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now it's hardly a secret that i like the razer blade their 2018 model addressed

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almost every previous problem except the price at 2400 us dollars it

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is darn expensive but

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what if you could save a buck by cutting

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that's some razor humor there some of the bells and whistles well razer had

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the same idea this is the base version

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of the razer blade a slightly lower powered slightly thicker model with a

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significant price cut but has this made the blade more

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accessible or just worse well you guys are smart

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kids who read the title before you click a video so i guess you already know the

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answer

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compared to the advanced version of the blade the most obvious change is the

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thickness but in return we ditch the proprietary power connector and we get

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gigabit Ethernet and that's on top of the blade's already very solid i o and

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i'm happy to say that the base version has actually kept Thunderbolt 3 support

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but the extra thickness does take away some of the sex appeal and while the

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overall look and feel is still pretty

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good the bottom feels a lot more plasticky

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and cheap CPU performance also stays solid though thanks to a six core core

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i7 processor and the addition of two

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terabytes of spinning storage on top of the 240 gig boot SSD means that you'll

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be able to bring a massive game library with you on the go and there's even more

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good news for years razer blades were

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known for sounding like an f1 car mating with a leaf blower and although the

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basic blade does get a bit louder than the advanced model it is much better

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than the older rounded versions so far so good

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until now the real sacrifice that was made for the base blade was in the

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graphics department the reduction to a gtx 1060 max-q leaves some gaming

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performance to be desired now it's quite a competent 1080p gaming

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experience and in a vacuum this machine would be getting a stellar

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review but the issue is that other computer

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makers exist ASUS zephyrus leaves the basic blade in

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the dust with its gtx 1070 max-q

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and this thing isn't even an outlier making matters worse the extra FPS

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wouldn't even help us much because the basic is only available with a 1080p

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60hz display which is a real bummer if they at least offered maybe for like a

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hundred dollars more or something a 120 hertz or a 144 hertz screen option they

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could make a real play for esports gamers with this machine titles like

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overwatch and league of legends would easily run at that frame rate on a 1060

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max q so once again

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the zephyrus whops the base blade's butt with a 144

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hertz display on top of its better specs

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and then adding insult to injury the webcam on the zephyrus also pawns the

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blade basic another thing that got a considerable downgrade from the advance

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q so that means that the blade basic is now a tough sell for performance

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enthusiasts esports players and for game

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streamers that's rough but the thing is that while

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the zephyrus does punt the base blade out of the park when it comes to gaming

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like have you ever looked at this thing it has its own issues if you try to use

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it as a lap top like on your lap it just doesn't work between

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the flappy doodle thing at the bottom and the keyboard being so close to you

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there is absolutely no way to get comfortable and while the minuscule

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track pad crammed over on the right here is more usable than you might expect the

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blades is one of the best on the market it's large

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accurate and really my go-to example for how track pads should be done on a

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Windows machine too bad i can't say the same about the

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keyboard so while the basic blade wins for gaming

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on the go i'm really disappointed that they didn't manage to keep the same key

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switches as the advanced model trading them for a considerably mushier

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alternative they're bad enough that if you can find a desk it's safe to say

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that typing and gaming would be more enjoyable on the zephyrus at least until

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the battery dies so one of the greatest strengths of the new 2018 blade is its

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massive battery uh

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but hold on a moment remember how the base blade got a two terabyte hard drive

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why isn't this available on the much more expensive advanced blade

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well you don't save enough space for something like that magically and when

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we did open up the base blade we were greeted with

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well the man behind the curtain so to speak

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there it is so we have swapped out the 80 watt hour

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battery in the advanced for a 65 watt

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hour in order to make room for this hard drive

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on a more positive note at least the upgradability is solid in here with both

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our m.2 drive and our ddr4 sodiums

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easily accessible along with their wi-fi card if you're into that sort of thing

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so we've talked a lot about the zephyrus in

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this video almost as much as the base blade and that's because in many ways it

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is the clearly better laptop if you're looking to do a fair bit of gaming the

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better display and graphics card make the zephyrus the easy choice

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but what about the folks who only occasionally game

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well for you guys honestly i don't think i can really recommend the basic blade either not in

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a world where the dell xps 15 exists for the same price it does cost you a

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substantial graphics downgrade to a gtx 1050 ti

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but the much better screen keyboard general build quality and massive 97

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watt hour battery make it superior in pretty much every other scenario with

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the advanced version of the razer blade 2018 we loved razer's no compromises

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approach it's a great gaming machine but it's also usable day-to-day

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then with the basic what we realized was that once razer started making

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compromises while still commanding a relatively high

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price tag they opened themselves up to competition from all sides making this

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machine still good like just to be very clear

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it's still good it's just harder to recommend so thanks

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for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or

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maybe consider checking out where to buy this sophie featured at the link in the video description also down there so i'm

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ready to show you closer like this one on our community forum which you should totally join

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what i just want to be respectful of the viewers time they don't want to sit through that

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but they have to anyway it's like 25 seconds or something

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they don't have to we can't force them to do anything

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or can we