The New Razer Blade: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Vivek Gowri on October 3, 2012 5:40 PM ESTRazer Blade (late 2012) - Final Thoughts
Though they are unwilling to release sales figures, Razer claims that the original Blade was an unqualified sales hit, with demand far outstripping supply in the first number of weeks after it went on sale. Undoubtedly, they weren’t manufacturing units in any huge volumes, but it’s safe to say that Razer themselves weren’t expecting the Blade to sell as fast as it did. But even though the original Blade was a success, it wasn’t really a hard product to follow up. It had a fair list of flaws, but an equal number of relatively obvious solutions. Jarred and Anand both mentioned that it probably would have made more sense for Razer to wait for Ivy Bridge/Kepler to launch the Blade, and from an end product standpoint I think they were right—the new Blade is a significant upgrade in almost every way.
But with that said, I think the original Blade was a very important product for Razer to launch from a process standpoint. The ability to launch a product successfully and support it post-sale was an important aspect for Razer to deliver on, and the original Blade allowed them to gain that experience while developing a superior followup. Now, this of course meant that the early adopters might feel jilted, and to that end, Razer decided to give a $500 discount to original Blade owners that wanted to pull the trigger on a new one.
The new Blade is a far more well rounded system than the original, with the computing power to match its looks and a far more robust hardware (thermal) and software platform to support it. They even gave it a price cut. Razer has really taken in the feedback they got from the media and their own customers to bring some significant improvements to the Blade. The only thing left that I really think is an important fix is the browsing experience in Switchblade. Based on what I know of the Switchblade UI computing backend, I’m not sure how feasible that is without a complete overhaul of the software platform (like a switch away from Windows CE6), but hopefully I’m wrong. I'd also like to see an optional SSD-only configuration, and perhaps an IPS display panel as well. Beyond that, there's hardly anything I would change with the new Blade.
I suspect that the Blade will remain a relatively niche product, as most notebooks in this price range tend to be—it’s still an expensive system, there is no doubt about that. But there are a grand total of three notebooks that I could see myself paying more than $2000 for, and the Blade is easily one of them. The others? The Retina MacBook Pro (I actually already did) and the M17x R4 with the GTX 680M. Obviously the Apple is a different story entirely, but between the Blade and the M17x, it really comes down to what you’re looking for in a gaming system and how much GPU horsepower you’re willing to give up for the sake of style and portability. That the Blade is actually part of this conversation is a testament to how far the new one has come.
If you're in for the highest gaming performance, it's still not the system for you—Alienware will give you a GTX 680M for the same price as the Blade, while Clevo and MSI can give you that GTX 680M for significantly less money. No matter how much compute and gaming performance have improved, the Blade still isn't a system that will win an out-and-out numbers game with the botique performance notebooks. The Blade is about more than that—it’s one of the most unique and interesting designs on the market, particularly in the world of mobile gaming systems. It's the best looking 17" notebook on the market, and it offers a portable gaming experience unlike any of its competitors. I used the term desirable to sum up the Blade last time around, and it's still probably the the best way to describe the new one as well. But this one has more performance to back up the style, and that just makes it all the more compelling.
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Zmokin - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Well, I've had mine for four days now so let me tell you my impressions.For something this expensive you tend to second guess yourself, especially with all the nay-sayers out there. Although there are a few nagging issues (see below), so far I'm still happy with my purchase.
Keep in mind I'm upgrading from a four year old laptop so my experience will probably be different from yours.
General:
Despite some other reviews, The sound is loud enough (for me) to play music in a small room or for gaming and sounds reasonably good for a laptop. I'm not an audio expert so others may disagree.
The screen looks great to me. It's not washed out, doesn't fade much from the side or when I change the angle of the screen. No complaints.
- It is taking me a bit to get used to the touchpad location, but it's not such an annoyance as to make a big deal about it.
- Storage space. Plenty for me. I have all my music (20 gigs), lots of photos, four games, ms office, adobe suite, slew of other programs for work and all my data and I still have plenty of space left over (almost half). I'm not sure what else I would put on there except more games, but it definitely is better than the 256gb alone. I have no idea what all folks put on that they need terabytes of storage on a laptop, but more power to them - I'm satisfied.
Pros:
- Awesome looks! Took it to work and everyone wanted to check it out just from the initial looks - hadn't even turned it on yet! Once the switchblade came on with all the pics and stuff - it was all over, everyone was just drooling.
- boot up speed is fast (for me anyway), around 20 secs or so. There is a lot of stuff being loaded in the msconfig startup list, some of that might be eliminated. Maybe someone more knowledgable could tell us what isn't really needed to help make it boot even faster.
- Overall weight and size of course. My backpack thanks me for replacing my old 17" Gateway! And so does my back itself. The power brick (can't really call it that anymore) is so small for so much power.
Cons:
- Fingerprints! Everywhere! On the cover, on the palm rest, on the keys - it's disgusting. It looks like I just ate some fried chicken and didn't bother to wash my hands before picking up and playing with the laptop. And yes, I did wash my hands before handling it! I find myself cleaning it continuously, especially before taking it out in public since it distracts from the beauty of the beast. The worst part is that they don't come off easily. You really have to clean it as opposed to just simply wiping them off like other laptops I've had.
- Heat after long/heavy game playing. Could fry an egg on the surface. Played GW2 for four hours with everything on high minus anti-alias. Game played pretty smooth without hiccups or stuttering the whole time.
However.... I noticed the palm rest under the switchblade ui was getting really hot, and I mean really hot.
So I started feeling around. Right above the power button, it was so hot that I would have burned my hand if I would have kept it there.
So I did an informal temp measure just to see for myself if I was imagining it.
I emphasize informal since all I had was a standard home thermometer. I placed the tip on the palm rest and it quickly rose over 100F and then settled at 105.4F.
When I placed the tip above the power button, it rose to 110F and then just went to 'H' because my poor thermometer wouldn't read any higher (humans would probably be dead at that level!).
That said, reading Vivek's article, it sounds like this is normal. Still a little worrisome.
- Switchblade is good/bad. Good because it looks really neat and can be functional and versatile. I can see the potential.
However, it only works if you are connected to the Internet! WTH! As soon as I lose connection or if I'm in an area with no wifi, everything disappears and it is just a trackpad - even the buttons above the touchpad are all blank. I can't even turn it into a numpad which I think would be the least it could do. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but so far I haven't figured out how to download the profiles so that I can use the switchblade without being connected to the Internet. Dumb in my opinion.
Also, I tried to configure my own buttons across the top to add the simple functions of home, end, del, etc. to work along with the trackpad. Couldn't do it. In order to reassign the keys, you have to press the key you want to reassign it to. Since there is no home key to press, I couldn't assign it to the blank key. I found a way around by switching to their built in numpad, pressing the home key, but there is no way to assign the icon for it. They should offer a list of keys (especially those missing from the keyboard) to choose from and their corresponding icons to make this easier.
Overall I'm still happy, but the few things I mentioned do distract from the overall experience.
Zmokin - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
Here is a post from someone who opened the case (voiding the warranty) and installed new SSDs.With pictures:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/other-manufacturer...
(The link goes to the forum page so you may have to wander down the posts to find it.)
karasaj - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
If Razer took out the switchblade UI and made a 15 inch version etc. it would be very compelling... even more portable than this one is. As it is, this is pretty cool. I would definitely like one of these if I ever got into a situation where I wasn't traveling/transporting my laptop every day.Death666Angel - Thursday, October 4, 2012 - link
I think this laptop is something different. It is expensive for the innards you get, but it is slim, quiet, still powerful and does things a little different. The switch from full SSD to chaching is a shame though.What I would like to see in R3 of The Razer Blade: Make the Switchblade a 4.5-5" screen with 720p resolution, give us a Tegra3/Exynos Quad/Krait Quad/whatever based SoC with a full Android/Linux version and have the run on the small screen or if we chose to use this on the go just for internet, give it out on the big screen in 1080p and save tons of battery. That would be pretty neat.
jed22281 - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
So putting aside the unique aspects of this device, how does the rMBP stack up against this purely for Gaming?*Does the better GPU mean much better perf. at the same res. for both, or does the rMBP's CPU make that moot?
Plus.....
Can you till play many games (full settings or near) at the RMBP's native res. & get an acceptable frame-rate?
Anyone played with both a fair bit????
*note I have license for Win 7 & can dual-boot so that's not an issue.
jed22281 - Saturday, October 6, 2012 - link
"Can you till play many games (full settings or near) at the RMBP's native res. & get an acceptable frame-rate?"In hindsight, I realize the silliness in that statement....
One cool adv with the rMBP, would be that one can always buy an external thunderbolt GPU later for much more serious gaming, right?
I recall there being some on the market or coming, are there any decent ones out there nowadays?
themiracle - Sunday, October 7, 2012 - link
Why Anand didnt review the envy 17 3D, it has a similar design to this one, but has better display, and a slightly better GPU\CPU, it the fastest laptop ive ever used, it has two problems out of the box, but o well, wth, maybe you can make a reviewEnvy 17 3D 3290nr
tariq3877 - Monday, January 7, 2013 - link
- I understand ALienware are expensive but they have good after sales value too.- I understand These other systems may have a slim Chassis but the thing that matters is the GPU on board or Slot-IN, as i used to do GPU REBALLING i can say it matters a lot.
- Best machines according to repair point of view are Acers.
- Worst machines with 90% heat and GPU failling problems are HP.
raok7 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
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