The Razer Blade Stealth Review: Razer Takes On The Ultrabook
by Brett Howse on March 29, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Razer
- Skylake
- Razer Blade Stealth
- eGFX
- Razer Core
- Skylake-U
System Performance
When you buy a Razer Blade Stealth, you get just a single CPU option in the Intel Core i7-6500U processor. This is a dual-core chip with hyperthreading, and it has a base frequency of 2.5 GHz with a turbo frequency of 3.1 GHz. On the CPU side, it’s the second fastest offering in the standard "2+2" 15W Skylake-U series, with only the i7-6600U above it . This 15-Watt processor has Intel’s HD 520 graphics, with 24 execution units and a maximum frequency of 1.05 GHz. With Razer’s gaming heritage, it would have been nice to see the new "2+3e" Iris parts with eDRAM, but likely due to the target price this wasn’t an option. Meanwhile the 8 GB of RAM is DDR3-1866 in a dual-channel configuration.
The model tested is the Core i7-6500U with 8 GB of memory, 512 GB of storage, and the UHD display.
To test the system performance, the Stealth has been put through our standard notebook workload. The Stealth has been put up against several other Ultrabooks to see where it fits in performance wise, but if you want to compare it to any other device we’ve tested, please check out our Notebook Bench.
PCMark
PCMark attempts to simulate real-life workloads with several sets of tests. The workload tests all aspects of the device, and factors like the display resolution can come into play here on the gaming tests. Storage has its own set of tests which recently changed, so the new results are not comparable to the old ones. The workload is varied, and the Stealth falls in-line with other similar devices, although the high resolution display certainly pulls the scores down a bit compared to the competition.
Cinebench
Cinebench is a rendering program, with single-thread, multi-thread, and OpenGL tests. For notebooks, we focus on the single and multi-threaded tests, and this is a good indication of CPU performance. The i7-6500U does especially well in the multi-threaded portion.
x264
This test converts a 1080p video into the x264 format, and like Cinebench, it prefers high CPU frequencies and more cores. The Core i7 does very well in this test relative to other Ultrabooks.
Web Tests
Web browsing is still one of the most common tasks anyone does on a PC, so strong performance here is always a benefit. The scores below will be either done with Google Chrome as the browser if the machine was running Windows 8.1, or Microsoft Edge if the device was running Windows 10.
While not quite as fast as the Microsoft Surface Book, the Razer Blade Stealth still does very will in these tests.
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nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Xps13 can be bought around 799 nowadaysBrokenCrayons - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
“For Gamers. By Gamers.”Interplay, is that you in there? What happened to Van Buren?
retrospooty - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I never really got the need for a "gaming notebook". Gaming is far better, faster and cheaper on a desktop. Do alot of people really have the need to game when mobile? I would personally think most people, when out and about are doing whatever task they are out and about for, not worrying about gaming until they get home and have time for it. Is it just me? I guess if you travelled for work alot and wound up with extra time, but that screams niche market.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Most mobile gaming I see happens on a phone and not on a laptop. There are most certainly a lot of people who spend time away from home due to work that might benefit from a gaming laptop, but this particular laptop isn't a gaming box without the not-so-mobile Razer Core and other external bits like a monitor, full sized keyboard, and mouse. The benefit in this to those sorts of people is that they only need to worry about one computer as opposed to a laptop and desktop. The Stealth's potential of using an external, desktop GPU offers some flexibility at an added cost. So yes, there's a point and yes its a niche market.The "but" in all of this is that the niche market might be larger than you think. People with no legitimate need for the capabilities the Stealth + Razer Core offers might still purchase such a setup or some other gaming laptop in order to have those capabilities. The expense could very well do nothing but address a psychological need that exists without reason purely inside the mind of the buyer. It happens pretty frequently in automotive markets where people buy much more capability than they need in order to be prepared to drive in weather or road conditions that happen for merely a day or two out of the year. They then willingly endure the liability of their purchase the other 363 days happily. Similarly a person with no need for a gaming laptop will be able to play games in a hotel room for a couple of days a year and deal with the cost and performance penalty of their purchase the rest of the time for little to no rational reason.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
There are people like me, that have LAN gaming parties. A laptop is so much more convenient. And I can play it at the laundromat when Im doing my laundry every weekend.I also live in a 1BD apartment. Space is at a premium, there is nowhere to put a nice computer desk for a desktop.
nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Laptop is more convenient but you cannot play any real game on this laptop.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
I never understood what makes something "real" or not. Even a nearly ten year old GMA 950 can run games, some of which were flagship releases in the past. Does the age of a game make it lose it's connection with reality? Is something only "real" if it's been released in the last few months because humans can't fathom the relationship of the past to the present?DarkXale - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Depends on the definition of real.CS? It can handle.
LoL? It can handle.
DOTA2? It can handle. (Even benchmarked here at +60FPS)
WoW? It can handle.
Civilization 5/BE? It can handle.
Football Manager? It can handle.
Rocket League? It can handle.
You'd probably want to stay clear of Battlefield 4 or Witcher 3 - but at this point we're talking exceptions, not a norm.
DarkXale - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
I should point out that I chose these titles since they're generally where you tend to see the most /played being done -today-.rxzlmn - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I don't think it's that uncommon for people to have jobs which require a decent amount of travelling. The main point is that it's easily transported from A to B, not that you can use it for gaming on the route itself. If you move, especially internationally, it makes sense. If you don't have a lot of space, it makes sense. If you want to have one main computer for both work and gaming, it makes sense (as a computer for work often has to be portable, i.e. bringing it to work places, meetings, on the plane, etc).I have a solid notebook that also happens to be powerful enough to run games, and nowadays the mobile GPU/CPUs are fast enough to run most games properly. Of course not with all the bells and whistles, but I can play most stuff on full HD and somewhat medium settings just fine, and my laptop only has a midrange mobile GPU.
Apart from myself opting for all the above mentioned benefits, I would also have to spend considerably more for a gaming capable desktop and a comparable non-gaming capable laptop together.