now it's hardly a secret that i like the razer blade their 2018 model addressed
almost every previous problem except the price at 2400 us dollars it
is darn expensive but
what if you could save a buck by cutting
that's some razor humor there some of the bells and whistles well razer had
the same idea this is the base version
of the razer blade a slightly lower powered slightly thicker model with a
significant price cut but has this made the blade more
accessible or just worse well you guys are smart
kids who read the title before you click a video so i guess you already know the
answer
compared to the advanced version of the blade the most obvious change is the
thickness but in return we ditch the proprietary power connector and we get
gigabit Ethernet and that's on top of the blade's already very solid i o and
i'm happy to say that the base version has actually kept Thunderbolt 3 support
but the extra thickness does take away some of the sex appeal and while the
overall look and feel is still pretty
good the bottom feels a lot more plasticky
and cheap CPU performance also stays solid though thanks to a six core core
i7 processor and the addition of two
terabytes of spinning storage on top of the 240 gig boot SSD means that you'll
be able to bring a massive game library with you on the go and there's even more
good news for years razer blades were
known for sounding like an f1 car mating with a leaf blower and although the
basic blade does get a bit louder than the advanced model it is much better
than the older rounded versions so far so good
until now the real sacrifice that was made for the base blade was in the
graphics department the reduction to a gtx 1060 max-q leaves some gaming
performance to be desired now it's quite a competent 1080p gaming
experience and in a vacuum this machine would be getting a stellar
review but the issue is that other computer
makers exist ASUS zephyrus leaves the basic blade in
the dust with its gtx 1070 max-q
and this thing isn't even an outlier making matters worse the extra FPS
wouldn't even help us much because the basic is only available with a 1080p
60hz display which is a real bummer if they at least offered maybe for like a
hundred dollars more or something a 120 hertz or a 144 hertz screen option they
could make a real play for esports gamers with this machine titles like
overwatch and league of legends would easily run at that frame rate on a 1060
max q so once again
the zephyrus whops the base blade's butt with a 144
hertz display on top of its better specs
and then adding insult to injury the webcam on the zephyrus also pawns the
blade basic another thing that got a considerable downgrade from the advance
q so that means that the blade basic is now a tough sell for performance
enthusiasts esports players and for game
streamers that's rough but the thing is that while
the zephyrus does punt the base blade out of the park when it comes to gaming
like have you ever looked at this thing it has its own issues if you try to use
it as a lap top like on your lap it just doesn't work between
the flappy doodle thing at the bottom and the keyboard being so close to you
there is absolutely no way to get comfortable and while the minuscule
track pad crammed over on the right here is more usable than you might expect the
blades is one of the best on the market it's large
accurate and really my go-to example for how track pads should be done on a
Windows machine too bad i can't say the same about the
keyboard so while the basic blade wins for gaming
on the go i'm really disappointed that they didn't manage to keep the same key
switches as the advanced model trading them for a considerably mushier
alternative they're bad enough that if you can find a desk it's safe to say
that typing and gaming would be more enjoyable on the zephyrus at least until
the battery dies so one of the greatest strengths of the new 2018 blade is its
massive battery uh
but hold on a moment remember how the base blade got a two terabyte hard drive
why isn't this available on the much more expensive advanced blade
well you don't save enough space for something like that magically and when
we did open up the base blade we were greeted with
well the man behind the curtain so to speak
there it is so we have swapped out the 80 watt hour
battery in the advanced for a 65 watt
hour in order to make room for this hard drive
on a more positive note at least the upgradability is solid in here with both
our m.2 drive and our ddr4 sodiums
easily accessible along with their wi-fi card if you're into that sort of thing
so we've talked a lot about the zephyrus in
this video almost as much as the base blade and that's because in many ways it
is the clearly better laptop if you're looking to do a fair bit of gaming the
better display and graphics card make the zephyrus the easy choice
but what about the folks who only occasionally game
well for you guys honestly i don't think i can really recommend the basic blade either not in
a world where the dell xps 15 exists for the same price it does cost you a
substantial graphics downgrade to a gtx 1050 ti
but the much better screen keyboard general build quality and massive 97
watt hour battery make it superior in pretty much every other scenario with
the advanced version of the razer blade 2018 we loved razer's no compromises
approach it's a great gaming machine but it's also usable day-to-day
then with the basic what we realized was that once razer started making
compromises while still commanding a relatively high
price tag they opened themselves up to competition from all sides making this
machine still good like just to be very clear
it's still good it's just harder to recommend so thanks
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what i just want to be respectful of the viewers time they don't want to sit through that
but they have to anyway it's like 25 seconds or something
they don't have to we can't force them to do anything
or can we