their position on the bottom of the device the built-in
webcam isn't anything special and and there's more chassis Flex than premium
products like Dell's xps15 Apple's MacBook line and yes that comparison
again the blade 14 but nowhere near the
Gigabyte notebooks of old that I refused to review because I could bend them into
a boomerang shape with minimal effort and you are saving a few bucks here so I
don't mind making some concessions when it comes to overall
robustness but what about performance then lonus well as long as it doesn't
thermal throttle this Hardware combo shouldn't shock us so the only real
difference here comes into play if you insist on playing at Native resolution
so make of that then what you will on the subject of thermals it's trade-off
time again the arow 14 manages to be
quieter than the blade 14 underload and I'm thinking this is in no small part
due to its much less restrictive exhaust vent under the screen but It suffers
from noticeably higher keyboard and touchpad temperatures at idle then while
gaming its touchpad is actually 4° cooler but its keyboard which you're
more likely to be touching while you're gaming because you'll probably be using
an outside Mouse is 4° hotter add to
that though that the components inside the blade 14 generally run hotter and it
becomes a question of personal preference at least if you have enough
to afford either one which leads us then into the conclusion I don't like some of
Gigabyte's sketchy claims 3K display all
those call outs for m.2 NVMe raid when
my config the only one available in the states at the moment has a single 512
gig m.2 SATA drive and I don't
understand why they felt the need to behave this way because there's no need
to stretch the truth for the Aro 14 to be a fantastic machine it does that on
its own it gives up some build quality
it gives up a touchcreen and an RGB back click keyboard and Thunderbolt and it is
a little bit bigger than the blade 14 but it offers up significantly better
battery life HDMI 2.0 an SD card reader
more flexible configurations so I talked about my config I'd expect to see more
in the future thanks to two slotted memory and m.2 Bay a 2-year Global
Warranty and a much lower price and it
does all that while including a USB to Ethernet dongle for folks who prefer
wires to killer networking wasn't that fun you know what else is
fun saving money on your phone bill do you ever find yourself going gee why is
it that I when I go to the restaurant I have to order you know six cheeseburgers
for the week and then if I don't use four of those cheeseburgers I just have
to throw them in the garbage I only ate two of them why can't I just buy two
well that is how mobile phone bills work
you have to say in advance like oh I'm probably going to talk to you know
people for 200 27 minutes this month but
then if you only use 226 you paid for something you didn't use well not with
Ting with Ting you pay for only what you use and the average Ting bill is only 24
bucks a month per device just head over to lin. ting.com we've got it linked in
the video description and try out their savings calculator you enter your last
couple of bills and then it spits out hey here's how much you would be saving
on Ting and boom you can see if you'd be a happy person and by the way data is
now just 10 bucks per gig beyond the first
Gigabyte pretty freaking cool so sign up
and you'll get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device
wow so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or check out the link to where to buy this laptop which we will
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check out our latest video over on Channel Super Fun barkl and Dennis go
for a joy ride in my car for some reason who does that kind of thing