The New Razer Blade: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Vivek Gowri on October 3, 2012 5:40 PM ESTRazer Blade (late 2012) - Switchblade UI
Easily the most significant issue I had with the original Blade’s user experience while I had it was the usability of the Switchblade UI system, and other than the overall system value quotient, it was the biggest reason I could point to for not recommending a Blade purchase. By “usability of the Switchblade UI”, I’m not even saying that it was hard to use, just that it was never working reliably enough for me to use on a day-to-day basis. Synapse, Razer’s cloud-driven device settings manager, would crash with regularity, and the entire system had issues coming out of standby mode.
The good thing here is that the Synaptics drivers were pretty solid, so you could still use the touchpad part of it even when Synapse and Switchblade were long gone. Of course, there were also the occasional times when Switchblade would nuke itself completely (to use the technical term for it)—the LCD buttons would turn white and the touch panel would become unresponsive, necessitating a full system reboot. Through my three months with the original Blade, I probably spent two-thirds of my time with the Switchblade part of things not working. I didn’t care most of the time as long as the multitouch trackpad was working, but it was definitely a significant problem that needed to be addressed going forward.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed this, as Razer took a beating in various online notebook owner forums. Thankfully, the company was very proactive about pushing new updates and new content to Switchblade. Based on my interactions with the new Blade and also the DeathStalker Ultimate keyboard over the last month, it’s definitely a night and day difference in terms of stability and usability.
This is a very, very good thing. So is the new SDK that was released by Razer, something that will become an asset as more Switchblade devices hit the market. There are a couple of new applications, including a game timer and a screenshot app. Razer is also working with a number of game developers to add support for a number of popular titles, including CounterStrike, CS:Source, CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 3, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic at present, with more games currently in validation. And call me shallow, but I find the new ability to set your own wallpaper for the LCD touchpad simply awesome.
But here’s my deal. Even with all of the improvements being made to Switchblade, it’s still a cool concept with only a very specific usage model. Even then, a lot of the experiences are subpar—the browser is still Mobile IE 7 running on an embedded Windows NT 5.1 kernel, and it absolutely pales in comparison to basically any modern smartphone browsing experience. The Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter applications are just the mobile IE 7 experiences, which makes them generally painful to use, but it's also worth noting that YouTube videos played back at a very low frame rate, 20 frames per second or less. Any iPhone or iPod touch (going all the way back to the ARM11-based originals from 2007) will top that. So will the Zune HD or any credible Android/Windows Phone/WebOS device made in the last three years.
It’s a blatant issue—it’s far easier and more convenient to just pull out a smartphone or an iPod to check the internet, email, or social networks. The gaming functions are nice enough, as is the screenshot application, and I suspect we’ll see Switchblade get more useful as developers come aboard and more games-specific applications are launched. The game developers can do some pretty innovative things with Switchblade; we were shown a demo of the Firefall application that allowed you to use the touchscreen as either a virtual analog controller or showed the environment map, for example.
Switchblade clearly has the potential to enhance gaming experiences, but it’s just as clear that it needs a lot of work in other areas. I enjoy the idea of having a touchscreen input, along with the configurable shortcut keys at the top. The placement, too, is very convenient and is much more natural to use than a traditionally placed touchpad once you get used to it. But with such outdated software experiences powering the core web-based functions of Switchblade, it’s sadly going to remain a novel but not particularly functional sideshow outside of its uses in the gaming realm.
If you look solely at the keyboard and mouse, things look pretty solid. The touchscreen trackpad, like I said above, is great to use; Synaptic’s multitouch drivers are seamless and offer a wide range of gesture support. Razer has improved the touchpad buttons to give much more positive feedback on clicks—there’s less of a cheap plastic sound when you actuate them. The keyboard is almost untouched, meaning fully anti-ghosted and individually backlit keys that have zero flex, though the key travel itself is a bit shallow. Razer has backlit the secondary functions (brightness, volume, etc), which has made using them in the dark significantly more convenient. I still take issue to the layout (seriously, there’s little to no reason for the Fn key to be on the right side of the spacebar) but you get used to it quickly enough as long as you aren’t switching from notebook to notebook.
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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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