Is the most beautiful gaming laptop worth your bottom dollar?
"Razer has done it again, crafting the most gorgeous gaming laptop
we've ever seen, but impractical hardware features make it difficult to
justify the premium."
For
Gorgeous design
Brilliant, bright screen
Quiet while gaming
802.11ac Wi-Fi
Against
Poor value
Unnecessary features
Runs extremely hot
Paltry storage options
You
know what they say: third time's a charm. At least, that seems to be
Razer's hope with its third revision of its widely lauded Razer Blade gaming laptop. The result is a PC gaming machine that – pardon the pun – has been honed to a fine edge … at least on paper.
In
response to complaints regarding the 2013 Razer Blade, the company has
checked all the boxes (and then some). That last parenthetical is
important, because it's clear that Razer may have been a smidge
overzealous in meeting its customers' demands.
Last
year, folks were miffed at being asking to pay two grand for a 1600 x
900 display. This year, Razer stuffed a 3,200 x 1,800 IGZO (indium
gallium zinc oxide) IPS panel with 10-point capacitive, multi-touch
control into the lid. See what I mean?
You might think
that I'm nitpicking here, and maybe I am, but a starting price of $2,199
(£2,099, about $2,520) for just 128GB of solid-state storage is asking
for extra scrutiny. Especially when you stack the Blade up against
similarly priced – and arguably better equipped – competitors, namely
the 15.6-inch MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K and Gigabyte P35W v2. But let's dive deeper into that later.
Design
For
now, let's just admire what Razer has accomplished here. To my
knowledge, at 0.70 inches thin, the Razer Blade is still the thinnest
gaming laptop on the planet. And, by purely subjective evaluation, the
Blade is the most gorgeous gaming notebook – if not Windows notebook –
ever made, period.
That's thanks to, well, Razer doing
almost nothing. Not much has changed about the Blade design since last
year, and with good reason: it looks simply badass. The triple-snake
logo illuminates in a neon green glow as the deep black aluminum lid
opens on a single sturdy hinge.
As the cool, bright and
green backlit keyboard reveals itself, the all-glass black bezel touts a
sharp "Blade" logo just beneath the awfully bright touchscreen. But the
gray logo only reveals itself when under the right light or looked at
from the right angle, a brilliant touch of intrigue.
Just
in front of the hinge is a prominently placed power button adorned in
spun metal. The Blade design was clearly inspired by the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display,
and that's not a slight. There's a reason why everyone goes gaga over
MacBooks, and it's about time that at least one laptop maker from the
Windows camp took notice.
One piece of hardware that
Razer chose not to emulate, though I wish it did, was the touchpad. The
Blade still uses a touchpad with hard right and left buttons, rather
than the inimitable Apple clickpad. And while the tracking surface is
silky smooth and snappy, the buttons are rather flimsy.
It's
not a major issue, considering most gamers are wont to hook up a gaming
mouse as soon as their Blade emerges from its black box. Regardless, a
premium touchpad to match the rest of quality put forth here would be
much welcomed. So,
now that we've sufficiently gawked at the most beautiful gaming laptop
in this star system, let's get down to brass tax: the numbers. How thin
and light is this thing, really, and what are you getting for that
asking price?
Specifications
It's already been said that the new Razer Blade is almost
impossibly thin and light for a gaming laptop. But what do the numbers
look like, and how does the new hotness compare with last year's model?
The
new Blade measures a super slim 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches (W x D x H) and
weighs just 4.47 pounds – just four tenths of an inch thicker and three
tenths of a pound heavier. That's quite the feat for all the new,
beefier hardware (and touchscreen) that Razer managed to cram inside
this time around.
Now, let's put that into perspective. The 15.6-inch MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K
measures 16.5 x 11.3 x 0.85 inches and hits the scale at 4.36 pounds. A
bit thicker, sure, but much lighter, considering its larger dimensions.
The Gigabyte P35W v2
tells a similar story, measuring just a tad thicker at 15.16 x 10.63 x
0.83 inches and weighing a heftier 5.07 pounds – but not by much, again
considering its size in comparison.
But there's a likely explanation for all this: the Razer Blade is encased in an aluminum unibody enclosure, much like the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display
that it looks to emulate. I'm no expert in metals, but I'd venture to
guess that aluminum, while a softer metal, is much more dense than the
plastic used to cover the undersides of MSI and Gigabyte's gaming laptops.
For
the most premium products, you pay by the pound – literally. At any
rate let's take a closer look at what Razer managed to stuff inside 0.7
inches worth of alluring aluminum. Here is the Razer Blade configuration
given to rncreviews
Spec sheet
CPU: 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-4702HQ (quad-core, 6MB cache, up to 3.2GHz with Turbo Boost)
Screen: 14.0-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 (QHD+) IGZO, IPS with LED backlight, capacitive multi-touch
Storage: 256GB SSD
Ports: 3 x USB 3.0 port, HDMI 1.4, 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, security lock slot
Connectivity: Intel Wireless-AC 7260HMW (802.11a/b/g/n/ac), Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: 2MP HD webcam
Weight: 4.47 pounds (2.02 kg)
Size: 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches (W x D x H)
All
of those top-end components crammed inside the most gorgeous chassis to
ever grace mobile PC gaming is going to go for top dollar. The asking
for this setup: $2,399 (£2,299, about AU$2,765), and shifting the
configuration won't save you much money. Between the three available
Razer Blade models, all that changes is the solid-state drive capacity.
If
you're OK with a paltry 128GB of space, you'll save a measly $200. Want
more space? Be ready to fork up an additional 300 smackers. This story
is nothing new to consumer tech: if you want the thinnest, chicest and
snappiest around, you better pay up. The question here I ask is, when it
comes to gaming laptops, how much should that really matter?
Take
two of the Blade's competitors, for instance. The most expensive
version of the GS60 Ghost Pro 3K offers double the video memory from the
same GPU, a larger screen (albeit at a slightly lower pixel count), a
faster processor, double the RAM, more ports and gobs more storage – two
128GB SSDS and a 1TB, 7,200 rpm hard drive – for the same as the
cheapest available Razer Blade. That said, it's not as much of a looker,
though it's still quite nice.
Gigabyte offers a similar
deal. You'll net a larger (though only FHD) IPS screen, a better version
of the same graphics chip, a stronger CPU, double the memory, tons more
space (a 256GB SSD and 1TB, 7,200 rpm HDD), and far more ports for $400
less than the cheapest Blade on Amazon. And though you will lose AC
Wi-Fi for those savings, you'll gain a Blu-ray disc drive that can
become an additional storage bay.
One
thing in common that these two competing systems share is that they
lack touchscreens. MSI and Gigabyte clearly made a call that such
technology doesn't do much for PC gamers. Frankly, I wish that Razer
would follow suit – it would at least shave a few bucks off the premium
price tag.
Of course, none of this is to say that the
Blade doesn't ... cut it when it comes to gaming. (Cue David Caruso.) Au
contraire, as you'll soon see
Performance
This gaming laptop
might come in a fancy package, but don't go for a second thinking that
it's all looks and no substance. Based on the synthetic tests I ran on
this machine alone, this thing is a monster.
Benchmarks
3DMark: Ice Storm: 52,610; Cloud Gate: 15,255; Fire Strike: 4,207
On all the synthetic tests, the new Razer Blade fought toe-to-toe with the MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 3K and Gigabyte P35W v2, reporting scores within points either way. (At least on these benchmarks, the extra RAM didn't do those rigs much good.)
While
those Metro: Last Light numbers look atrocious, keep in mind that this
game chews up most all mobile GPUs. That said, I would expect to be able
play just about any PC game that lands this year or next at 1,920 x
1,080 resolution and high settings. Beyond full HD, however, is where
you might run into some problems.
The gaming life beyond HD
Phrases
like "1440p" and "4K" chart the next frontier in PC gaming. On the
desktop, we're already there, though for far more than most are willing
to pay for even an Xbox One or PS4.
On laptops, however hard the GPU makers and notebook vendors try, we're
just not there yet – but we're awfully, terribly close.
Take
my time with Titanfall at 3,200 x 1,800 on high settings (with double
buffered vertical-sync and 2x MSAA at about 30% draw distance), for
instance. Using Fraps on a five minute run during a live match, the
Blade managed a perfectly playable 32 frames per second on average.
That's fine for one of 2014's premiere shooters, but what about 2015?
I'm
not confident that the GTX 870M, as powerful as it is, will be able to
reliably play more demanding games like, say, Dragon Age: Inquisition or
even the recent Alien: Isolation at this resolution and similar
settings. Sure, 1080p should be no problem, but an admission like that
begs the question: why bother with such a sharp screen then?
Plenty of pixels to go around, but where to?
There's
no denying that the IGZO IPS panel is a beauty to behold. Text and
images look astounding, with nearly nonexistent viewing angles, and
games look especially smooth. I barely noticed shifts in frame rate
while blowing up giant robots at native resolution, likely thanks in
part to the IGZO's enhanced response time.
If you're able
to find QHD+ video online, much less stream it at a respectable clip
(that's where AC Wi-Fi comes in), I'm sure that it will look simply
stunning on this screen. But that's just the problem: unless you're a
frequent traveler, how many movies are you going to watch on a 14-inch
screen? If you're in the market for such a premium laptop, chances are
you already have an excellent HDTV, if not a 4K TV.
And
if gaming at acceptable frame rates at such a sharp resolution is going
to be a challenge with this hardware as we enter 2015, where does that
leave this absurdly attractive piece of machinery? Perhaps I'm being too
harsh on such a fantastically-designed device, but the asking price in
the presence of such value-packed machines deserves some extra scrutiny.
Bringing the heat – literally
Razer
made great efforts to better move heat around and out of its flagship
gaming laptop, from localized heating, custom designed pipes and
diamond-cut vents to better cool air as it enters the internals while
hot air exits. The company even coded a smart cooling system into the
laptop's BIOS.
It's crystal clear that Razer knows that
gaming laptops, especially ones this thin, have trouble with heat, and
its engineering teams are on it. It's too bad, then, that heat is still
an enormous issue with the new Razer Blade. After just a few minutes in
any 3D game, any area above the middle row of letter keys was hot to the
touch, with the region between the hinge and keyboard deck being
painfully so.
I say this with almost all gaming laptops,
but I'll add an exclamation point to this disclaimer: do not play games
with this thing on your lap! That said, the Blade nary makes noise above
a whisper while playing games – just consider buying one of those
laptop coolers.
A battery befitting of its size
Call
me spoiled by the forbidden fruit, but with laptops this thin and
light, I've come to expect longevity to match. Otherwise, what's the
point of a notebook designed to better fit in my bag if it can't last
for the length of my travels? Razer hasn't broken any records, but it's
managed to impress in the battery department.
The more
intense PCMark 8 battery test didn't do the Blade any favors with a 2
hours and 40 minutes recorded time, but my arguably lighter (and more
realistic) anecdotal testing saw much better lasting power. While no 13-inch MacBook Air, the Razer Blade lasted exactly 4 hours in my personal battery test.
Like
all of my anecdotal battery tests, the Blade's power setting was
notched at "Balanced", the screen at 50% brightness, the keyboard was
not backlit and the machine was powering a USB mouse. I then streamed
high bitrate Spotify while working in 10+ Chrome tabs, TweetDeck and
HipChat, and watched the occasional high-res YouTube video.
Not
too shabby for a gaming machine. That's especially so, considering the
Gigabyte registered the same time powering a standard FHD screen,
whereas the MSI couldn't hang out for longer than 2 hours and 58
minutes.
Verdict
Three revisions in, the Razer Blade has been honed to a fine
edge, merging nearly peerless performance with an unmatched sense of
style. Razer's crack team of engineers and designers is clearly on to
something with this device, but I can't help but think that the vision
still needs further refinement.
We liked
Not much
has changed about the Razer Blade design over the past year, and,
despite the rather flimsy touchpad buttons, that's completely OK. I've
often called Razer's mean machine the MacBook Pro of gaming laptops,
and I still stand by that and consider it a compliment. From the
lecture hall to the LAN party, this is a notebook that will fight right
in no matter where you take it.
Panache with performance
to match, the Blade can keep right up with the best of its competition.
If you own a (completely legal) treasure trove of 1440p or better video
content to watch, it will absolutely pop on this brilliant, bright
screen. And, if you can tolerate lower settings, games will look just as
incredible at QHD+.
Lasting
exactly half a work day in my personal battery test, the Razer Blade –
being a gaming laptop, of course – produces at least some of the lasting
power that its form factor commands. The Blade will hang in there for
most flights, but will likely check out before you land on a
cross-country jaunt. That's more than most gaming laptops can even come
close to claim.
We disliked
Frankly, the
touchscreen should have stayed on the chopping block like it did last
year. Sure, it performs just great, thanks in no small part to the IGZO
technology, but what does it matter? My use of the touchscreen didn't
extend beyond testing whether it actually works, and it rarely does on
any touchscreen laptop I review. I'd much rather save a few bucks.
Speaking
of which, while being one of the first gaming laptops to pack an IGZO
panel sporting a crazy crisp 3,200 x 1,800 resolution makes for a great
bullet point, it too is largely unnecessary. If this model were to come
touting an IGZO, 1,920 x 1,080 display (without touch), I'd be just as
excited and impressed. Again, another place dollars could be saved for
all parties involved.
Finally, as much as Razer tried, it
simply still struggled to keep the heat under control in a laptop this
thin. I won't belabor the point, but perhaps if Razer moved the air
intakes to where the speakers are located, and employed tweeters
embedded underneath the keyboard, heat would be less of an issue. Most
PC gamers I know use headsets anyway.
Final verdict
Razer
has more than proved its point: it can craft a gaming laptop better
than all the rest. But the Razer Blade still feels like a proof of
concept more than a viable product for the PC gaming masses, if only due
to some superfluous features and thusly baked-in prohibitive price.
As
powerful and pristine as the new Blade is, some of that power is wasted
on unnecessary hardware features that only serve to drive the price up
to levels unattainable by most PC game enthusiasts. And that's not even
including those who have yet to recognize the wonder and majesty of the
platform and ecosystem.
To be blunt, there isn't a
scenario in which I would wholeheartedly recommend the Razer Blade. For
the same price, you could either purchase a far more sensibly-built,
though not as beautifully-built, gaming laptop or build your own beastly
desktop gaming PC.
But, and this is a big "but", the
fact of the matter is that the Razer Blade is one of the best gaming
laptops, if not Windows laptops, that money can buy. It's just a damn
shame that it takes so much money to get.
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