Sooo .... the Razer Blade 14 2016, ehh?

[milkydude12]

I've been really hating on the Razer Stealth for its small 12.5 inch screen, lack of a quad core cpu and laughably mediocre 8gb of DDR4 ram, however recently the Razer Blade 14 inch has appealed to my outcry of needing better specs.

The Razer Blade 14 2016 has everything I want in a Fast ultrabook form, It has a i7 6700HQ, 16 GB of DDR4 ram, a delicious touchscreen 4k display and the best part a GTX 970m (6gb). Now my only bone with it is the lack of a 2.5 inch bay, but with its form factor its understandable that that would be impossible, with that being said, even if thats impossible, they should've at least been able to do a secondary drive slot capable of taking a Msata ssd.

I want the community's thoughts on the Razer Blade 14 Inch, what do you guys think of it?

As for me, provided everything works as it should and theres no issues with thermals while gaming im thinking im probably going to stop putting off getting a laptop and finally bite the bullet, ive been looking at companies like Eurocom, Alienware, Msi, and Asus... however none of them really appealed to me, it was more like a it'll do situation with them ... however the Razer Blade checked off everything on my list, I wanted a laptop form factor that would be able to bleeding edge games for the next 5 years, be able to be put into my laptop bag (max of 15 inch laptop) and have a battery life somewhere in the 3-6 hour range (when doing work)

[TkSilver]

Bleeding edge for the next 5 years is quite an asking. 5 years ago a 17" ailenware R3 was sporting a 2820QM i7 and a gtx 580m at one of its most expensive settings. This laptop had the advantage of size and price and not caring about battery life and it is showing it's age when trying to run Newer AAA titles at native (1080p) resolution.

The Razer Blade is using a higher resolution screen 3200x1800 and is using a gpu right before a major architecture change the gtx 970m. So if you want to max out games at native resolution for 5 years you are probably asking a little too much. Maybe with the inclusion of the Razor core you might mitigate some of the issues, but that is assuming things happen within 5 years just like the last 5 years and technology rarely follows that rule.

So probably no 15" or less (or 21" or less for that matter) laptop will max out all new games for 5 years at bleeding edge settings. Odds are all of them will have to comprimise settings at the very least and that is assuming that 4 years from now all games don't require 21 physical cores to even run (exaggeration but the point kinda stands).

As far as everything else goes the Razer Blade 14 (2016) looks to be an excellent laptop that should be nice and powerful along with great construction and a beautiful finish. The specs are quite nice for it's size and Razor is known for it's amazing ability to move more heat around a laptop cooling system then the laws of thermodynamics should let them. So I would say it is a nice buy.

[milkydude12]

(04-15-2016 07:38 PM)TkSilver Wrote:  Bleeding edge for the next 5 years is quite an asking. 5 years ago a 17" ailenware R3 was sporting a 2820QM i7 and a gtx 580m at one of its most expensive settings. This laptop had the advantage of size and price and not caring about battery life and it is showing it's age when trying to run Newer AAA titles at native (1080p) resolution.

The Razer Blade is using a higher resolution screen 3200x1800 and is using a gpu right before a major architecture change the gtx 970m. So if you want to max out games at native resolution for 5 years you are probably asking a little too much. Maybe with the inclusion of the Razor core you might mitigate some of the issues, but that is assuming things happen within 5 years just like the last 5 years and technology rarely follows that rule.

So probably no 15" or less (or 21" or less for that matter) laptop will max out all new games for 5 years at bleeding edge settings. Odds are all of them will have to comprimise settings at the very least and that is assuming that 4 years from now all games don't require 21 physical cores to even run (exaggeration but the point kinda stands).

As far as everything else goes the Razer Blade 14 (2016) looks to be an excellent laptop that should be nice and powerful along with great construction and a beautiful finish. The specs are quite nice for it's size and Razor is known for it's amazing ability to move more heat around a laptop cooling system then the laws of thermodynamics should let them. So I would say it is a nice buy.

I'm gambling on the fact that ill be able to use the Razer Blade with the Razer core and will be able to do external gpu swaps ..... I plan to mostly do gaming in 2k resolution for now as 4k gaming requires too hefty of a gpu), im planning to use the Razer core with the GTX Titan Black i currently own

[TkSilver]

I figured the gpu situation coukd be helped with the Razer Core. You just have to hope that the cpu requirements do not get too ridiculous before you are willing to upgrade your laptop. But like I said it looks like a nice laptop..... though even desktops struggle to keep bleeding edge performance for 5 years without at least one rebuild in that time period and it is a small pain to outright impossible to upgrade some laptop components on certain models.

But since you need the form factor, there really is no way around the issues that come with gaming on a laptop. Though it is far better then when I was in school in the early 2000's where the performance gap was much much wider.

[milkydude12]

(04-16-2016 02:54 AM)TkSilver Wrote:  I figured the gpu situation coukd be helped with the Razer Core. You just have to hope that the cpu requirements do not get too ridiculous before you are willing to upgrade your laptop. But like I said it looks like a nice laptop..... though even desktops struggle to keep bleeding edge performance for 5 years without at least one rebuild in that time period and it is a small pain to outright impossible to upgrade some laptop components on certain models.

But since you need the form factor, there really is no way around the issues that come with gaming on a laptop. Though it is far better then when I was in school in the early 2000's where the performance gap was much much wider.

:/ Yea im hoping games that come out in the next 5 years aren't too cpu intensive, I had a asus G75vx with a i7 3630qm 12 gb of ddr3 ram and a gtx 670mx, worked really well until earlier on this year it died. Lasted about 5 years i believe...

early 2000 i had a fujitsu lappy...

It ran 2 games, need for speed underground 2 and maple story .... it had 512mb of blazing fast ram and..... who am i kidding, it last for obo 4 hours then overheated causing a BSOD.

[TkSilver]

I had a dell c640 with a premium 512mb of ram, mobility Radeon 7500 32MB discrete GPU, pentium 4m. It lasted until a few months ago when I decided to power it up and finally it died. To be fair I haven't really used it for much other then some old games and nostalgia, but it did last for 15 or so years which is about 14 or so longer then any HP laptop tends to last.