The 2013 Razer Blade | Image Credit: Razer
Razer turned heads last month when they announced having manufactured the world's thinnest gaming laptop, boasting the most power-per-cubic-inch of any notebook released to date. Phrases like "insanely powerful" and "impossibly thin" are littered across the product's marketing copy. Are these just bombastic buzzwords or is there an approachable, enthusiast-grade gaming notebook beneath the Blade's sexy new shell?
It truly is "impossibly thin" | Image Credit: Razer
At 0.66" thin, the redesigned Blade defies typical categorization. For the most part, it's an uncompromising gaming notebook packing an
Razer has been called many things: The mad scientists of gaming, cult-like, overpriced. While my review configuration clocks in at $1999, it's the first hardware offering from Razer that presents compelling performance relative to the sticker price. But tragically, like 99.9% of every Windows laptop on the market, a couple important issues hold it back from perfection.
Aesthetics
From a design perspective, the Razer Blade is breathtaking. Its 4 pound matte black aluminum chassis is sleek, curvy, and will remind you of the MacBook Pro in all the right ways. The emerald-colored USB 3.0 ports on either side, however, are an acquired taste. Still, they emulate Razer's branding without looking garish.
Opening the lid -- effortlessly accomplished with a single finger -- reveals a chicklet keyboard replete with Razer's stylistic font on the caps, a roomy trackpad, and the continuation of the Blade's minimalist design. Two weeks in and I haven't tired of just gazing at it, still awestruck at the hardware packed inside that frame.
Keyboard and Trackpad
Too many good gaming notebooks have terrible trackpads. Thankfully the Blade isn't counted among them. The surface itself is spacious, ultra-smooth and very responsive, but it's the dedicated trackpad buttons that diminish the overall quality. They're a bit loose and could stand to accommodate a wider finger, but for everyday tasks and web browsing it's a considerable step above what we're used to with this class of product.
The keyboard is the weak link here, and I criticize it understanding that my opinion is highly subjective. The keycaps are slightly wobbly (loose) under your fingers, and there's something intangibly "off" about the spacing on the keyboard. I use multiple keyboards daily in my line of work, and have adapted to each new style (chicklet, mechanical, full-sized, ergonomic, split) fairly well. With the Blade's keyboard, I experienced an unusually high number of typos and my fingers felt cramped. It's a far cry from the keyboards you'll find on a Lenovo, Alienware, or ASUS gaming notebook. Serviceable, but not suited for lengthy typing sessions.
Gaming Performance
Now we switch gears from minor quibbles to lofty praise. The Razer Blade can handle any modern game thrown at it, typically on high to ultra graphics settings. The 8GB of RAM, 4th-generation Haswell Core i7, and next-gen mobile GPU from NVIDIA all work in tandem to produce some serious gaming performance, and a near-silent operating noise.
All of the results below are in frames-per-second, and were conducted using the Blade's native 1600x900 resolution.
- Sleeping Dogs: 42FPS (High Quality, Normal Anti-Aliasing)
- GRID 2: 32FPS (Ultra Quality, 8xMSAA)
- BioShock Infinite: 52FPS (Very High Quality)
- Crysis 3: 39FPS (High Quality Settings)
- Metro Last Light: 30FPS (Very High Quality, 4xAF, Normal Tessellation)
Because the Blade can drive an external monitor via HDMI, I also wanted to see how it handled a few of these games at 1920x1080 using the same quality settings as above. Let's take a look:
Sleeping Dogs: 31FPS
GRID 2: 26FPS
BioShock Infinite: 39FPS
Metro Last Light: 24FPS
We drop about 6 to 9 frames on average in scaling up the resolution, but ultimately these are very impressive results given the form factor, and considering my admittedly demanding quality settings.
So how much heat is all this eyecandy generating in a 4 pound ultrabook-sized device? Don't be misled by hype or marketing spin: The answer is quite a bit -- but with almost no detriment to the user. Razer's employs a completely bespoke solution for its cooling system, utilizing a custom-designed heat pipe that pushes heat away from areas that are frequent user touch points. So, as you'd expect an all-aluminum chassis to, the Blade gets hot. But there's no hot air blowing on your mouse hand (right or left), and the keyboard itself stays relatively cool. That being said, expect your lap to be scorched if that's your preferred playing position.
Display
On the plus side, Razer has employed the use of a matte panel for its 1600x900 display. That's where the positives end and the serious criticisms begin. What we have in the Blade is a TN (twisted nematic) display, one of the most inexpensive panels used in consumer electronics. It suffers from very limited viewing angles -- worse when moving vertically than horizontally -- and very shallow black levels. To be frank, had Razer thrown in an IPS panel, the Blade would come with my highest recommendation. Unfortunately the window into our otherwise fantastic gaming experience is sub-par. The amount of cash and resources that gets poured into R&D for designing your own custom laptop chassis isn't insignificant, but Razer has done their product a disservice with this screen. Is it playable? Of course. Does it look alright? You bet. Would you expect a superior display to match the price tag and the level of quality that surrounds it? Absolutely.
L-R: Power bricks for the MSI GX70, ASUS G750, and Razer Blade
Battery Life
With Haswell, Intel is trying to deliver on a promise of all day battery life in ultrabooks. That's not achievable with the kind of horsepower inside the Blade, but typical tasks present us with outstanding battery life. Looping an HD movie in fullscreen, with brightness at 50% and Bluetooth off yielded about 5.5 hours worth of juice. Mixed usage pushes the built-in 70Wh battery to the 6.5 to 7 hour limit.
But gamers? You'll want to leave the wall power flowing, which is admittedly convenient given the shockingly small size of the 150W power brick. To test battery life with pure gaming, I looped GRID 2's benchmark mode on High Quality settings at 1600x900 resolution, with the laptop itself at 50% brightness and Bluetooth off. The result: 55 minutes, and I ran the test twice to make sure.
Conclusion
The new Blade is a product of genius engineering and a proud display of passion from Razer, which makes its drawbacks that much more painful. Is it overpriced? Check out the price tag on the comparatively under-powered MacBook Pro and the answer is a definitive no. Then again,
This is the best hardware to emerge from the house of Razer. Outside of the average keyboard it's a joy to use and an even bigger joy to tote around. But like so many Windows laptops, it tragically drops the ball in one crucial area -- the display. If you can get around that, the Blade is a great choice for the enthusiast gamer on the go.
