Razer Blade 14 (2014)
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,530 words · ~7 min read
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I was in a dimly lit room in Vegas, CES
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2014. I was in the middle of a meeting with a shady character. Minlang Tan and
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I were sitting across from each other on couches. I had recently given the Razer
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Blade 14 2013 edition a mostly positive
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review, but I was in the middle of laying into him about how frustrating
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that notebook had been for me because I thought it was basically perfect if it
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wasn't for the TN screen. Midway through he kind of started smiling and then
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finally he said, "Okay, so Lionus, then what you're saying is that if I fix the
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screen for you in the next iteration, you'll call it perfect on
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camera." Not being able to think of anything else I wanted changed, I
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agreed. Let's find out if I held up my end of the bargain. Is the Razer Blade
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2014
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perfect? With its power loss protection, affordability, and performance, the
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SP920 from Adata makes upgrading to an SSD remarkably safe and simple. So, here
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is my review of the 2014 Blade 14. And
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apart from my customary complaint that Razer really needs to fix their bloody
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product naming scheme, I may have to give this my first ever editor's choice
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award. It's expensive, but it's a truly
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remarkable piece of technology. On top of ditching the rubbish panel type,
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Razer quadrupled the pixel count to an extremely sharp 3200 by 1800, made it a
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10point multi-touch screen, and they improved the core specs of it as well.
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So, we're getting an upgrade to a fourth gen Core i7472HQ quad core with
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hyperthreading. We're getting an upgrade to a GTX 870M with 3 gigs of GDDDR5
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memory, which is remarkable given the form factor. That's anywhere from 60 to
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100% faster in realworld games versus
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the last gen Blade 14. And as long as it's running at full speed, which
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amazingly on a flat surface it does, we're getting 2.5 GHz on the VRAMm and a
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slightly boosted overbase 967 MHz on the
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GPU in heaven with the graphics core running at 82° and the CPU running at
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77°. On battery, these values dip a little bit down to around 875 MHz core
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and 2 GHz RAM. But I guess that's to help conserve battery life. Although I
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still got a very respectable, if not overwhelming, 45 minutes of continuous
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3D use out of it. Not bad considering
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its size. All right, so let's move on to the physical overview. The Power Brick
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is incredibly small for 150 W, just like last time. And that's about it for
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accessories. Onto the machine, it features an aluminum unibody
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construction that gives off a definite Apple would make notebooks like this if
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they were cool vibe. that also assists with cooling and keeps it extremely
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light at just under four and a half pounds or about 2 kilos. It's got an
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illuminated Razor logo on the back with subtle sort of accent bumps and
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basically it looks just like the Last Blade 14, which means it is still
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beautiful. The bottom has two cooling intakes and two rubber feet to keep the
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notebook from sliding around. Then moving to the left side, we've got power
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in, two USB 3 ports, and a headphone/microphone combo jack.
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Finally, on the right is a Kensington lock, an HDMI output, and another USB 3
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port, which brings us around to the top. The trackpad has a very pleasing finish
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and satisfyingly clicky, if a little bit
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narrow, dedicated left and right buttons. The speakers are unhindered by
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obstructions and sound loud, even if they're not particularly deep and
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boommy. The power button sits below the screen, above the exhaust that spits hot
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air out above the keyboard here. and that keyboard. Razer has outdone
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themselves here. The layout is spacious and nearly perfect. Every key is
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programmable. The backlight has an extravagant 20 levels of illumination.
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And the keys have a satisfying tactile clickiness that is
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unlike any other chicklet type notebook that I have ever used. It is
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outstanding. Now, I know I already kind of awarded it
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an editor's choice, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to ask for a few things to be improved in the next
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revision. And number one is actually related to the next stop in our tour,
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the screen. The resolution makes it super sharp whenever text scales
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correctly, and colors and viewing angles of the screen are much better than the
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last chip, like worlds better. But there's still a noticeable color shift
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when viewing offc center. And although it makes up for it somewhat with an
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incredibly bright backlight and therefore a very solid contrast ratio,
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black levels of this screen are not as deep as I'd like, especially for use in
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a dimly lit room. Number two, Razer, the
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memory is soldered on and you only gave us 8 gigs. That's good enough for today,
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but what about tomorrow? I regularly use 6 gigs of RAM on my desktop just
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browsing the web. The 256 gig skew and
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up need to have 16 gigs of RAM for this machine to last long enough to justify
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the sticker price, especially if it's not going to be upgradeable. And number
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three, well, I think we got just enough USB3 ports. And while I appreciate the
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upgrade to Intel's solid 7260 AC wireless solution, I don't think a
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gaming machine is complete without an Ethernet port, even if it requires an
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adapter or something. And then while we're at it, I would have much rather seen mini DisplayPort in the place of
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HDMI out due to its higher resolution support and ability to be inexpensively
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adapted to anything else. But that's it.
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It's all I got. It's an engineering marvel. I mean, out of my measly four
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complaints, one of them could have been resolved with a $25 USB Ethernet
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adapter. A trivial amount of money for anyone buying a Blade 14. Which I guess
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leads into one more like extra bonus criticism. One that's very different
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from the others. and that I don't expect Razer to be able to fix it anytime soon.
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The Blade 14 is very, very expensive. I
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don't have to like it, but I do understand it. And that's the reason why
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I'm not taking its editor's choice award away for costing as much as my car for a
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512 gig model. For the same price, you
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can of course get a much more powerful gaming desktop or even a much more
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powerful gaming notebook. But this is a luxury item that a lot of R&D went into.
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So, someone has to pay those engineers and that's why it costs this much.
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Sadly, it's too expensive for my tastes. But for affluent gamers who want
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something beautifully crafted that they can take on the road with them, this
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notebook will absolutely annihilate similarly crafted machines like Apple's
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13-inch MacBook Pro. So, here's the conclusion. With network streaming
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gaming technology advancing so quickly right now, how longived thin and light
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gaming notebooks will be as a category remains to be seen. But one thing's for
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sure in my mind. Right now it's alive and this one rules the roost. If you can
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afford one, I wholeheartedly recommend the Blade 14 2014. Nothing is perfect,
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so I'm reneggging on that deal where I have to call it perfect. But I will say
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it's the first notebook I've ever seen that just plain doesn't feel like a
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compromise in any way. It's thin, light, beautiful, and powerful, and it's my new
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favorite. Well done, Razer. Thank you guys very much for watching. Like this
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video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment under the video letting me know what you think of
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the Razer Blade 2014. If you think that Razer should really let me keep this
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instead of making me send it back, which is making me very, very sad right now as
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I try to finish this review. Anyway, in
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the video description, you can check out the support link, guys, where you can
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buy cool t-shirts like this to maybe help me afford a Razer Blade 2014. You
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can also give us a monthly contribution if you love our content. And if you
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don't want to give us anything directly, which is great. You can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our
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affiliate code. We'll get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff that you already would have been buying anyway.
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So, that's another awesome way of helping us out, and we appreciate it.
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Thank you very much for watching once more. And as always, don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips if you
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haven't already.