the latest iteration of one of the only two products to ever win an editor's
Choice Award from me is finally here
this is the new Razer Blade from well
Razer Mast drop is currently hosting a drop for a set of csgo themed keycaps
learn more about them and many other awesome drops set the link in the video
description so let's get this out of the way right off the Hop Razer is actually
calling this thing the new Razer Blade are youing kidding me for starters Razer
you already had a product called the Razer Blade it had a 17in primary screen
and this weird supplementary one with a trackpad built into it that was why you
called the 14-in model the blade 14 when
you launched it in 2013 do you even remember this but okay fine I'll forgive
that if for no reason other than that you've already been doing it for a few
years at this point and while we're at it I'll forgive the way you call each
new iteration the same damn thing forcing retailers and reviewers to
augment these with long ass part numbers Andor release years you didn't start
that I blame Apple for that no no the reason I'm mad is that you keep
compounding the problem you've actually removed it now but shortly after the
launch of this one you actually had last last year's model on the site as the
blade QHD plus something it was never called and something that's not helpful
because the new blade that you had on the site at the same time also has a QHD
plus screen I mean stop this who do you
think you are
NVIDIA anyway with that out of my system
let's get down to business the new blade
features an 0.7 in thick 4.25 lb unibody
aluminum chassis with decent stereo speakers and as I mentioned before a
14in 3200x 1800 EXO LCD just like last
year and while the panel still Sports a
larger than ideal bezel still doesn't handle off angle viewing as well as the
best IPS displays out there and still lacks support for g-sync or higher
refresh rates I understand that the bezel is Big to allow for more room for
cooling and it still got the 10-point multi-touch screen something that most
other gaming laptops lack which is a tradeoff that I personally will take I
didn't realize quite how often I use it to zoom in or reposition something on
the screen until I ordered an XPS 15 for review you can check that out here by
the way that didn't have it also back
for another round is NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture GTX 970m graphics processor
it's unclear if anything about the Silicon or or binning process has been
tuned to improve thermals or battery life both of which are improved but we
do know that it's been upgraded to 6 gigs of vram this time around let's take
this opportunity then to run through the rest of the specs the Haswell 4700hq
quadcore has been booted out the door in favor of a shiny new Skylake core i7
6700 HQ which I left running the id64
stress test the entire time I wrote this review only to see it reach about 80 to
85° Max at room temperature an
acceptable result though one that does come at an acoustical cost and it's one
that won't hold true with a GPU load added to the mix so the thermal system
improvements seem to be more focused on keeping heat away from the user's hands
with actual CPU temperatures as a secondary objective since it does still
throttle here's a shot though with our thermal camera to show how well they
achieved the primary objective very
impressive my favorite notebook webcam and its excellent microphone return yay
the old Intel Wireless gets replaced with a killer 1535 solution that I was
skeptical about but that behaved very well and managed some of the fastest
most consistent Wireless file transfers that I've seen 16 gigs of ddr4 RAM is
now standard on every model and storage across the board has been upgraded to
NVMe instead of SATA based solid state
drives they are using the value PM 951
model instead of the 950 Pro from Samsung but this is still a big
Improvement so there's nothing to complain about here but nothing really
Earth shattering either the big stuff actually happened on the outside at
first glance it looks the same but IO
has gotten much much better on the left you'll find power in magnetic next time
please a couple USB 3 5 gbit ports and a headphone microphone Jack then on the
right you will find an HDMI 1.4b port another USB 3 and okay so this is the
only actual Improvement nothing else changed a USB typ C connector that can
handle an additional USB device or
Thunderbolt 3 with DisplayPort sick
right type c is just so cool in so many
ways little things like charging your typc phone faster all the way up to big
things like plugging in high-speed external storage devices or even an
external GPU with products like the Razer core set to be available very very
shortly the one thing really missing here for me is an SD card reader and
then it would be dare I say it perfect
there's more too I can't quantify this but the touchpad definitely feels like
it tracks more smoothly and more consistently and the keyboard has also
been upgraded it is still my same favorite laptop keyboard from a tactile
standpoint and now that that Luke has one his words were something along the
lines of I never really understood why you're always raving about this thing
but wow I get it now except that it now
has the same RGB upgrade as the blade stealth so gone then is the gamery font
you've got all the usual controls that you would expect out of an RGB keyboard
you wave this breathe that change color there and I think it's something stupid
like 14 different brightness level adjustments with the only downgrade and
this is a huge bummer for me actually being that backlighting on the secondary
functions of the F keys and the number row razor tells me this is due to the
position of the switch but frankly I'd have preferred a smaller font and just
kind of cramming it over there is no longer back lit which sucks because
these are the things that I'm most likely to have trouble remembering in
the dark let's move on to the gaming
experience that frankly hasn't changed much some games that push both CPU and
GPU very very hard will cause you to encounter your thermal limits and the
970m is still not beefy enough to really
game it higher than 1080p in most titles
if you want to turn details up so there's not much to report here but one
key difference is that whether it's gaming or whether it's productivity the
new blad's battery life is better enough
that I actually noticed the difference day to day I didn't turn the keyboard
lights completely off per the reviewer guide but I did Dim them to about the
same level that I normally use about 30% which leads us into the conclusion I
think the blade 14 2015 was already good
enough that it was my first choice with the blade stealth given how little I
game on the go and how freaking light yet well constructed it is being the
first device that I've encountered that looked even capable of dethroning it
only to never even enter the ring due to its 8 gig RAM limitation so then
shouldn't be a shocker that the new blade 2016 model is going to hold its
Throne almost everything about the old blade I cannot emphasize enough how butt
hurt I am about the half key illumination is undeniably superior and
that's impressive but what's really impressive is that they've done all of
this while significantly lowering the razor tax as I call it in the past
friends would ask me they'd see this laptop they'd be like that looks sick
should I get one and I say wow I really
like mine but that's easy for me to say I didn't pay for it it's very very
expensive well that changes here and I am really liking the path raisers on
bringing down the cost of their machines but without the compromises to spec or
build quality that have made PCS a
second class citizen compared to MacBooks for anyone who wants a
beautiful well- constructed mobile device good job guys keep it up and good
job to Ting keep up what you guys are doing they're the mobile carrier that is
focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first I mean yeah sure
there's all the little details like only paying for exactly what you use with the
average bill being only 24 bucks a month there's the whole thing where you can go
on their site that's Linus doing.com we've got that Linked In the video
description enter your last few bills from your existing carrier and find out
easily in just a few minutes if Ting will be cheaper for you but the most
important thing is that when you call Ting if there's some kind of a problem
let's say something goes wrong someone picks up and says hello can I help you
there is no automated phone system not because they couldn't figure
out how to do that but because they don't think it's a good idea they're
very customer Centric and if you want to
become a customer they've got an offer for you they will cover up to 25% of
your cancellation fee so that's up to 75 bucks and if you use our link again
that's lin.com you'll also get 25 bucks
in service credit or towards a new device so go check it out so thanks for
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