The new Razer Blade Stealth is a 13 inch laptop that still manages to fit Nvidia GTX 1650
Max-Q graphics inside. In this detailed review I’ll cover both the good and the bad to
help you decide if it’s something you should consider.
For the specs there’s a 10th gen Intel i7-1065G7 ice lake quad core CPU, Nvidia GTX 1650 Max-Q
graphics, 16gb of memory in dual channel, a 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD for storage, and a 13.3”
1080p 60Hz screen.
There’s WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 for network connectivity, however it’s too thin for
an ethernet port, so you’ll need an adapter if you want that.
It’s also available with different configurations, such as lower powered MX150 graphics or 4K
touchscreen, you can find examples and updated prices linked in the description.
The Razer Blade Stealth is made of a solid aluminium unibody with an anodized matte black
finish, both on the exterior and interior. The whole laptop feels extremely well built
and premium, however due to the blocky design the front did feel a little sharp if pressed
against on the right angle.
The weight is listed at 1.42kg, and mine was a little under this. With the 100w Type-C
power brick and cables for charging, the total weight increases to just under 2kg, so it’s
quite lightweight.
It’s also quite portable and on the smaller size even for a 13 inch laptop, which results
in just 6mm thin screen bezels on the sides.
The Stealth comes calibrated out of the box, and I’ve measured the colour gamut using
the Spyder 5, and got 94% of sRGB, 66% of NTSC and 71% of AdobeRGB, so alright results.
At 100% brightness I measured the panel at 440 nits in the center, and with a 1010:1
contrast ratio, so above average compared to most other laptops I’ve tested in terms
of brightness and contrast.
There was pretty much no backlight bleed, but this will vary between laptop and panel.
There was minimal screen flex as the whole lid is solid metal, and the large hinge runs
along most of the base further aiding in stability.
It can also be easily opened up with one finger, demonstrating a fairly even weight distribution,
no problems using it on my lap.
The camera is found above the display in the center despite the thinner screen bezels,
and it’s got infrared for Windows Hello support.
The cameras looking about average and the audio sounds pretty good.
I found the keyboard alright to use though the presses were a little shallow. There are
some sacrifices being made due to the smaller size of the laptop, like the small shift key
on the right, I personally don't use that one so I had no problems, but worth noting.
The RGB keyboard is just controlled with one single zone, so the effects are limited. It’s
possible to use the function and F10 and F11 keys to adjust the brightness between 16 different
levels or off if you prefer. Here’s how typing sounds to give you an idea of what
to expect.
There was some keyboard flex while pushing down hard, but overall it was quite sturdy
and rigid due to the metal build and I found the letter keys need 58 grams of force to
actuate.
The two front facing speakers are found on either side of the keyboard and they sound
great, definitely above average, they get loud enough at maximum volume despite the
smaller side, however the latencymon results weren’t ideal.
The glass precision touchpad is on the larger side, was super smooth to the touch, and worked
extremely well. It clicks down when pushed and it’s got all the usual gestures.
Fingerprints show up very easily on both the lid and interior, and despite being a smoother
surface they were more difficult to clean compared to alternatives.
On the left from the back there’s a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port, a USB 3.1 Type-A port,
and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
On the right there’s a second USB 3.1 Type-A port and another Type-C port. This one supports
Thunderbolt 3 with 4 lanes of PCIe, so we could attach an external graphics enclosure
like the Razer Core X.
The back is just all smooth metal, and same with the front with just a single status LED
towards the right.
On top of the matte black lid there’s a subtle black razer logo in the center, it
doesn’t light up so can only be seen if the light is hitting it right.
Underneath is pretty clean, just a couple of air intakes towards the back corners for
the two fans with some exhausts behind the rubber feet.
It was easy to open up using a TR5 screwdriver to remove the 10 screws, and once inside there’s
the battery down the bottom, single M.2 drive just above this towards the right, and WiFi
6 card to the right of that. The memory is soldered to the motherboard and cannot be
upgraded, so you’ve got to buy it with the amount you need.
The Blade Stealth is powered by a 53 watt hour battery, and was tested with the screen
at 50% brightness, keyboard lighting off and background apps disabled. While watching YouTube
videos it lasted for 7 hours and 21 minutes with Optimus.
Gaming was tested with The Witcher 3, 50 minutes in the frame rate dipped from 30 to 20 FPS,
and after 66 minutes it was unusable at 6 FPS. In total it lasted for an hour and 21
minutes, and took an hour and 50 minutes to charge to full from nothing while powered
on.
I didn’t have any battery drain during my testing, so the 100 watt power brick seemed
to be adequate, and it was possible to charge up using the Type-C port on either side of
the machine.
The Razer Synapse software also allows us to set different key brightness levels when
on battery to save power, or even swap it from 60Hz to 30Hz, however when set to 30Hz
I only got an extra 8 minutes of battery life, which isn’t really much when it gets over
7 hours anyway.
Next let’s check out thermals. Inside there are a couple of fans and a heatpipe shared
between the processor and graphics.
The Razer Synapse software allows us to swap between balanced and gaming mode, or adjust
fan speed. I’ve tested both modes and also with the fans on the default auto or maxed
out.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius. The
idle temperatures were looking fine.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system.
Realistically all these temperatures are fine, even worst case under combined CPU and GPU
stress test we’re not passing 72 degrees Celsius, there was never any thermal throttling.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests. The CPU performance is the lowest
in balanced mode, and gaming mode increases the power limit so it can perform better.
Setting the fan speed to maximum changes nothing as thermals were not the limitation, and undervolting
the CPU helped address the power limitation, so there was an improvement with this.
The GTX 1650 Max-Q was always able to run up to its 35 watt limit without issue. Balanced
mode capped the power limit of the CPU to 12 watts, while gaming mode increased this
up to 15 watts.
Here’s how CPU only performance looked in Cinebench. Even in a CPU only workload we’re
limited to 15 watts in gaming mode, that is until we disable the Nvidia graphics. I’ve
done this through device manager. Once the GTX 1650 is disabled, the CPU is able to run
up to 25 watts in CPU only workloads and perform better.
Here’s how hot the machine gets in the areas where you’ll actually be touching. At idle
it’s a little warmer than the usual 30 degrees Celsius I see, but not by much. With the stress
tests running in balanced mode it gets up to the mid 40s. With gaming mode enabled it’s
perhaps just a little warmer, owing to the increased CPU power limit. With the fan now
at maximum speed it hardly changes, and it’s worth noting that as the whole body is metal
and absorbs the heat, the palm rest area did feel warmer than I’m used to for my hands.
Here’s how fan noise sounded during these different tests.
It was completely silent at idle. With the stress test in balanced mode it was still
on the quieter side, and this rose just a little in gaming mode. It’s louder still
maxed out, but this is still noticeably quieter compared to most larger gaming laptops I test,
which seem to average above 50 decibels.
I’ve only recently started testing Adobe Premiere, so only have limited data at the
moment. Here’s how long the Blade Stealth takes to export one of my laptop review videos
compared to other laptops. It’s only just behind the highest specced XPS 15, not too
bad.
Next let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, all games were tested at 1080p in gaming mode
with the fan at max speed for best performance.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool. It wasn’t
possible to run the test at ultra settings due to the 4gb VRAM limit of the 1650 Max-Q,
but given we’re only seeing 30 FPS at high settings anyway that’s probably not that
big of a deal.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode without RTX, and medium settings felt ok for
the most part, however the low setting preset was able to push us above the 60 FPS sweet
spot.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum, or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. Even maxed out it was still
playing ok with above 60 FPS on average, but for a competitive first person shooter like
this minimum settings with over 100 FPS would be a better experience.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare was tested in campaign mode, and I’ve also tested it with
the settings either maxed out or at minimum. With minimum settings it was still easily
playable with above 60 FPS.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and as a less demanding game epic settings
was only just a little below 60 FPS, with medium settings well above 100 FPS, so a good
example of a less demanding game that’s still able to hit high frame rates even on
this hardware.
Overwatch is another less demanding game and was tested in the practice range. Even at
epic settings the 1% low was above the refresh rate of the screen, so it was still playing
smoothly with 100 FPS and above achieved at ultra settings and below.
CS:GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and as a game that depends primarily on CPU
power the results are down due to the 15 watt CPU, however well above 100 FPS was still
possible with all settings maxed out.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane, and as another primarily CPU heavy game the
results are lower compared to other higher specced gaming laptops I’ve tested. Despite
that though ultra settings still averaged above 120 FPS, while high settings had a 1%
low that was even higher than the screen’s refresh rate.
I’ve tested 20 games in total on this laptop, check the card in the top right if you want
to see more results.
Let’s see how this config of the Razer Blade Stealth compares with other laptops, use these
results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with different drivers.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider I’ve got the Razer Blade Stealth highlighted in red near
similarly specced machines. In this case it was at the bottom, but performing the same
as the MSI Prestige 15 which has the same 1650 Max-Q graphics, although the Prestige
has a better CPU.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This seems to be more of a CPU heavy test, so it’s now slightly behind the Prestige
15 with better CPU, and the Blade Stealth is now slightly ahead of the Lenovo L340 which
also has a quad core CPU, but the higher powered 1650, granted that one uses single channel
memory.
The Battlefield 5 results were interesting, well at least compared to the MSI Prestige
15 which was performing significantly lower for some reason in this test. In any case
the performance isn’t too much below the 1650 laptops.
Although I’ve only compared a few games at max settings, as we’ve seen the Razer
Blade Stealth is definitely playing most games perfectly fine at 1080p, you just need to
drop down to low to medium settings in most cases. Honestly this is quite impressive,
you need to keep in mind that this is a 13 inch laptop, most others at this size max
out with the MX250. It would be possible to improve performance with an external GPU,
let me know if you’d be interested in seeing that tested in a future video.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike and Timespy from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want a detailed
look at these results.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage. The 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD was performing
great for the reads, but the writes weren’t much better than SATA speeds.
For updated pricing, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US it looks like there’s a sale on the config I’ve
tested here. It’s $1500 USD, down from $1800 USD. Interestingly this is the same price
as the version without the 1650 graphics, so might as well just go for the superior
version with Nvidia GPU. If you’re after the 4K touch screen version though you’re
looking at $2000 USD.
Meanwhile here in Australia we’re looking at $3300 AUD for the configuration I’ve
tested here, while the 4K version is $400 AUD extra, definitely not cheap given the
specs, but that’s going to be expected as a thin and light package that’s packing
in this amount of performance.
With all of that in mind, let’s finally conclude with the good and bad aspects of
the Razer Blade Stealth 13 gaming laptop.
Overall the build quality and design is very nice, it’s made out of a solid block of
metal and feels extremely high quality. The obvious major downside is the price tag, for
this money you could easily buy a more powerful gaming laptop, even from within Razer’s
own lineup if you’re willing to go just two inches larger to fifteen.
This means that the viability of the Blade Stealth is really going to depend on how much
you value the smaller size and portability, that’s what you’re paying for, a small
machine that still has some power to it. Some people, myself included, are happy to spend
more for less performance for a more portable system that still gets the job done - that’s
exactly why I have a 12.5” laptop for travel.
The battery life was excellent despite the smaller 53 watt hour battery, the touchpad
was very nice to use, Type-C charging on either side was nice to see, and the presence of
Thunderbolt was also good. The I/O selection was a little limited, but with Thunderbolt
you could use a nice dock or dongle. Thunderbolt also gives you the option of using an external
GPU enclosure, and although by default the CPU power limit is capped at 15 watts, if
you disable the GTX 1650 graphics it will instead run up to 25 watts, which will be
ideal with the eGPU setup.
It would have been nice if it could just instead detect the 1650 graphics aren’t being used
and do this automatically, but that’s the way it is.
Otherwise the only other things I didn’t really like was the warmer feeling metal body
once you load it up, but that’s just due to the metal chassis absorbing the heat, and
the front feeling a little sharp was only a problem if you’re rubbing your hands along
the front edge.
Let me know what you guys thought about the new Razer Blade Stealth 13 gaming laptop down
in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for future
laptop reviews and tech videos like this one.