Razer Blade Thin & Light Gaming Notebook Featuring Switchblade Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,982 words · ~14 min read
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you guys asked for it and I delivered eventually this is the razor blade I am
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doing an unboxing of this was an E3 demo unit so yes it's already open but I
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think you'll mostly get the point so what do we have inside we have peel off
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oh okay interesting place the film over and apply the film to the okay I'll
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explain what this is after so that's probably supposed to be actually inside
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the package somewhere so the razor blade is a gaming notebook from a legitimately
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gaming company Razer um there's a lot of gaming notebooks from and I speak from
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firsthand experience from companies that
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don't actually understand what Gamers want and what Gamers need and not every
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uh not every notebook solution that is high performance or that is high quality
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is necessarily great for gaming for example Lenovo think pads great
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notebooks not great for gaming more designed for corporate use rugged
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portability that kind of things so it's all about what you actually need and
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Razer believes that this notebook is entirely focused on what the gamer needs
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Razer as always just like brilliant
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packaging that's that's how they roll they've got like kind of a carbon fiber
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esque sort of look to the top of the box here and that's all the time you get to
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look at it because we have to keep things rolling here and have a look at
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the notebook itself so this is a 17-in gaming notebook it has a quad core 2.8
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GHz mobile processor that turbos up to 3.5 GHz did I say quad core I'm sorry I
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meant dual core uh thank you for the correction slick uh so it has a dual
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core processor however if you checked out my recent episode on NC Tech tips on
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the ncixcom channel you'll see that
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actually Beyond two cores hyperthreaded in modern games
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there isn't really much benefit assuming the same clock speeds however for mobile
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CPUs uh making the same clock speed assumption isn't really fair because
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most mobile quad cores are not clocked at the same kind of speed as most mobile
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dual cores so there you go something to
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be aware of you guys it has 8 gigs of dddr uh DDR3 memory it has a GT
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550m graphics card and at 88
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in it is phenomenally thin so it uses an
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aluminum construction which feels just
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absolutely beautiful um wow that's quite
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nice actually and the weight is is actually pretty manageable too so the
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unit is about 7 lb which for a 17in
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notebook is already pretty good plus the fact that it uses a metal construction
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which doesn't really help with the weight Factor but does help them keep it
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uh sign ific Slimmer so let's start with the overall phys oh right right right
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okay let's finish with specs so spec wise right so it's got a 17.3 in LED
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backlit screen it has a 256 gig boot SSD
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it has let's just open this up here uh
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it has a full um anti- ghosting keyboard so what
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that means is that you're not going to have any issues or problems if you
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accidentally press um you know some keyboards you if you press sort of uh
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comb of keys it can ghost and it can actually interject additional characters
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or not register key presses correctly all that kind of stuff so it has a
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gaming grade keyboard has a power button up here which has a green Halo it also
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has a fully backlit keyboard and um it's
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got an integrated sound bar so instead of doing stereo speakers they've gone
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with a sound bar and this this is the uh kudrass of this particular product this
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is the switchblade interface so instead of a traditional touchpad it is booted
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up now it is a glass surface here glass
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plastic feels like glass um so whatever
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it's it's a it's a surface here that has two buttons and then 10 fully
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customizable display buttons so these okay if you guys remember that um I
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forget what it was called it was like that art lebedev keyboard that it was
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the full keyboard with individual OLED
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screens and all the keys and it was fully programmable for whatever you want wanted to do whatever language you
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wanted this is basically that except
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actually made commercially viable so you use their synapse 2.0 software which
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allows you to customize what shows up on
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these little screens it allows you to customize the functionality of the
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buttons you can have profiles for various games and the synapse 2.0
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software actually allows you to save uh a variety of different gaming settings
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in the cloud so you can take them with you wherever you go so let's finish up
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with the exterior of the unit before we get too much further into uh into more
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details of the switch blade which is
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looks like a whoops now I'm breaking everything
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okay so let's do the uh the traditional
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iPhone thickness comparison there you go guys that gives you some idea so the
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laptop is actually less than 7 lb the 7 lb travel weight is assuming you're
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carrying around the adapter as well which is extremely small and slim so you
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can see it's even here we go iPhone size
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comparison whether you guys like it or not now you know how big the adapter is
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so there H and this is actually kind of cool it comes with a nice rubber strap
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for uh strapping the cable so instead of
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one of those velcro ones that will wear out eventually because velcro inherently
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will you uh you get that instead okay so ventilation is here on
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the side you can see the uh the heat sink fins power in is here uh gigabit
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Ethernet HDMI out super speed USB 3
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colorcoded green uh two USB 2.0 ports
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and a headphone outport on this side on the front of the unit you find not a
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whole lot in terms of I/O and on the other side of the unit you find just a
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Kensington lock which as you can see based on that this is a demo unit has
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been used you can also see another cooling vent here as well as a heat pipe
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in there so obviously like pretty much every laptop that exists right now it is
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using a heat pipe for cooling uh is that more oh yeah more ventilation here so
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this must be the intake and that's probably the exhaust so you're going to want to make sure you don't use it on a
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soft surface uh because those are your intakes right there make sure they don't
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get covered when you are especially when you are uh gaming so the Razer logo on
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the back which I think is great and Slick apparently doesn't like the razor
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logo as much as I do but whatever uh he's not the one who gets to stand in
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front of the camera and give his opinion anyway so the razor logo which I love
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looks absolutely fantastic on the all aluminum top here and it does have a
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backlight so it glows and looks all baller I mean come on it's better than
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Apple or with their logos on the back of a laptop see now he's nodding in
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agreement it's awesome um the keyboard
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itself has almost no flex which is of course one of the advantages of using uh
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an aluminum construction for the notebook The Notebook itself has this is
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actually pretty good considering how thin this is so this is a very thin
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screen as you guys can see now that I'm holding my iPhone up against it and it
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only has just a touch of flex to it that's really good um and then the the
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bottom just just absolutely no flex at all completely rigid so this thing is
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going to that it really helps it adds to the durability of a notebook when the
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parts aren't constantly being stressed and it happens whether you're aware of
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it or not when you're putting it in a bag or or moving it around it will
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happen I mean I mean have you guys ever used a notebook like this and walked
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around like this if you have done that you're putting you're putting stress on
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the internal components because you're only supporting a small part of it and
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you're straining the BCBS it's not good for it I mean it's not going to kill it
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immediately but it's just one of those things where having a more solidly built
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notebook is definitely a good thing um oh yeah I want to show you guys how nice
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the backl is on that keyboard it's
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awesome so beautifully backlit keyboard
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you can't really see much halo around the outsides of the keys at all but the
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uh the letterings themselves are very very well lit up so those look like they
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must be I mean they must be edged Keys cuz I can't imagine any other way you'd
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get an awesome backlight like that um right so let's talk switchblade 2.0 so
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the switchblade 2.0 UI and so you can see guys this is a trackpad it's also
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like a glass touch thing now not Everyone likes glass wait okay no let's
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talk switchblade 2. or um synapse 2.0 uh
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before we go any further so synapse 2.0 is compatible with this as well as
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future razor products and some Legacy products like the Naga it actually
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allows you to save a variety of different things like macros uh any kind
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of programming any kind of sensitivity settings um even things like lighting
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effects you can actually save in the cloud and then you just go to a land
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Center or go to wherever you want and you can make sure that everything's set up exactly the way you want it so that's
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cool the switchblade is fully compatible with it and it can serve as one of two
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different things so it can either be a fourpoint multi-touch trackpad or it can
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be an 800x480 resolution display which is
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actually a phenomen resolution to have in such a small space these are also LED
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backlit displays I think I covered that already and ah if you don't like the
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glass feel of the touchpad it actually
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includes a couple of different feeling covers that you can put on it um that'll
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a protect the screen and B give you a bit of a different um a bit of a
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different feedback experience depending on what you prefer so that's uh that's
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really good uh What else do we have here
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guys oh yeah we haven't really covered the keyboard much let's have a look at
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the layout of the keyboard because that can really make or break a laptop for me
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as if the keyboard has kind of a fail layout so can I reach the backspace yes
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can I reach shift and shift yes I can cap slot can be off this is a good
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keyboard layout yay or at least in my opinion you know not everyone agrees
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with me about everything but uh if they don't then they can get their own
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YouTube channel so um so the keyboard lay uses long shifts a reasonably long
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enter and a reasonably long backspace when I see shorten shift Keys shorten
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Backspaces as someone with small hands that's a real problem for me when the
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backspace ends you know right about here and you have a really short one because
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I just plain can't reach it whereas this one I can so in terms of hot Keys you've
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got your volume controls you've got your external display your media controls
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your brightness as well as your other more different brightness so your
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keyboard backlight brightness as well as your screen brightness so let's see what it can do there's your razor logo for
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activating your hot keys so I don't know what brightness that is but something's
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probably going on
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and oh please log into synaps to access full switchblade functionality so uh
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give me a sec guys so our wireless network isn't working which means I have
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to sit here to log in but either way we
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have now logged into the synapse 2.0
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software and this is really cool so you can customize whatever these displays
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have on them so let's go to Twitter for example a cool and then once you do that
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apparently you have like navigation back
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forward and refresh so they dynamically change in terms of what uh what they're
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displaying since we don't have a Twitter account set up check that out that's
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actually like a pretty balling out display so to go back to home you just
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click the razor logo right here and so let's try going to something that we
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actually can go to like say for example um what's this oh cool number pad okay
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back oh cool touchscreen number
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pad I'm actually kind of I'm kind of liking this oh macro recording okay uh
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what's that gaming mode okay so oh this is neat so everything that's up here I
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was going to show you guys the app on the screen um so everything that's here
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is also apparently here so you got your lighting effects um so switchblade
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module brightness normal bright screen brightness all that kind of good stuff
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uh you've got your that might be keyboard brightness I don't know whatever something there's touch there's
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um hot keys for that anyway so put them to sleep one this saving power saving
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mode okay gaming mode allows you to do disable a bunch of different key combos
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this is cool I actually haven't most gaming modes are like disable Windows
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key but disabling alt Tab and disabling alt f4 are sort of equally important so
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um yeah okay so anyway everything that's up there seems to also be down here so
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let's go ahead and press this apparently that's going to haha go to razer.com can
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we Zoom or anything like
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that oh yeah I don't know how to
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actually enter like a uh oh search there we
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go keyboard active
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sweet I mean this is the kind of thing that if you're someone like me okay here
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here I'm going to show you guys something when I'm using my computer at
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home a lot of the time my smartphone is
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like propped up like this on my desk because I'll have like a YouTube video
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playing or something while I'm actually trying to use my
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computer this is that now I can have
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like triple screens so I can be like navigating the
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NC weekly special or like reading the Forum without
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actually okay it's not super fast but it is what it
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is forums come
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on yeah there we go nope no I clicked
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the wrong thing ah there we go so it lagged a little bit there oh I
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missed I hit the new arrivals forums
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come on okay so it's not quite an iPhone
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Touch Screen but for basic functionality like
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watching YouTube videos or whatever else this kind of thing would be absolutely
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perfect so let's go back let's see what else we got here so uh you can have a
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clock using Razor's like fancy thing and okay so this is just um
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so you see that razor logo there that is because the whole thing is a display you
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can turn that off and it can just be blank and a 4o multi touchpad you don't
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have to have anything on the display um so in games you can actually have
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additional information displayed here as well which is really really really cool
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um so I'm going to oh right I was sorry I was looking for a touchpad there I'm
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just sort of hardwired for that now uh screen resolution so let's see if it
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detects it as like a completely separate screen yeah I don't know how they're doing I don't know how they're doing
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this but they're doing it and it's really cool and there you go what's that
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is that the YouTubes there this is exactly like the only thing that I would
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really use this for uh when I'm not like
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other than games I guess I guess Twitter's not bad either to be perfectly
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honest so you can watch later account most recent search so we could search
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for um
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oops minus Tech
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chips and we could watch my p8 z77
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premium motherboard unboxing so
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cool okay so that is the razor blade to
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my uning the8 z77 V premium Now of
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not uh razor blade unboxing don't forget to sub subscribe to L Tech tips for more
16:00
unboxings reviews and other computer videos there goes my phone