Slim, Sexy Quad Core Blade Stealth – New Daily Driver
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,297 words · ~6 min read
0:00
the og razer blade stealth's middling battery life eight gigs of RAM with no
0:05
option to upgrade and dual core processor made it neither a serious
0:10
productivity device for road warriors nor a legitimately capable gaming
0:15
machine like its thicker and less stealthy 14-inch cousin
0:19
even with an outboard graphics card
0:23
but that's all different now literally all of it the blade stealth
0:28
late 2017 stomps all over its predecessors so let's take
0:34
a look at it
0:43
world of tanks is the free-to-play online game that throws players into
0:47
epic tank battles across different battlefields and we've got a special
0:50
deal for you guys below and more info coming later in the video externally the
0:55
13.3 inch blade stealth pretty much hasn't changed in the last couple of
1:00
years and that's a good thing because you
1:03
might disagree but i think the industrial design is damn near perfect
1:08
the top is classic razor with an illuminated logo and armored accent
1:12
bumps the bottom is lifted a little higher at the back on rubber feet for a
1:17
slight angle to the keyboard and to give the single intake fan access to fresh
1:21
air and the side profile is pretty much as thin as it could be while still
1:26
allowing razer to cram in what is fairly generous io for a thin and light these
1:31
days two full-size usb 3 ports HDMI 2.0
1:35
an audio jack and a type c Thunderbolt 3 port that also charges the device
1:40
and the whole thing has a sturdiness to it that's been very refreshing compared
1:45
to the gram that i've been using since early this year
1:49
it is heavier yes and the battery life
1:52
is much worse unless you're willing to cart around an extra battery bank with
1:58
you but in power saving mode it still
2:01
comfortably lasts me over 5 hours of actual use and i also expect it to hold
2:06
up to the rigors of my grueling travel schedule a little bit better than the
2:10
gram has flipping it open then there's
2:13
still not much to dislike it's 2017 the bezels could be a little
2:19
bit thinner and the power button is still really mushy for a company whose
2:23
first product was a mouse but the 3200
2:26
by 1800 100 srgb display while not
2:30
shockingly bright is a solid performer and includes a touch screen something
2:34
that i rarely notice myself using but that drives me crazy when i'm on
2:38
something that doesn't have one and the keyboard speakers and trackpad are
2:44
somewhere between very good and excellent for a device of this class
2:48
with the keyboard in particular standing out to me because it blows me away
2:53
that the same company that put such an excellent low profile keyboard on a thin
2:58
and light put such an abomination on their desktop replacement 17-inch model
3:04
let's talk gaming the stealth is not really for
3:08
gaming but thanks to some under the hood upgrades there are a lot of ways to game
3:13
on it emulators older aaa titles and
3:17
modern esports titles like rocket league and dota 2 will run directly off the
3:21
onboard Intel graphics at usable frame rates as long as you lower the
3:25
resolution the onboard killer wireless consistently
3:28
saw transfer speeds of 40 megabytes per second or more on a high-end ac access
3:34
point so if you have a gaming pc elsewhere in the house steam in-home
3:39
streaming works at very high quality settings fantastically or you could even
3:44
use it remotely with software like parsec on a fast low latency internet
3:49
connection and with the addition of an external GPU the blade stealth
3:54
transforms from ultra book to ultra
3:57
high-end gaming system i was floored
4:00
when i saw the CPU turbo boosting to those clock speeds in games
4:05
i mean yes we're still giving up some FPS compared to a desktop running that
4:11
same titan xp graphics card with a high
4:14
end quad core or six core desktop chip
4:18
and thunderbolts protocol overhead and narrower PCIe 4x connection aren't
4:23
helping matters but these are still really impressive
4:27
results and sorry razer
4:31
both the performance bottlenecking and the price gap actually close
4:35
significantly if you're willing to explore third party egpu enclosures that
4:40
forego some of the core v2's creature comforts like easy upgradability and
4:45
built-in Ethernet and thanks to the 16
4:48
gigs of soldered RAM i found it useful for more than just gaming even with just
4:54
the onboard graphics for editing and rendering simple videos Intel's 8th
4:59
generation u-series processors put their previous generation efforts to shame i
5:04
would still equip a skilled video editor with something that can run higher than
5:08
about 2.2 gigahertz with all the cores slammed but throwing together this video
5:13
in premiere in the back seat of my car on the way to visit my grandparents was
5:18
very doable on the blade stealth
5:21
it's still a blade so it was sitting between 10 to 15 CPU usage thanks chrome
5:27
while i was typing up this review and you know it was a little warm to the
5:31
touch but it stays really quiet even
5:34
under full load now we need to talk about money
5:38
gone is the starting at 9.99 pricing
5:42
that made the original blade stealth so attractive
5:45
but while it is pricier than that it's
5:48
still in line with or better than devices of similar spec and build
5:52
quality like dell's xps 13 so that's not
5:55
something that i'm going to give razer too much flack about
5:59
i will save my flack for the battery
6:02
it is the worst thing about this device
6:06
but as i've said before it's still very usable so i think of the blade stealth
6:12
as kind of like a sporty two-seater the fuel economy sucks compared to something
6:17
more practical like the gram but it's
6:20
got other things going for it and i really really like it and i will be
6:25
switching to the blade stealth full time
6:29
wargaming is sponsoring this video to tell you guys to go check out world of
6:33
tanks it's the free-to-play online game that if you've been living under a rock for
6:38
the last few years you might not have heard of but it's all about breathtaking
6:43
tank battles across epic battlefields it's set in the mid 20th century and
6:48
world of tanks gives you access to an impressive roster of over
6:52
450 authentic tanks from steel brawlers
6:55
to light and fast scouts and there are rpg elements to the game where you can
7:00
research upgrades and modifications to enhance your tank's performance on the
7:04
battlefield for new players they're recommending to try out the ruis3 a
7:08
close range brawler or the ust29 which
7:11
has a powerful turret and quick maneuverability and you can join over
7:15
150 million players worldwide and make a name for yourself on the battlefield
7:19
they're offering you guys three days of premium time 500 gold and a premium tank
7:24
by using code wwii tanks and this is for new players only and you'll find that at
7:29
the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if this video
7:33
sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like
7:36
button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
7:40
description also down there is our merch storage has cool shirts like this one
7:43
and our community forum which you should totally join
7:49
wow almost dropped it wow