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the razor blade has been a roller coaster of emotions for me over the

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years with the highest peak being when i dropped a crap ton of cash

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on them for my staff and the biggest valley being

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shortly afterward the defect rate of the aforementioned blades that i bought for

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my staff now the most recent last gen blade was

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fine in fact we've got two units that are both still working like the day we got

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them but it was such a boring pure spec

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update that honestly i was having a hard time figuring out what the heck razer has

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been working on for the last few years fortunately

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all of that changes today this

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is the blade 2018

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and this is our sponsor today Corsair Corsair's

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next generation strafe mark ii keyboard features a variety of cherry mx RGB key

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switches and 8 megabytes of onboard profile storage check out the link below

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to learn more

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once i got over the shock of razer moving to kind of a a boxier design

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compared to their older curvy one my initial impressions of the razer blade

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2018 are actually very positive the aluminum chassis is extremely rigid in

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spite of its overall slimness and the significant reduction in bezel size

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makes it feel far more 2018 than its not

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so 2018 predecessors probably the most

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important change to the id here though is that razer has finally made a laptop

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that will impress both your gaming friends

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and your business associates that is assuming of course that you do

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get at least a little bit of help from dbrand and maybe tone down the RGB on

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the keyboard so it has HDMI mini displayport and usb type-c along with

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three full-size usb type a's and that

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type c i showed you that's a Thunderbolt 3 port very nice not to mention it's got

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significantly better performance so it's core i7 8750h and gtx 1070 max q

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might seem a little pedestrian compared to other manufacturers who have been

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bitten by the core i9 bug but as we've seen over the last couple of weeks

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unless you're building a machine like this one

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you can actually end up better off with

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a less powerful CPU but one that you can actually cool

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compared to an op one that ends up throttling all day so we're going to

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fire up an ida 64 test here and we're going to see

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that while the 2018 does actually trade

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some clock speed for thermals when hit with a synthetic load so you can see

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here it's running at 2.6 gigahertz for a short while then

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it's going to drop down to our base of 2.2 gigahertz

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in games this thing regularly turbos up

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to 4 gigahertz ending up in about the 90 degrees range and never thermal

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throttled in our 24 degree celsius office and our GPU stayed nice and cool in the

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low 70s and as you can see here i'm

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going to lean in close to it

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the fans are certainly audible but not

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distracting at all and what else is cool is that this

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generation blade keeps the keyboard nice and cool even while gaming though it

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should be noted that this area right here right above the keyboard that's

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where your heatsink is you are not going to want to touch that

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now performance is right about where we expected with

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the 1070 max q getting beaten

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but even then only slightly by the full fat gtx 1070 in the ASUS zephyrus

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but Linus you might say what i really loved about the old blade

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was how loud it was huh if you're not concerned gamer just

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gonna fire up synapse here all you have to do is enter gaming mode

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which actually boosts up the clock speed here we go of our gtx 1070 max-q

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takes the CPU's TDP from 35 to 45 watts

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with a max turbo power of 85 watts and

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generally makes the blade 2018 a worse

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laptop um

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if you were blindfolded in gaming mode with the blade 2018 in front of you

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we'd forgive you if you mistook your gaming rig for a drone taking off

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we would actually recommend leaving gaming mode off until razer provides

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maybe some finer control of the power and fan profiles because the performance

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gain is in our estimation not really worth it now on the subject of options

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that gamers should actually use the

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144 hertz 1080p version of this notebook

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is the one to get you can completely ignore the 60 hertz 4k version unless

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you desperately need a touch screen 1080p 144hz is a perfect fit for this

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CPU GPU combo and the ips panel in this

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version is bright and vivid with the higher refreshment making everything

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from games to even just mousing around on the desktop navigating

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Windows feel smoother and more responsive

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i think the only thing that i would like to see added in razer's options is a

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touch version of the 1080p one because right now

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they're really making you choose between the ultimate compact gaming laptop and

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one that is still optimal for productivity

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though this might be something that we have to take up with the actual panel

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manufacturers and not so much with razer

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now above the screen here is the webcam

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pretty decent compared to other laptop webcams which is to say that it is

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still behind literally every flagship phone on the

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market and we really wish that laptop makers other than microsoft i guess

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would be the only one that seems to be taking it seriously still bad we wish

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they would start doing a better job given how small of a camera element you

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can have and how inexpensive a camera element you can have that can end up

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with a very nice looking image these days with that said at least razer

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borrowed some of its mobile expertise on the speakers for this puppy they do lack

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a little bit of punch on the low end but they make up for it with clear sound

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that is pretty loud and excellent stereo

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separation

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now back to the bit that we talked about before about how this machine

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could easily be used for gaming and productivity

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what about the keyboard now razer keyboards have been a real

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sticking point between me and alex who has kind of become our de facto

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notebook editor now i have liked

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most of razer's notebook keyboards with the notable exception being the blade

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pro he on the other hand literally changed my personal blade

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stealth's desktop background to this when he had to use it for like an hour

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now fortunately razer has actually made some revisions to the keyboard in this

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model and we can finally agree

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it's very good it's got a nice snappy feel to the keystrokes it's not too loud

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and we both feel comfortable typing on this machine for hours then

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below that very satisfactory keyboard is one of the biggest touch pads that i

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have ever seen on a Windows machine in fact it might be the biggest one like

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check this thing out it is awesome to use like it baffles me that it has been

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two years since the apple macbook pro 2016 and no

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one has ripped off that design yet like it's still not quite as good as the one

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on the macbook pro but with its glass top

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really nice feel nice clicky buttons although not the whole surface is

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clickable it's the closest that we've seen in a Windows machine opening up the

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blade 2018 reveals actually pretty impressive upgradability given its size

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both the RAM that's a new one and the storage can be

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easily swapped and that is a hecking impressive 80 watt hour battery that

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gives it four hours of life in our pc mark test now that's not an amazing

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result compared to other productivity-centric notebooks but it

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absolutely smashes other gaming laptops that are this

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powerful bringing us to the price

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our model here comes in at 2400 us

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dollars which is considerably more than the ASUS zephyrus that i'm going to put

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next to it right here and remember guys this is a laptop that

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already had a substantial thin tax built into the toll that it was

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going to take on your wallet if you're going to be gaming day and night we feel

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that the zephyrus is a better choice it offers a bit more performance while

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making less noise it has more room for games thanks to its hard drive in

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addition to its SSD and it offers silky smooth visuals

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thanks to g-sync by contrast the blade is still very competent for gaming and

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crushes the zephyrus when you're on the go thanks to its more professional looks

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excellent track pad smaller form factor and double the battery life but of

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course you get to pay a thinness tax and a razor tax

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speaking of taxes d brand ships worldwide does that have anything to do

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with that whatever it doesn't matter dbrand makes awesome vinyl skins for

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laptops phones tablets consoles controllers and more they use high

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quality true textured 3m vinyl on every product and their skins are cut with

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unrivaled precision they measure many times and cut once only to ensure they

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have a factory fit for your product not only do they look great but dbrand skins

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protect against incidental damage and scratches like say for example one of

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the main reasons i love a dbrand skin on my laptop is sliding it in out of my bag

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that way you don't end up with a completely scuffed up surface on both

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sides of your laptop that sucks especially when you're paying this much

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for it their products are affordable and they ship worldwide so check them out at

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the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you

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disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking

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out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below also down there is our

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merge store which has cool shirts like this one well like this one in the sense

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that they're LTT not like this one in the sense that you can buy this design anymore

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and a link to our community forum which you should totally join