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Check the link in the video description for more details. Welcome to my unboxing
and overview of the Razer Blade 14 from well, Razer. So, first of all, it comes
packed in soft foam. So, it's already my favorite notebook ever. No, I'm just
kidding. Okay, it does compact in soft foam, but it doesn't get too many points
for that because it's an extremely expensive notebook. For a 256 gig
configuration, you're looking at about 2Gs, putting it right up there in the
Apple echelon in terms of pricing. But the real question is, does it deserve to
be there? In terms of the unboxing experience, we're going to do a very,
very short version of it. This is what the box looks like. Foam, typical green,
beautiful razor packaging as we've come to expect from them. And other than
that, there's not a whole lot in here. So, there's a little bundle of what you
typically come to expect. So, you get a couple of razor stickers as well as a
microfiber cloth. Honestly, it's not going to do you a whole lot of good. The
black finish is absolutely beautiful, but you can never get it quite perfect
as far as I can tell. I even tried uh using some alcohol in order to get it
off, but honestly, it really isn't that bad either. At least it's black, unlike
these silver finishes that the fingerprints really do show up on. And
you also get a letter from the CEO and chief gamer of Razer, as well as a quick
start guide. Not going to worry too much about any of that. Other than that, all
you'll find in the box is their very sleek, very sexy power brick. This is
150 W power brick, but as you can see from my traditional phone size
comparison. Here's an HTC1. Is extremely small for 150 W brick. Razer claims they
spent several times as much as most manufacturers will on a power brick in
order to have it fit in this form factor. This was extremely important to them because they were going for
portability as well as gaming performance with this particular
machine. So, speaking of portability, it is only 0.66 in thick. So, we're going
to go ahead and give you a look at it physically. Here's that phone comparison
for you again. It weighs only 4.1 lb. It is 14 in. And it is not an ultrabook
because it has well not because but it
has much more performance than an ultrabook. In spite of the fact that the
form factor looks an awful lot like an ultrabook. This has a full-fledged GTX
765M. Razer has done nothing in terms of
downclocking that graphics card. It also has a Core i7 quad core processor. So
that my friends is what makes this not an ultrabook. It is a 472 HQ which means
it runs at 2.2 2 GHz base, 3.2 GHz
boost. So you can see we're running Crisis 1 right now. So the answer is,
can it run Crisis? Yes, I'm running at very high 1600 my 900 at the native
resolution. The keyboard is quite well spaced out considering that this is a
14-inch notebook. speakers are quite loud. Although, as with most notebook
sound, it's not the most, you know, rich, gorgeous sound you've ever heard,
but it is certainly functional for gaming, even in an environment where
there's a fair amount of ambient noise, such as at a land party. So, back to the
keyboard here. There are 20 different incremental steps for the keyboard
backlight, all the way from completely off to an extremely vibrant green that
reminds me of the Black Widow Ultimate 2013. The keyboard is also fully
compatible with Synapse 2.0, know, meaning you can remap every key to
whatever you want and program advanced macros. I wish there was a number pad,
but given that they would have had to sacrifice the spacing of it, and it is
actually quite a satisfying tactile keyboard. You can hear there's a bit of
a click. The one key that I would or the two keys I would really complain about
are the space bar has a bit of a tiny
sort of um plasticky feel to it. And then I don't really like arrow pad
configurations like this, but I don't really find myself using the arrow keys
much. these days. The touchpad I've seen other people complain about, but I
personally didn't find it that obnoxious. Um, people were saying they
prefer a clicky touchpad. I don't. I prefer dedicated buttons at the bottom,
and that is exactly what you find with the Razer Blade 14. However, there was a
little bit of glitchiness in fine movements sometimes when selecting icons
and then clicking by touching the touchpad. It's shown up a couple times
for me, but not a ton. And hopefully this is something that they can fix in
sort of a silent revision after the review units go out. This is a review
unit, not a finished one. For physicality, it's very bare bones. So
along the right hand side of the notebook, we find USB 3, HDMI, and a
security lock. On the back of the notebook, Whoa, there's nothing. Where
are all the air vents? I'll show you that later. Don't worry, guys. On the
left side of the notebook, we find power in. It fits very snugly. This is a huge
oversight on one of my notebooks, an MSI gaming notebook I got a few years back.
I think they've addressed it now, but the power plug just slips out a lot of
the time. So, I do like to see a snug power plug. Would prefer magnetic. Two
USB 3.0 ports on this side as well as a headphone microphone combo jack. Then on
the front, we find a whole lot more of nothing. The hinge is very easy to open.
So, I mean, I guess this is kind of unfair to it, but even holding it up in the air, I can get that separated. You
don't have to wedge two fingers in there in order to get it open. And how does
the ventilation work? How the devil did they fit a GTX 765M and hold on, I'm
just going to turn the sound off. A GTX 765M and a quad core into this form
factor. Two ventilation fans down here. So, we're running Crisis right now.
Actually, I'm going to unpause the game so you guys can get some idea of how
loud these fans are. They are louder than a silent notebook, but here, check
this out. So, I'm putting this right next to my boom mic so you guys can see
what I'm doing here. They are quieter than my Aspire S7 which
is more of an ultrabook but doesn't have a GPU and doesn't have actually I don't
even think it has about a 6 hour battery life. So battery wise you can get anywhere from around 5 to 6 hours out of
it in a light to medium usage case scenario. However, when you're gaming
obviously that's going to be significantly reduced. So these two fans
on the bottom here vent air aha up here.
So, it's actually completely stealthed up at the top of the keyboard. There are
two major exhaust ports here and here. Now, the advantage of this design is
that you don't have to look at any exhaust vents. The disadvantage is it
means the top of the notebook does get very toasty in a gaming scenario. And
because it's using an aluminum uni-body chassis, that heat does tend to spread
out a fair bit. So, what we're going to be doing uh at near the end of the video
is I'm going to take my temperature probe right here and I'm going to be
running this game and I'm going to stick the probe to various parts of the notebook to give you guys an idea of how
exactly it runs. Even if it means the heat gets spread out, that's a good
thing for one reason because it's part of what allows that massive power inside
this notebook to be possible in this form factor. And aluminum compared to
plastic, there's just no comparison. There's no flex to it. It feels good. It
reminds me a lot of something like the black MacBook Pro back in the day before
Apple kaiba that which I think was one of the most beautiful notebooks ever.
It's stylish and elegant. So on the top you've just got a couple of subtle
accents as well as an illuminated Razer logo. I'm going to go ahead and turn it
back on so you can see the illumination there. on the side. The only thing that
reveals that this is a gaming notebook is this tiny green accents in things
like the USB ports and then the green backlit keyboard. Other than that, it's
something that you could easily sit in a boardroom meeting with and you wouldn't
have to feel like a total weirdo. Part of the way that it achieves that long
battery life, making it suitable for business use, is the fact that it
employs NVIDIA Optimus technology. So, that means that the dedicated graphics
card pretty much turns off when you're not using it. And Intel's new Haswell
fourth generation core processors are so efficient when they're only being used a
little bit that well all of a sudden this is possible. I remember saying when
the original Blade launched, this is interesting, but what I'm really excited
for is NextG. NextG is finally here.
Now, with that said, this notebook is not perfect. It lacks an SD card reader.
It lacks a dedicated hardwired Ethernet port. However, the wireless end solution
does use Bigfoot killer optimizations in order to prioritize your gaming traffic.
So, that's at least better than nothing. But the one that really bothers me is
the screen. So, I'm going to get you guys to come in and have a look at the screen. So, check this out. So, that's
your straight-on viewing angle. If you guys have been watching my channel for
any amount of time, you'll know that I am a huge advocate for nonTN panels. And
this panel is about as TN as it gets. The colors are not as vibrant or deep as
you'll get with an IPS uh pls or even a
VA panel of some sort. And the viewing angles are quite um well, they're some
of the worst I've seen on a notebook that costs more than you know between
$500 and $1,000 in a very long time. And I found that very disappointing. I for
one am not disappointed about the resolution. 1600 by 900 is very
acceptable considering that a 765M is
not, you know, a desktop GTX 780. So,
you're better off to have slightly lower resolution natively and be able to run
at native res rather than running at a non-native res in your games. And the
pixel density at 14 in for a 1600 by 900
screen is actually not that bad. Like, I don't I don't mind that at all. Um
although I've seen complaints about that from other reviewers. This particular
configuration has eight gigs of RAM, a 256 gig SSD, a 70Wh hour battery,
Bluetooth 4.0, Windows 8, as well as a
built-in HD webcam, and some of the things about this notebook that I also
find exceptional are, check this out. Partly due to the fact that it's an SSD,
partly due to the fact that it's extremely fast, and partly due to the fact that it has no bloatware. Here's
our wake from sleep time. Also, it boots from cold in about 12 seconds. So, this
is I mean, yay, Windows 8. It's one of the few things that really truly is
great about it. Speakers are I think I already covered that loud enough for
gaming, but you know, nothing really super special. And I think that pretty
much covers it. So, let's go ahead and show you guys some crisis gameplay as
well as give you some temperature readings from various points on the
notebook. To start our thermal tests, we went with what we found was the hottest
spot where air was being exhausted from the Blade 14. So, that was right at this
point right here. and it's about
50° when we measure the temperature of the notebook in that particular spot.
Now, with that said, you don't touch it here, although it does feel very warm to
the touch, but Oh, look at that. Me touching it reduced the temperature.
That's awesome. But we are going to take some temperatures at other places where
it might be more important. Next, we taped our thermal probe to the Q key,
which is right next to the W key. So, that's typically where your gamer is
going to want to rest their fingers. And we found that to be around 29 to 30° in
a gaming load. The other place where a gamer is typically going to rest on the
notebook is the palm rest. So, we've taken another dab of thermal goop and
taped down our sensor here where we're getting anywhere from around 30 to 32°.
It does tend to fluctuate a little bit. Um, so the temperature at least is quite
consistent from the WD all the way to the palm rest. However, that is quite
warm and it will cause some sweaty hand syndrome. Now, years ago, the system
manufacturers wanted to move away from calling these things laptops and switch
to calling them notebooks because they didn't intend for you to actually
operate them in your lap because that interfered with cooling. So when we are
taking a temperature from the middle of the bottom of the notebook, you can see
that gets quite toasty. Guys, this is a
notebook, not a laptop at
45° 46°. Now, the heat being transferred
into your lap is quite toasty. So, while you're going to get some sweaty hand
syndrome going on up at the top left here on the keyboard, Razer has
effectively kept the heat mostly away
from the top of the notebook. However, on the bottom, it gets quite warm. So,
I'm going to show you once again where that thermal probe was affixed. The
closer we get to this edge where the heat is actually being exhausted, the
well, the more dramatic the temperature increase is. So, right near your knees
is where it would run the hottest. With all of that said, the Edge14 is an
absolute marvel of engineering, and it is a miracle that a company that's known
best for gaming mice and gaming keyboards in only a couple of product
iterations managed to come out with this. With that said, it's a couple
grand. Personally, I'll be waiting for the next gen when it's this. Maybe runs
a little bit cooler or maybe doesn't. maybe has a little bit more performance,
comes with an IPS screen, and then we're
really talking about taking some of my money because that's probably going to
happen. I understand why they used the TN panel. They do tend to have faster
response times, which for some gamers is more important, but I personally find
the richer colors um a more engaging experience versus the faster response
times of a TN. And with that said, IPS panels also do cost more. Don't forget
to subscribe to Lion's Tech Tips, guys. Leave a comment under the video. Tell me
what you think of the Razer Blade 14. And as always, wait, don't forget to
subscribe. Yeah, like the video, too. Do all of those things because it actually is very helpful. So, this is kind of a
spontaneous uh tearown of the Blade 14. B-roll made a comment that uh we were
just talking about the cost of this notebook versus other options available on the market, and I said, "Well, you
know, is an is a MacBook a completely stupid thing to buy?" And he kind of
went, "Yes." And I said, "Well, okay, but it doesn't have nearly the same kind
of horsepower as something like this." And he said, "Well, yeah, but it's also
better built." And I kind of went, "Well, no. I I don't really think so
because the level of integration that's going on here is outstanding. Plus,
there are some things that you can do here that you can't necessarily do with
uh with every MacBook. So, for example, there's an MSA SSD. So, the SSD is
actually upgraded now or upgradeable. Now, while you can't necessarily upgrade
everything, you can see all the DDR3 memory is soldered right to the main
board. You can change, you know, your wireless chipset, it looks like the
battery should be possibly removable here. We can also see just how flat
everything is packed within the inside of this notebook. So, there's our two
cooling fans right here and here. Each of them gets two heat pipes and a very
small aluminum fin array. So, uh, this
right here looks like it must be the GPU because I can see the dedicated memory
around the outside of it. And then this one right here is the CPU. So, I think
that's pretty much all I wanted to show you guys inside the notebook. And I
guess this is the old Seinfeld double goodbye. But, uh, farewell again, my
friends. There goes my phone.