Razer Blade -- Discuss

I thought the 1-2 hour claim was for gaming on battery. Even then, I think it might be a bit dubious because of the size of the battery Razer is using.

 

Razer Blade Gaming Laptop Unboxing - YouTube

this was just posted from razer on facebook.. lol

 

Haha that was an epic unboxing thanks for the link

 

Yup, I bet. But I have a feeling Razer`s goal is to sell a limited number to people and create a small "exclusive" niche. After all, that is what they are doing with their price and the weird touchpad. They could have gone the standard way, build a cheap big standard plastic chassis and concentrate on putting hardcore hardware inside instead. You know, like Alienware, Sager, MSI are doing...

I actually applaud Razer for going a slightly different direction although they could have executed it a bit better imo.

Actually, taking the size and the thermals in to consideration, there might be some truth in to it. I have no idea how efficient the cooling system is, but the GPU is a 45W TDP and the CPU is a 35W TDP. I bet that atleast cause some careful considerations about the heat the components create when they are aiming for a light and very thin design

 

I read it in one of the previews somewhere, let me dig around.

Some but not all. M18x has an anodized aluminum shell which is far more robust than the famous Elitebooks, Precisions and ThinkPads. In fact, a top of the line 8760w after M18x felt like a cheap fish can, hehe. Same goes for others, not every model is a plastic lunchbox. Research and you will see.

 

Ahh, clearly I'm not the demographic.

I still don't understand the strong support behind this. "Slightly different direction." It's still an awkward and underpowered machine. Later this year when a slew of new games requiring more than mid grade hardware to run, will they all sell these and go buy another $3000 laptop? Be required to run at 720p with low/medium details on "the first true gaming laptop"?

People keep comparing this to the Mac. Ok, fine, from a construction point of view, yes, it's like a Mac, kind of. But performance-wise it's supposed to be a gaming machine. It's not. It's like they couldn't decide. It's like if you were to take a sweet, sexy Aston Martin with the performance and handling characteristics of a Toyota Camry.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here. I guess we'll all just have to agree to disagree.

 

They need to go back to the Switchblade idea and make like a 560M 13 inch laptop

 

Now that's something that I can see selling. Well for less than $2000

 

Hey man I know this is completely unrelated but I looked at your signature and I basically ordered the same laptop you have.

I wanted to know if dual 580m's can handle a 30 inch 2560x1600 res monitor, specifically the Dell IPS, on ...any game on medium high - enthusiast settings.

 

The answer is yes.

 

Putting the Razer Blade Through Its Gaming Paces

Man the comments on this article are hilarious. Especially the ones between Excel_Excel and GenericName.

 

I want to know where's the IGN review? They had an unboxing Friday, would hope they'd be slamming info out there asap.

 

Not a full review, but it's a hand's on.
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dlbXTwDPWdM?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dlbXTwDPWdM?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

 

That's just the marketing info, not their detailed review.

 

I don't know, if decently spec'D at the right price it would be one hell of a competitor to the m14x

 

Thanks for the link. haha

 

If nothing else (besides the good comments), this Kotaku report shows how difficult is to hide the reality behind the performance of this laptop (no FPS, no resolution).

 

Skyrim on low? So is he basically worse then current gen mbp?

 

Low is the new high! -- That's my favorite.

 

Indubitably!

 

of course. the current gen mbp is essentially the same thing with a much better processor. it's going to give similar performance in the best case, but worse overall.

the obvious problem with buying a $2800 laptop where you have to run new games in low settings is: what do you do for the games released 6 months from now which require just a little bit more power? There's no headroom

 

Baka thought someone ran Skyrim on it on high with shadows tweaked to probably something lower like medium ._.

 

Why not? The questions would be the FPS obtained and at which resolution.

 

Hm...

That? ._.

 

If you lower shadows it will run Skyrim with everything else max at 1080P with 30-45 FPS.

 

Skyrim should be no problem. Lowering settings would simply help reach it 60fps. Shadows on medium look just as good as on high so it's no biggie.

I think Skyrim is the first game where my old CPU was completely bottlenecked. When I changed to 920xm and use it as quad core 3.2ghz, I am actually getting 60fps at ultra at 1920x1080.

the razer shoulnt have problems with half that or more at the same settings.

 

If it's a laptop, then we sacrifice some performance (but it should still play games well) but portability is just as important. 0.88" thin and 6lbs with good performance in our view is better than 2-3" thick and 12-16lbs

Lol I hadn't read that. Mine's 7lbs 1.2 inch thick, and I run circles around in performance.

Man that sounds SO wrong...

 

Yeah, somehow I too can't get over on their marketing motto : "First true gaming laptop". If they'd have used some more realistic motto (acknowledging the existent market) it'd be better. Examples: "The thinnest gaming laptop", "The thinnest and coolest gaming laptop", etc...

 

maybe they are banned in google..

 

I don't really understand who they're trying to fool. Unlike the console market, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of PC gamers who'd buy something along those lines would know a little about hardware and would see through it.

If they're trying to cater to the naive few who don't do know enough to look into these things then I can't see the market beinng that big. To buy something that expensive, you'd be mad not to do some research, and when you do you'd find the pretty much unanimous statement from anywhere you look that it's overpriced for what it is.

If anything, it's kinda offensive that they expect us to believe them.

 

With Trinity around the corner, I bet we'll be seeing a few more thin-and-light "gaming laptops" that probably equal the Blade in performance and will cost a whole lot less than $2800. They also won't be 17 inches, which IMO completely ruins the "portable" aspect they were trying to achieve.

 

If the 35W/45W chips boost performance by as much as 50% as they claim, it will definitely be close to the performance of the 555m. If only you could overclock the IGP in the AMD's that would offer even more performance.

 

lol 555M? Are you serious? For a single 45W APU that also features a CPU? 555M alone is 45W. Impressive if true

 

The Blade is Razer's version of a concept car. It is not a product intended to sell at volume. It is a halo product intended simply to raise awareness of the company through hype.

There were 45 pages of discussion in just this one internet forum (Notebookreview.com) about the Razer Blade, when it was still vaporware. Everybody knew about the Razer Blade, everyone knew the specs, everyone was talking about it, and everybody knew that Razer was making it.

This is exactly the same strategy as the Optimus OLED keyboard that used re-configurable OLED displays for every single key. The manufacturer doesn't actually intend to sell any Optimus OLED keyboards at $2,000 each. But the simple fact that they created it, and got people talking about it, raised a lot of awareness for the brand (Art Lebdev Studio).

Razer doesn't need to sell any Razer Blades. The fact that we are talking about it means that it has already paid for itself. Any units that they actually do sell is just gravy.

 

The existing 6620G IGP has about 3500 3DMark Vantage score. They're talking 50%+ improvement in performance with Trinity, and support for up to 2133MHz DDR3 RAM and even (rumors) perhaps its own on chip GDDR5 (probably 512MB). That should easily push it over 5200 Vantage score (and similar improvements everywhere else). With the right combination and potential overclock possibly > 6000.

 

agreed. genius. what's really funny is that this isn't a novel strategy. this is like 1st level low tier business game theory. and we're still blind to it. how one-sided.

 

Yep, in the first level low tier business game there a rule of thumb, 80% of the ppl are blind.

 

People still bought them, even at the ridiculous price. The member that bought one from here sold his M18x to get one. To each their own though, he Is happy with it. In the end guess that is all that matters to the people that bought it. Heck the skinny little dude in the unboxing that was posted a few pages back, was humping the box it came in. I just don't get the hype about that lappy.

 

You can never ditch AW, it's AW who ditches you

 

Agreed!

I just know this for sure, my R2 might be a fatty compared to the blade, but it's my fatty and I love it! (Never gonna give you up Playing in my head. lol)

 

Razer =/= Optimus. The fact that MacBooks exist for similar cost and actual "True gaming notebooks" cost upwards of $3000 (for significantly better specs I might add), makes me think this isn't a gimmick. They invested a LOT of money in making this laptop. I'm sure they didn't go to marketing and say "hey we have a great idea, but we need $100M to do it. We're not going to make any money at it, but we're going to have mass market interest".

These machines cost a fortune to design and manufacture. A typical high end keyboard is about $100. $2000 is like 20x times that. An Optimus keyboard could pay back their investment with just a few dozen units. Razer are trying to force the Blade into being a top end high cost machine without having a history like Apple has done.

And concept cars are never sold... ever. This would be akin to Pep Boys designing, manufacturing, and selling their own car like a Toyota Camry but for $50,000.

 

Yeah, had an R2 and miss the 1200p RGBLED screen

 

It doesn't have to be strictly one thing or the other. It does seem plausible that they factored in an advertising win into the development cost of the machine. Razer spends a ton of money on advertising their products. I see their ads all the time, everywhere.

 

Which is strange because I never see their ads.

 

I still think HTWingNut ordered one in secret and is just playing it cool not telling anyone .

I still want to play with one myself though, maybe they will have one at Microcenter eventually ? . We can meet up there HTWingNut and you can tell me how you really feel about it in person .

 

I guess ads might not have been the right word. It's not like print ads, or even web ads. They sponsor events and things all the time. They'll promote themselves in those types of places, where it's really relevant.

They do a lot of marketing*

Also, they often make game specific peripherals and market those with games. The advertise a lot. It's not all in traditional ad format, but they do have traditional ads as well.

 

Well I find this kind of marketing deplorable and humorous, and judging from everyone else I'm far from alone. I have a hard time taking Razer seriously after this debacle. Tells me their other products are probably way over priced if they can afford this kind of marketing campaign.

 

I'm not saying you should take them seriously at all. I'm just explaining how they seem to be operating.

 

I own two. First rule of government spending. Why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price?

 

i just bought a razer nostromo, and if your an employee at bestbuy you get cost+5% but its capped at 50% total discount, so the price was exactly 50% so you are right in that sense they have a huge mark up on all of their products. but i do like the pad though its so ergonomic.