Razer Blade 14 2015 - Can it handle my trip through Asia?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,994 words · ~9 min read
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the Razer Blade 14 2015 it's really not
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that different from the two previous iterations both of which I described as
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engineering Marvels and one of which W an editor's Choice Awards so when I got
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too many requests to ignore to review this thing I said to myself okay well if
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I'm going to cover the same product again for the third time I'm going to do
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a couple of things number one is I'm asking Razer for a keeper unit this time
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and number two I'm going to throw the toughest test I can at it one that the
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Surface Pro 3 a very widely respected
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device failed miserably I'm going to leave my xps2 behind for a 3 we trip to
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Southeast Asia and bring only the new blade to see if it's as suitable as an
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ultra portable gaming rig slw workstation as my previous test drives
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would indicate that it would be or if
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it'll end up grinding my gears until I'm forced to just stop using it since it's
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my only choice for
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computer Intel's new 750 series ssds
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utilize the NVMe standard providing speeds that never before seen on
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consumer storage drives click this
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laptop or here to learn more so I worked on the general overview
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for this review in Singapore which I would describe as um Asia with train in
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wheels for Americans it's hot and humid there's a lot of Asian people there and
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the availability of Burgers and Fries is pretty limited compared to chicken rice
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but all the signs are in English and most of the toilets I encountered had
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seats anyway just like its predecessors the blade 14 2015 features a hyper thin
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aluminum unibody design with only a dual fan intake hinge exhaust cooling
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solution and a couple of long rubber feet adorning the bottom a simple
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illuminated razor logo on the top and otherwise a very clean and beautiful
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design that is without completely forgetting functionality so while the
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unit is thinner than a dime as Razer loves to say it's still got three USB
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3.0 ports and an HDMI 1.4 output to go
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along with a headphone SL microphone Jack power plug and lock on the sides
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front-facing speakers and razors trademark solid and satisfying chicklet
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style keyboard complete with weird type face and unnecessary 20 levels of green
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light adjustment some of the stuff about it is not unnecessary though the Wi-Fi
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coverage was so spotty in the house where we were staying in Singapore that
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I ended up upgrading their access point but the good news is the blade dropped
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fewer connections than my other mobile devices from the start and while the
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screen could take some pointers from Apple to be usable in the car since
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higher brightness is required to compensate for the bouncing types of
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Reflections caused by vehicle movement it was definitely suitable for
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stationary use Outdoors near the famous simem Square Tech mall and while
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lounging in the yard with the parrot who lives there but it's time to move on to
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my next part of this video as well as my next destination brunai where thanks to
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some lazier days when my son got sick I spent most of my computer time replying
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to emails or watching movies the latter of which led to a couple more
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observations about the blade on the subject of the screen I'm still really
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not sure how I feel about the 3200x 1800 resolution it's harder to Drive natively
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than a theoretical 2560 x440 panel would
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be and requires very aggressive scaling
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to be usable for most people Razer actually sets it to 250% out of the box
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but viewing angles motion blur colors
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and of course smoothness of on-screen elements without anti-aliasing are all
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solid selling points and made watching videos on the device really enjoyable
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but that didn't impress me nearly as much as the time I pulled the HDMI cable
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out of our host's satellite box and plugged it into the blade so everyone
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could watch Penguins of Madagascar and it took me until halfway through the movie to realize the TV didn't support
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audio over HDMI and we were actually listening to the laptop speakers the
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entire time a fact that made me happy
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then but continues to infuriate me actually it turns out Razer does know a
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thing or two about audio product engineering which makes it that much
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more tragic that they insist on their gaming tuned headphones and headsets
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when it's obvious that they can do better but I guess this is doomed to
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remain a philosophical agreeded disagree point and since Razer is min's company
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and not mine I guess they'll keep doing it his way until I enter in agreement
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with them to do a limited like Linus Edition run of Kraken forged headphones
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that actually sound good or something actually that'd be kind of badass men if
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you're watching we should do that another thing I noticed in brunai since
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it was the only time on my trip where I used the blade fairly extensively
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without a wall plug I ended up waiting around an hour during a lady's trip to
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the salon and did a fair bit of riding in the car is that this aspect of the
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device has improved a lot to the point where while on the original blade 14
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battery life was good considering the other positive points of the product now
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I'd actually call it a fairly strong point I was able to work in airplane
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mode for anywhere from 4 to up to almost
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6 hours in a light productivity setting
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definitely something that pleases me gaming well you're still going to be
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looking at a little over that you know hour mark unless you're using some
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pretty aggressive NVIDIA battery saving features like capping your FPS at 30 or
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something along those lines the good news about which is that thanks to its 970 GPU it does support that feature but
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I still consider it mostly a mobile
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workstation and you're going to want to plug in if you if you want to do any kind of extremely long gaming session in
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Malaysia our next stop our host had one of those 4G mobile hotspot Internet
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plans so I was able to use the blade to get racket advice with my helper at the
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mall then I was able to use it again and oh wait no I didn't our host's 4G data
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cap got wrecked by having six house guests so even though my brother-in-law
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was giving me crap about why are you pulling out your laptop in the you know
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upside down house and this cool castle
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SL church thing in Mala where there's no
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Wi-fi I persisted and at the very least I got I hope some Neato shots of it
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sitting on the stone walls of the church and wow I sure wish Brandon had been
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there cuz with his knack for b-roll I'm sure that uh these shots would have been
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better but he's just plain too expensive to take with me on a trip like this so
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whatever the last stop in my vacation was Thailand and while my plan was to
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finally find some time to game on the bloody thing since I finally had decent
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or at least consistent internet without giving too much detail traveler's
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diarrhea totally sucks and I spent most of my mere two days in puket in bed
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sleeping off the wicked headache that came along with it so I guess all that's
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left is the conclusion about this notebook again there are some small
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things that definitely became bigger to me now that I'm using it as a daily
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driver versus when I was just using review units I'd like a wider opening
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hinge full-sized up and down arrow keys series seriously please fix this a
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larger trackpad with larger buttons that go to the edge of the laptop so that I
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can just kind of casually lean against the bottom of the laptop rather than
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like really intentionally pressing it when I'm using it two-handed and while
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I'm Dreaming how about a um I don't know slightly more fingerprint resistant
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finish but that's about it they fixed the crummy RAM capacity of the last gen
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and they beefed up the graphics what's not to love it's powerful enough that I
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can do any kind of work or gaming I could want while on the go it's portable
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enough to be practical something I value
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a lot as someone who used to carry a thick gaming notebook everywhere and
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honestly if you're into that kind of thing it gets a lot of compliments
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people were we were staying with security checkpoint officers you name it
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people kept asking me what that cool laptop was too bad their jaws all
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probably collectively hit the floor when they looked it up later and saw how much
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it costs but that's the price you've always had to pay to be on the bleeding
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edge and in the case of the blade 14 I know at least some of you will decide
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it's worth it even if it has no landport
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and I have to carry a dongle with me all over the
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place but I guess it's not like I can travel without a certain number of extra
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Essentials anyway like the great bathroom supplies from the guys at
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dollarshaveclub.com for a few bucks a month you can get highquality razors
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straight to your door so you always look good and okay I'm not going to focus on
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the razors in this spot today too much because one wipe char
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need a spotlight here I'm going to confess I left for my trip to Asia
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without some of the travel packs of one wipe Charlies which was a huge and brown
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mistake there's no toilet paper at all in public bathrooms in some of Southeast
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Asian countries with the expectation being that she'll shoot water from a
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hose at your butt and hope you don't manage to make some kind of a mess a
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pack or two of one wipe Charlie would have been way better anyway that's
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dollarshaveclub.com join the club now shave time and shave money and shave
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your butt I guess or yeah the whole save
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sounds like shave thing doesn't really work as well in that instance or maybe
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it does anyway guys thanks for watching
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like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it uh check out the
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link to our Forum if you want to discuss the video that's Linked In the video
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where you can change your Amazon bookmarked one with our affiliate code so we got a small Kickback whenever
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you're buying like Razer Blade 14s or whatever else the case may be it would
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actually be a pretty big Kickback on that so if you're buying a blade buying
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a braid buying a blade 14 then definitely use our affiliate code thanks
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again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all that good stuff