People sometimes ask why would you buy a gaming laptop when you can just build a custom PC for like $7?
This is why: This is the new 15-inch Razer Blade and it is one of the best-looking laptops
I've seen this year. The design has changed quite a bit,
I always thought that the 14 inch Blade looked a lot like a MacBook, this new 15 inch Blade looks a little bit more unique,
the corner radius is a little bit smaller slightly more boxier shape, and I think it looks really good.
There's some noticeable improvements in build quality as well. So the chassis just feels more rigid,
It's a tighter build and I think it's one of the best-looking products from Razer. So the logo is still right in the middle
It's sunken in a little bit more and it still lights up,
It would be cool
If they released a gunmetal color like they did on the Stealth
But something tells me they won't do that any time soon.
You can get skins for them, the D-Brand one in matte black looks really cool if you mute out the logo and it protects
the surface from any scratches and stuff. When you open it up
you'll see speakers on either side of the keyboard and the power button on the right speaker,
it almost looks like they could implement a fingerprint sensor on that power button
but it doesn't exist right now maybe for future generations. The speakers themselves sound good for reference, they're similar
If not slightly better than the speakers on the 2015 MacBook Pro, but the 2016 and 2017
MacBook Pro speakers still sounds significantly better than these but good speakers overall.
The audio sounds clean but I wish there was a little bit more bass. So the screen is fantastic. It's bright
It's fast, great color gamut. There is a 4k panel available, but 144 Hertz screen
It's where it's at
If you plan on playing games on this machine
high refresh beats higher resolution any day of the week unless you're really hardcore about video or photo editing.
This is one of the best 144 hertz panels on the market right now.
I'd consider it a step above the competition now keep in mind. It does not have G-Sync
I think it was a right decision
I'll explain why in a little bit but yeah no G-Sync. The webcam quality is pretty mediocre
It's a 720p image. To get inside, it's just a few Torx screws and the panel comes off pretty easily,
there's finally user upgradable memory. I think that's something that a lot of people have wanted over the years
It's traditionally been soldered on on the Razer Blades. It's now replaceable,
you can also replace the SSD and the Wi-Fi card. Battery life is fair, it's an 80 watt hour battery
I'm getting around five and a half hours of battery life with the screen at 250 nits.
This is with the screen at 60 Hertz. So I'm actually reducing the
144 to 60 just to kind of preserve battery life, so five and a half hours and this is what I was talking about before
I feel like without G-Sync you get Nvidia Optimus which helps extend battery life and on a device like this
it just makes sense to not have G sync and have
technology in here to extend its battery life because that's why you want something that's thin and light and portable right?
The AC adapter on this thing is a little bit bigger than the previous generation, but it's still really portable
It's a very clean design the plug connects into this oval-shaped port kind of like a bigger USB-C shape thing
It is reversible, but it's not magnetic. I do like it though
It feels secure. The rest of the ports are pretty standard
You got three USB A's, a Thunderbolt three with some display outs, but there's no SD slot and there's no Ethernet.
Okay, let's talk about the keyboard
when I first up pictures this layout I was concerned: it reminds me a lot of the keyboard from the Razer Blade Pro and I
did not like that layout very much and it's essentially the same layout.
So here's the issue the shift key on the right side and the arrow keys are positioned in a very untraditional way.
Normally that shift key is right beside the question mark and just out of muscle memory when you're doing a question mark you'll hit
shift+question mark just really quickly and it just makes sense. Right? You've done it a thousand times in your life
probably a hundred thousand times your life, but on this keyboard
There's an arrow key right between them and it's actually quite difficult to get used to it.
I've been using this thing for about a week at this point and for the first two days, it was very irritating.
I was constantly hitting up+question mark instead of shift+question mark and you can see how they'd be annoying. After
day four, day five, I got used to it.
But there's another problem to this if this was the only
laptop or the only keyboard that you ever used then you'll get used to it.
But the moment you switch to another keyboard like even a regular razor keyboard like one of their desktop keyboards
you're back to a completely different layout and that is the bigger problem.
The inconvenience when it comes to switching keyboards. Now, if you're someone that uses the left shift instead of the right shift
then this probably won't bother you or if you're someone that just doesn't switch keyboards very often then it also won't bother you.
But for the few people out there
it might be more than just a few but for the people that do switch keyboards or just switch devices regularly.
It's a thing. Now another thing that kind of bugged me before about Razer keyboards
is that the function keys up top only light up the function number. You don't actually see the hotkeys being lit up
so the brightness controls, and the volume controls, you can't see those in the dark.
But you can map different colors to it using the Razer synapse: like you can make those purple or green whatever you want
So you can technically identify what buttons those are by the color which is a bit of a workaround
but at least it's better than not be able to tell where they are at all. The trackpad:
This is now using Windows Precision Drivers. Great surface texture and accurate tracking.
The buttons are underneath the trackpad this year instead of the dedicated hardware buttons
they've had in the past but I think most people will enjoy this trackpad. There's one like mild issue
the trackpad is quite large and the palm rejection software isn't perfect yet
I think that is something that they can tweak over time
but right now when you're typing, occasionally your palm will kind of move that tracker around but it's a really minor problem.
The performance is great. It's running the i7-8750H. It's a six core CPU. Excellent for multi-core applications.
There are two GPU options. There's a 1070 Max-Q and a 1060 Max-Q that 1070 gives maybe
25-30 percent better performance than the 1060. It's not insignificant, but it's also a little bit thicker, like half a millimeter thicker
It's barely noticeable
but there is a difference. The performance in games for either of these cards is gonna be great and depending what you play or what
you want to do with your laptop, you'll have to make that decision for yourself. My unit runs pretty warm
But I'm not seeing it throttle. It's cutting it kind of close
so if you live in a warmer climate, or if you play your games in a room that doesn't have air-conditioning,
then you're gonna get warmer temperatures. Keep in mind, this is at stock though
I did try undervolting in XTU and I got it to like negative 130 millivolts and
temperatures are noticeably better. Now, cooling a device like this is not easy. Every millimeter that you shave off this laptop to make it thinner
and thinner just makes it exponentially harder to cool it properly, and this year they did a really, really, good job.
It's still not perfect,
I'd love to see lower temperatures without undervolting or repasting but it's better this year than it has been in the past.
Okay, the fans are not too loud. You actually get pretty decent control in the software this time.
You can tweak it the way that you like and even at max speed, it's not crazy loud or anything. One weird thing though
I don't know why it takes like 10 maybe 15 seconds for the fan speed to ramp up and down. Like a lot of gaming
laptops that I've used you press a button and the fans goes all the way up,
instantly. This takes a little while to get there
it's not it's like not an issue or anything, but it's just something I've noticed
I haven't seen in other devices before so I thought I should just mention it. Now whether or not you should purchase this thing.
Like should you get one. Here's the thing, this year in 2018,
there are a ton of really good thin and light gaming options to choose from. Like there's
more this year than have been any other year that I've seen before.
With the Razer Blade you're getting a device that is the smallest
15.6 inch gaming laptop on the market. It's literally the smallest one available and with that title comes a price premium.
But the overall device is really good this year. Nice design, awesome build, really powerful components, good thermals,
the keyboard is really my only gripe but if you think you can adapt to it,
or if you don't really care about those issues that I mentioned about that shift key and arrow key then I think you're gonna really
like this device. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. I'll see you guys next time.