Razer Blade Stealth Review - My new daily driver?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,915 words · ~9 min read
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for three generations the Razer Blade 14
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has ODed me with its astonishingly compact design fantastic aesthetic and
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superb build quality which puts the Razer Blade stealth 2016 the product I'm
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evaluating today in a somewhat unique
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position one of being on the inside
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looking in because I'll be deciding on a new daily driver notebook before this
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video is over and whether Razer wins or
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loses Razer is going to
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lose which will also cause Razer to win
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meaning that Razer will also lose which okay the joke's old now roll
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the
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intro Intel has brought ddr4 to the mainstream with their core
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i76700k processor check out the link in the video description to learn more I
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think the smart thing to do here would be to begin with a physical tour which
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is easy because Razer has taken just about a pure if it ain't broke don't fix
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it approach in this regard the top of the machine is black with only a razor
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logo the illumination of which can be disabled now if you want a nice touch
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and a couple of accent ridges to Adorn it just like it's bigger brother the
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bottom has two rubber feet the rear taller than the front to Incline the
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keyboard gently toward the user and a couple of air intakes just like its
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bigger brother and if I looked hard enough I could probably find a dozen
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such similarities but you didn't come here for similarities you came here for
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differences so let's focus in on those for a moment here the discret left and
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right click buttons under the touchpad have been replaced by a gesture aware
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click pad this is a change that would bother me if they hadn't implemented it
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so well no issues in two-handed operation and palm rejection was solid
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so good on the speakers are both narrower and
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closer to the edge to salvage as much room as possible for the surprisingly
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spacious keyboard which has been completely overhauled with RGB lighting
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more on that later the big change though is that the blade stealth is
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significantly thinner and lighter than the blade 14 shaving 7 in diagonally off
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the screen size and about 75 of a kilogram off the weight making it only
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2.75 lbs so light enough then that I can
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pretty much not tell whether it's in my
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4 and 12b backpack or not something that I can't say about my daily driver blade
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14 and it manages to do all of this
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while maintaining a very respectable mix of IO Apple should take notes on the
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right is a USB 3.0 port and an HDMI 1.4
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output then on the left is a 3 and 1 12 mm headphone microphone combo Jack
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another USB 3.0 port and a USB type-c
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connector that handles Thunderbolt USB 3.0 DisplayPort and charging duties
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through the compact included AC adapter this is the port that will be used to
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enable the theoretically hot swappable although I did manage to break it at the
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demo at CES external dedicated graphics
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card housing that they're calling the Razer core which I will be covering in
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an upcoming separate video today though I'm focused on the blade stealth as an
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Ultrabook because that's what it is while the slim exterior definitely hints
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at what makes the blad stealth so different from razer's previous mobile
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devices all of which adhered to that for
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gamers by Gamers slogan that they've got displayed so prominently on their
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website the inside of this machine reveals outright that it is not a gaming
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device so regardless of which model you buy then I've got the 1199 256 gig Quad
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HD skew but I spent most of my time with the 999 base model the one with the
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white vinyl skin from dbrand here you'll be getting a things an Intel Core i7
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6500 U 2.5 GHz base 3.1 GHz boost
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hyperthreaded dual core processor with Intel HD graphics 520 yes my friends
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onboard graphics and 8 gigs of non-upgraded
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soldered dual Channel low power DDR 3
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then depending on which trim level you opt for you can get anywhere from 128
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gigs to 512 gigs of unspecified m.2 NVMe
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storage on mine it was was a Samsung pm951 so about as basic as it gets for
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an NVMe drive with sequential rights limited on the 128 gig version to the
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rated 150 megabytes or so thanks to its
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TLC nand do note however that I would
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take a basic native PCIe drive over a
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SATA one any day of the week the other user configurable spec is the screen
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which I guess leads me to one of the things that frustrates me about Razer
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systems what if I don't mind the 2560x1440 touchscreen srgb color space
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display it's the one I've got here and frankly everything about it looks
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fantastic at 13.3 in contrast brightness
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and sharpness are great so what if I
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want that instead of the Adobe RGB 4k
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monitor whose advantages while tangible won't benefit me personally and whose
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higher resolution will drain my battery faster but I also want a 512 gig SSD
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I will need to upgrade it after the fact although all of this is irrelevant if
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the experience of using the blade stealth isn't a good one and you
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shouldn't buy one anyway so how is that
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well for a $1,000 machine the 6500 U
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processor with its 90% usage while installing applications and CPU
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bottleneck while testing the maximum usb3 transfer speed with screen
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recording running in the background might still not be the right solution
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for me personally but if your mobile Computing needs are a little lighter
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than mine they have nailed a lot of stuff here the 45w hour battery turned
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in a solid result at PC Mark's recommended brightness setting although
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it should be noted if you want to use it outside it goes a lot brighter than that
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and I didn't realize how much I missed my touchcreen until I did my XPS 15
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review without one which you can check out here by the way a one-finger hinge
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is really hard to do on a device this light without having it feel flimsy but
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they nailed that and Razer speaker camera and microphone quality continues
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to embarrass their competitors attention
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industry notebooks or communication devices this stuff is important so good
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on Razer for at least maintaining their above average standard here which leads
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us back finally again to the keyboard Far and Away the biggest departure from
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previous razor notebooks and everyone else for that matter the layout with two
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function keys six full rows a great size considering the screen size and a
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sensible key cap font this time around is IMO perfect except for the half
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height up and down arrows those still bother me and it's still fully
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reconfigurable with remapping and macros using synapse but now it's RGB as well
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so you can actually change things like color you can add canned patterns and
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effects to it you can change the effects and patterns for different applications
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including games with both first and third party tools and just generally
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personalize the device in a way that hasn't been done on a laptop before
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freaking awesome there are however some
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trade-offs the new backlighting does not illuminate the whole key the way the old
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type did so while the function row lights up when it's activated the actual
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functions themselves are not easy to see in the dark and more importantly the
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feel of the switches has been altered very significantly they are quieter
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which some people will appreciate but they are also less crisp feeling than
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I'm used to something that I sincerely hope does not carry over to the new
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blade when I review it shortly to be clear it didn't slow me down much but it
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was not as pleasing to type on something that I would personally consider more
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important for a productivity-minded as opposed to a gaming device leading us
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then to the conclusion of today's video the blade stealth takes the ID and the
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build quality of the blade 14 which has gotten me uh wow that's a cool black
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MacBook more than a few times at airport security checkpoints strips out
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everything gamer about it including the video card and even the Bizarro land
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keycap font in a clear effort to Target the mainstream and slashes the price in
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half I mean who saw that one coming from Razer of all people but what does that
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mean then would I buy one not until Ultra books can have quadcore CPUs and
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16 gigs of RAM but but would I recommend
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one to someone in search of an Ultra Book today you're damn right I would
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this is a very compelling answer to the MacBook Air something even Apple doesn't
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have right now since they seem to be on a we don't need ports kick so good work
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Razer this is a great machine especially
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for the price speaking of good work let's give a
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good work to our friends over at dbrand who no longer are limited to phones and
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game consoles yes my friends they now offer skins for mac and PC laptops
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including the blade stealth so if you're kind of going oh wow ginus that white
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one is really cool how do I get my hands on some of that or what if I wanted a
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different color head over to the link in the video description dbrand.com and you
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can use their configurator to try out all kinds of different combinations of
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different colors and textures of skins to get your device looking exactly the
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way you want it their skins fit like a freaking glove like seriously no one
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would know looking at this that you've put a vinyl skin on it as opposed to it
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shipping out of the factory like that and they're affordable and they ship
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worldwide so check it out at the link in the video description if you want to
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make your device more scratch resistant if you want to make it look cooler and
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you don't want to spend a ton of money doing it they're the guys to go to so
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uendo ensues