Razer Blade Stealth ultrabook

The Razer Blade Stealth is the primary ultrabook from a company that’s typically focused on constructing gaming laptops, but there are valuable few signs and symptoms that the Stealth represents a chief new product vicinity for the fanatic-centered company. It’s significantly much less high priced than the brand new Razer Blade, which presently begins at $1,999, or the Razer Blade seasoned, which has a $2,499 base price. In contrast, the Razer Blade Stealth we’ll be reviewing today starts at $999.

The specs on the Razer Blade Stealth are not anything to sneeze at. Razer sells two versions of the pc, however they’re greater alike than they're distinct. both are ready with a core i7-6500U, 8GB of RAM, a 12.five-inch show, and Intel HD 520 pics (and neither version has gaming prowess on its very own as a result). The differences are in display screen resolution and available storage — there’s a 2560×1440 panel version that conforms to the sRGB colour preferred and ships with 128-256GB of storage in addition to a 4K panel version that conforms to the Adobe RGB wider shade gamut and offers either 256GB or 512GB of storage. both versions use the Killer Networking Killer 1535 802.11ac wireless modem and offer Bluetooth 4.1 aid.

We’re reviewing the 2560×1440 model of the computer today, which comes with a 256GB SSD for $1,199. We’re not thrilled with the fee you pay to improve your storage — whilst all OEMs gouge on garage and reminiscence improvements, charging $2 hundred to step from 128GB to 256GB works out to $1.56 per gigabyte of extra storage. It’s been a long term due to the fact SSDs had been everywhere close to that steeply-priced.

The Blade Stealth measures 12.6 x eight.1 x 0.52 inches and weighs in at 2.seventy five pounds. All versions of the Razer Blade Stealth have the equal port configurations: one USB kind-C 3.1 port with Thunderbolt 3 (beneficial for the Razer core peripheral), a pair of USB 3 ports, a headset jack, a 2 megapixel webcam, and an HDMI output. each the 1440p and 4K variations of the pc are touchscreens, and at the same time as I typically opt for a keyboard and mouse, a touchscreen is surely useful whilst running on an plane or in any limited area.

outside design, Razer Chroma

The Razer Blade Stealth’s all-aluminum chassis has a matte black finish that offers the ultrabook a graceful, understated look. that is really spoiled through the sparkling Razer logo at the top of the computer, however the glow may be disabled in case you don’t fancy it. the one drawback to the pc’s finish is that it selections up fingerprints and oils easily. This isn’t a machine you want to use without washing your fingers first, unless you need to spend a non-trivial amount of time polishing it to get oil off later.

the lowest of the pc is properly-designed, with  “toes” that run the whole period of the chassis. This helps make sure that the gadget won’t overheat — and that’s not a trivial consideration given how skinny cutting-edge laptops have come to be.

The Razer Blade Stealth mounts its speakers at the actual keyboard location instead of on the lowest of the system and the sound high-quality from them is exceptionally good for a design of this type, provided you don’t count on remarkable subwoofer-excellent bass. pc laptops are infamous for susceptible trackpads, but again, Razer’s is better than average.

The keyboard is respectable, especially for an ultrabook, but it has a number of the everyday flaws that make typing on extremely-skinny systems less than fun. The keyboard is extremely shallow compared with a popular computing device or conventional laptop, although Razer has made the keys a touch stiffer to compensate. Key placement is strong — you gained’t locate your self whacking manufacturer-specific keys whilst you reach for the characteristic keys or break out, even though the arrow keys are hard to use for any sizable task. It’s no longer as satisfactory as a few full laptop keyboards we’ve used, however as ultrabooks go, it’s pretty decent.

one of the approaches Razer differentiates its very own merchandise is with Chroma, its interactive lights engine. The Blade Stealth is the primary computer to provide in keeping with-key lights options, and Chroma is designed to create a ramification of visible consequences, as distinctive beneath:

any one of the Razer’s keys may be programmed with one in all 16.7 million colorations, and the possibilities for customization are considerable. video games also can assist Razer Chroma, at the least in theory — at the same time as the enterprise debuted an SDK simply over a 12 months ago, we aren’t privy to any titles that presently guide it.

The according to-key backlighting could benefit if the exchange key functions were additionally lit — since the lighting fixtures most effective covers the number one spot on each key, some of the secondary marks may be more tough to see. That said, the show kicks out sufficient mild on its personal that this shouldn’t truely be a problem.

machine performance

usual, the Razer Blade Stealth is an outstanding and well-polished layout. So how’s its general overall performance?

We’ve run the Razer via a suite of software tests to benchmark it towards some other computer we’ll be masking quickly — the Alienware R13. both structures use the equal CPU (middle i7-6500U), but the Alienware has greater memory (16GB as opposed to 8GB) and a GeForce 960M. because the Razer ultrabook is explicitly no longer intended as a gaming-first laptop, we’ll observe the gaming talents of the Alienware and the general fee proposition among the 3 laptops in a separate article. For now, we’re going to attention on how the 2 machines compete in not unusual computing device benchmarks.

PCMark 7 & eight

PCMark 7 and 8 are  one-of-a-kind take a look at suites that we use to run each laptops thru a huge range of packages. PCMark 7 is a fashionable check suite that combines audio/video encoding, computational workloads, web surfing, gaming, and storage tests. seeing that each of these structures use the identical core i7-6500U, we need to see widely comparable performance. PCMark 7 is the older of our two test suites, even though that’s less critical in relation to desktop workloads — workflow doesn’t exchange a whole lot at this degree.

trendy performance in PCMark 7 is similar, with the Alienware R13 posting a barely higher rating than the Razer. This isn’t surprising, for the reason that the Razer has a far smaller form factor and tighter thermal constraints and the distance among the systems is only about 3%, or well within a margin of error.

Switching gears, we've PCMark eight. unlike PCMark 7, PCMark eight splits workloads into unique categories — innovative, domestic, and paintings. here’s how Futuremark describes each:

innovative: The PCMark 8 creative benchmark includes workloads usual of enthusiasts and experts who paintings with media and leisure content…PCMark 8 innovative includes net browsing, photo enhancing, video modifying, institution video chat, media transcoding, and gaming workloads.

domestic: The PCMark 8 home benchmark consists of workloads that replicate common tasks for a regular home user… domestic consists of workloads for web surfing, writing, gaming, photo enhancing, and video chat.

work: The PCMark 8 paintings benchmark take a look at measures your gadget’s ability to carry out primary workplace work responsibilities, inclusive of writing files, browsing websites, developing spreadsheets and the usage of video chat.

whilst there’s some overlap between each class, each creates a awesome rating. PCMark 8 gives the option to run benchmarks in an OpenCL-multiplied mode or to apply a fashionable, CPU-handiest mode. We opted for the extended option, in part to test how OpenCL guide in Intel’s HD 520 GPU could evaluate towards Nvidia’s GTX 960M. even as the 960M is vastly extra powerful than Intel’s portraits in 3D gaming, second workloads don’t have a tendency to scale the same manner.

inside the 3 PCMark 8 checks, the Razer Blade Stealth truely narrowly leads the Alienware R13 in two of our three benchmarks, although the distance within reason small. Intel’s OpenCL overall performance is pretty desirable for laptop programs these days, and the middle i7 6500U is acting properly in both structures.

garage performance

For our garage performance assessments, we’re comparing the storage suites from PCMark 7 and PCMark 8. both benchmarks use real-global software lines to degree performance rather than synthetic packages and in principle, Razer’s PCI express garage need to supply it a bonus right here, however we don’t see that benefit reflected in either check.

PCMark 7 and eight don’t use the equal storage overall performance test, however we suspect the difference between the two isn’t just a count of which assessments have been run. Futuremark’s garage score isn’t only a precis of the numerous man or woman tests — the corporation weights the ratings to determine an average overall performance stage. The weighting in PCMark eight isn't the same as PCMark 7, and that in all likelihood debts for some of the difference we see right here.

the opposite ability variable is the storage answer itself. The Razer Blade Stealth uses a Samsung MZVLV256HCHP chip. you can view its traits right here, but to make an extended tale brief, the power’s sequential read performance is rated at 1GB/s even as its sequential write overall performance is indexed as just 280MB/s. Random reads are listed at 250K IOPS, even as random writes are 74K IOPS. The susceptible write overall performance can be what pulls the Razer down in those outcomes, although we’d want to be aware that we located no practical difference between the Blade Stealth and the Alienware 13 in our various checks.

x264 encoding

Our very last check is x264 encoding the usage of version five.01 of the x264 benchmark. once more, we should see very similar test rankings right here — each the Alienware and the Razer use the same CPU, and this check is entirely CPU-certain.

The Alienware 13 and Razer Blade Stealth are neck-and-neck in this check; the middle i7-6500U simply isn’t throttling to any giant degree in both system. The Razer leads narrowly on the primary pass, whilst Alienware ekes out a small win in the 2nd.

Battery life

One place wherein the Razer Blade Stealth  has been knocked fairly is the battery lifestyles, which hasn’t been specifically fantastic compared with other ultrabooks. on the grounds that we’re a chunk missing in similar ultrabooks, we are able to’t examine strictly in opposition to those structures, but we did compare both structures inside the innovative suite of PCMark eight.

undergo in thoughts that this is the maximum strenuous of the PCMark eight suites and that it produces overall run instances lower than what you’d see in a battery test that focused best on idle or video playback. universal battery life for Razer is quite near a midrange gaming laptop with a GTX 960. The 1440p panel on our Razer show is probably a part of the motive why battery existence changed into near the bulkier Alienware; we’ve lengthy known that ultra high-definition panels had a big effect on machine battery life.

initial verdict

we say “preliminary verdict” in preference to very last verdict, due to the fact that is handiest the beginning of our pocket book comparisons, and we’re planning to check both the Alienware 13, the Alienware-specific outside pictures card solution, and Razer’s outside core pics dock. nevertheless, the early statistics right here is advantageous. There’s without a doubt no question that the Alienware R13 could demolish the Razer in any kind of head-to-head gaming take a look at, but as a long way as ultrabook workloads are involved, the Razer holds its own.

It’s staggering to have a look at wherein ultrabooks at the moment are in comparison with 2012, whilst Intel first released the idea. whilst it’s authentic that ultrabooks have failed to halt the overall decline of the laptop marketplace, ultrabooks in 2016 are able to a long way more than their 2012 opposite numbers, with higher resolution displays, better battery lifestyles, lower TDPs, and attractive enclosures. Even in 2012, buying an ultrabook regularly intended sacrificing normal system performance within the name of better battery lifestyles. Now, structures just like the Razer Blade Stealth are proving that you could match large laptop widespread performance with out compromising the machine at all.

Of course a part of the beauty of the Razer Blade Stealth is the Razer core, and we’re not ready to deliver a final verdict at the device until we’ve visible both components in movement. but the early ultrabook positioning is solid and nicely added, even though we’d like to see a piece stronger battery lifestyles.