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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bug77 - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
Hear, hear!My desktop has it's place and is the only device I game on (save for PvZ2 on my old tablet).
lmcd - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
While the battery life isn't mind-blowing, I wish the storage tiers went 900-1100-1300-1500. Six hour battery life, while bad by comparison, is still more than the average person's working time away from the desk and wouldn't limit most of the people interested in this.jcbenten - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
The thick bezel makes it look old. After seeing the XPS and Surface Book I could not stand to look at this screen.nagi603 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Yeah, that bezel looks thicker than that of my old 2004 gaming laptop...Naql99 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I bought one of these for my son. First power adapter was defective out of the box. The usb-c connector would not 'snap' into place. Returned it and the replacement unit broke in about 2 weeks when the tip fell out of the end of the cable. I assumed my son was at fault, so I purchased another for the princely sum of $140. The tip fell out of that one within 3 days. Razer refused to replacement. Well, sorry, but cannot afford to keep shelling out $140 a pop for charging bricks and they clearly have a build quality defect. Sure, the colored backlit keys are pretty, but Razer quality is sub-par and their support let me down. We ended up buying an Innergie charger for $40 that works, even though Razer support warned me that using it instead of their crappy $140 chargers would 'void my warranty'. Ok, your warranty isn't worth squat. May I recommend the dell xps precision laptops which are also eGPU capable. As for the Core, it does not even offer a thunderbolt pass-thru, so how can that be considered an actual docking unit. There will be other eGPU solutions soon. I would wait. Buyer beware. Out of the two months my kid has had it, he's only been able to use it for maybe 2 weeks.DanNeely - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
It has a bunch of USB ports, an ethernet port, and a bunch of video out ports. That looks like a standard docking station to me. If I were to criticize it for anything, a lack of audio ports would be my biggest grumble.Not including TBs optional passthrough feature was probably a deliberate decision to limit competition for bandwidth the GPU needs. An x4 PCIe connection is enough that most games will run at almost full speed; only an x1 will strangle a large fraction of them. Even with just USB+ethernet you could end up oversaturating TB3: 32gb for PCIe, + 4x 5gb for USB3 + 1gb for ethernet is 53 gb vs TB3's 40gb. In practice that's unlikely to be a major concern; not least because 1 or more of the USB ports would typically be filled with low bandwidth devices (keyboard, mouse, usb headset); and USB3 devices capable of maxing the bus speed for sustained periods of time are relatively uncommon. Chaining a second high bandwidth TB device OTOH could be problematic; giving it half the total bandwidth would hurt the GPU in a significant number of games. Things that would fall under the category of "clever^H^H^H^H^H^Hstupid user tricks" like chaining a TB3 monitor and having it run off the laptops IGP (either due to misconfiguration, or not having video pass through support for the docs GPU due to cost or hardware limitations) could also end up burning people.
IMO with GPUs in the mix any sort of daisy chaining would need to wait for a future standard that supports at least 8x PCIe.
Naql99 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I see your point, but I have a significant number of thunderbolt devices. I need to be able to hook up my external disks. In general, it is frustrating that there are so many thunderbolt devices that insist on being the the last device in the chain. In any case, I would have purchased the Core, if not for the support/wuality issues noted above.jsntech - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Razer has made enough missteps for me (Synapse 2.0, numerous failed devices which were very gently used) that despite the decent form factor competing pretty nicely with rMBP 13 and such, I won't even consider it (not to mention 16:9 is *especially* poorly suited on a 12.5" display).jsntech - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Er, the MB is probably a better comparison.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
For that price, I would have expected for them to use the i7 6560u with the iris 540 gpu, and have better battery life. This thing is just a normal uber expensive ultrabook without the dock, at least with iris it could stand on its own a bit.