Razer Blade -- Discuss

Seriously, drop the numpad-touch-mouse-thingy and get a normal touchpad in the middle under the keyboard and it would be a ing mbp KILLER!

No wait, it'd be a mbp SERIAL KILLER!
For real, those specs in that body..
Just got myself a boner.

edit; forgot to mention, drop the price just a liiiittle bit please.

 

The specs still aren't impressive.

 

Oh man what happened to Razer, they used to be a great mouse company. Now its all eye candy, gimmicks and marketing.

 

A dual core cpu, and a 555m with a 1080p screen? Enjoy playing your games at low settings on your $2800 laptop. Wow.

Razer had a good opportunity to break into the gaming laptop market if they would just build something to compete with Asus/MSI/Alienware, but instead they do this...

 

Yeah i think i'll stick with my ASUS G53 !
REPUBLIC OF GAMERS !

 

And one of their intro video for the Razor Blade stated that 'there are no gaming laptops on the market today'.
What a load of trash... especially when a gaming laptop that even costs less definitely exists.

 

Every Razer promotional video I've seen uses some kind of deceptive hyperbole like that. "Never before..." or "Razer is the first..." blah blah blah.

They did the same thing with the Razer Switchblade videos. So it doesn't surprise me that they are doing it here.

 

Well, there's nothing wrong about more competition right? xD

 

why are ppl dissing AW price/performance? An M14x is cheaper than this with similar specs. Sure thin and light is nice, but not that nice.

 

Because the price-to-performance ratio of an Alienware machine is easily matched or beaten by other laptops. You can buy laptops from Asus, Sager, Clevo, etc that will rival or beat the performance of an Alienware M14x / M15x / M17x / M18x at a lower price point.

To some people, that pure price-to-performance ratio is all that matters. To other people, there are other factors that matter (build quality, display quality, weight, size, battery life, warranty, aesthetics, etc).

It's very similar to how you can buy (and tune / modify) a Honda Civic to beat a Porsche 911 at a much cheaper cost. Anybody can claim that the Honda Civic has superior price-to-performance ratio. But at the end of the day, you're still driving around in a Honda Civic.

 

A very and tuned up Honda Civic though.

However, I think hondas are more akin to Acers, HPs etc. You know, there are far more high performance brands in the world, not only ferraris haha

Alienwares have a good price/performance ratio in the higher end, and are rather competitive too. Considering that Asus etc don't have absolute high end like them.

 

...the blade is like that Aston Martin micro car based on a $15,000 Toyota.

Anyone buying a $2,800 555m based gaming laptop is a rube.

 

Does the thickness really matter, when it still weighs 6.9lbs? And that may not even include the PSU.

My notebook weighs 8.59lbs, and I wouldn't trade the performance to spare myself a measly pound and a half.

 

I don't see the charm in it myself, it's overpriced it's appearance isn't even that appealing to me, it feels boxy and unfinished. Also the fact of only 320 gig HDD and well, no blu-ray isn't making it a huge contender either, it's far to niched to leave any kind of impact. amd the keyboard... can't say it's anything special. Only thing that sets it aside is the sidepad functions. But the lack of any kind of numpad is a big flaw aswell.

 

Oh, missed the fact that there's no blu-ray.

No SSD, and 320GB HDD at that, no blu-ray. So for basically $1500 more you're getting 0.5" thinner and a new touchscreen gizmo that's not even ergonomically located. Not to mention that it will struggle with any newer games coming out in the near future if you want to play at 1080p or any amount of detail. So much for a "gaming" laptop.

 

I don't understand why they went along with it. I wish they had stuck with the thought-process of the prototype (although I knew they wouldn't be able to pull off such a small gaming laptop)

 

Lol...
the only thing that competition does in capitalism, is to potentially lower prices of certain products... in case of the IT industry, revisions of revisions of revisions without any significant changes in how computers work (actual 'evolution'), and yet in the SSD sector, the competition did little to drive the prices down (and that technology is already old).

In terms of Razer Blade... I see nothing competitive about it.
Severely overpriced for what is a mid-range laptop. While yes it could be called a 'gaming laptop', it cannot compete with laptops that come with more powerful components and are overall cheaper.

 

my reasoning is, that if one were to look at different computers at that price on the market, they should do a little bit of homework, and see other brands and such. If you would spend that much money on a gaming laptop and not even consider other brands, your a fool. Again, time and time again people have said this, but for that price, one could easily max out a desktop or get a much better spec'd m18x.

And if people would want this for a portable laptop... think for a second, it may weigh less, and be thinner, but that is still a span of 17", and you will still be lugging around a 17" laptop. ...I would much rather have the 14x for portability and yet get even better specs than this.

my .02

 

I'm a fan of the Razer branding. I like their color scheme. I think this laptop looks slick. I also think that its price is absolutely betrayed by its DUAL core CPU and its GPU. Sure, it'll run most games, but it won't be "defining PC gaming" with high settings with those specs.

Thing is, a lot of games are coming with, "Quad core" recommended now. I disagree with Intel even calling anything DUAL CORE an i7, but that was the only way to make this thing look high end, right?

The price is way, way too much. I mean, wow. I have to wonder if this isn't an ad campaign to get everyone saying, "That's great, but it's way too expensive" and then they'll release it at a much lower price and cry, "We managed to make it cheaper because we're great!" And then everyone'll cheer as they buy the $2k laptop (instead of $2800) because they'll be able to say, "I'm SAVING money!"

If they had announced a $2k MSRP, there would have been complaints about that, too. But dropping the price down from $2800 isn't really that hard...

The other logic might be they're treating this like a high end video card. Get the Razer Blade name out there, then release a lower cost, lower featured option afterward that rides on the coat tails of the more expensive one. If that's so, they seriously miscalculated because I'm not sure how far the Dual Core+GF555 is going to carry them.

The gamer wants a cheaper option with reliable gaming hardware (great GPU, great CPU). Kinda like the Asus ROG used to be (back in the days of G50's with 9800GS or 260M, G73 with Radeon 5800, not like the crippled Best Buy laptops they make now) when you could get a great gaming laptop for $1k-ish easily and reliably.

Asus has pushed their uncrippled up to the $1500 point since Gateway's FX series faded from Best Buy and there are no competitors in the point to put emphasis on things.

Razer COULD have brought PC gaming down to the masses with a fully realized, integrated, great laptop for gaming that had a nice, modern black look with no silly frills in favor of solid specs. Instead, they give us a Macbook Air for gaming with a price higher even than Apple and specs that just don't justify the premium imo.

If it DOES in fact sell for $2800, I don't think they'll have to sell very many to make a profit at that price. I suspect they'll be making a profit on every laptop sold, especially as times goes on.

I think perhaps they jumped the gun when they should have released a laptop on this form factor and around this idea around the time of AMD Trinity using the APU (combined CPU+GPU) to do both, save money, produce less heat, and give us good-ish performance. Use the specialization to install insanely high speed DDR3 RAM to help boost the GPU performance. This would, of course, have to happen next year when AMD Trinity is scheduled to release and replace Llano.

In the meantime, they could have given us the Razer Disposable. A $500 all black laptop with the highest spec Llano, highspeed, quality 6-8GB DDR3 overclocked by the factory to improve memory subsystem performance with the integrated GPU, a thinner form factor, no lights or stupid touchpad LCD's, decent speakers, an average quality 15" screen, and a Deathadder mouse with option to upgrade to Mamba, Naga/Epic, or Orochi. Market it as, "Why buy a $2k laptop every two years when you can have a new gaming machine every year for $500?" Position it against the consoles. Include the option for an extra $100 for a specialized wireless HDMI kit and include an HDMI port.

Get gaming computers out on every street corner and use the opportunity to sell your specialized peripherals (like a N52te replacement that uses the Switchblade panel, Razer mice, headphones, etc.) to an insanely growing market already bound to the Razer brand. Razer worked with Valve/Steam on Portal 2 for Sixense. Do it again, make a custom UI for Steam (already possible), integrate drivers for the computer into Steam's driver update program, and make Steam the front end for the whole software experience for the laptop. Have Valve marketing your laptop FOR YOU by partnering with them and giving them that "bottom, baseline spec" they want to list as a great "min recommended." Toss in a free Portal 2. From there, you can take on console gaming itself. Branch out into offering HTPC's built like consoles for lower than console prices that integrate a Razer Onza and a "large Steam UI" for living room use. Steam already promised they're working on it. Use that.

Even if you knock the price up from $500 to $700 on the laptop, you're still in a market that few gaming computer companies target regularly or well. Do you do any of that? All of which would be great and get gamers back into PC gaming? Of course not. Instead you go high end pricing on a mid-range computer. It's like you have more money than sense. Or want to.

 

I just found the best usage for this notebook with this kind of name:


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[ We can't blame people buying a gaming laptop because of it's portability. I bought mine because I'm travelling and I can't bring a desktop from country to country.]

But, this Razer Blade is like trying to knife a customer (exaggerating ) What the heck? $2,800 for those kind of stuffs? Even a year and a half old laptop is powerful than Blade. I would rather buy a top Alienware or Sager with that price Blade's feature is not for me.

Anyway, great concept for a gaming laptop. I'm not just saying bad things, it's just my opinion. I like Razer's Mamba and Mouse-pad but that's it. I just like the mouse (same matte as my laptop) so I bought this Mamba.

Good luck to their heat-sink and other stuffs,
-Yupi

 

They're about 4 or 5 years too late. Back in that day, people would drop thousands on gaming laptops out of ignorance, but the market has changed, mostly thanks to Gateway and Asus attacking the $1k price point with high-end GPUs.

 

Blade is probably more like a Rolls Royce 4 dour sedan or something like that.

$2.8k is too high they should go for like $2K. The thing though is how many people carry an M18X on their back every day while biking for example? That would kill your back. If you want to game and you get around on bike/bus then its a good deal.

What they mean by first real gaming laptop has more to do with the laptop part and less with the gaming part. If you move around every day you might get a desktop + a netbook if you want to game. The problem is you can't really game on the netbook. A 5 pound laptop is easy to carry around, easy to take everywhere you go. I doubt many people with 15 pound laptops bike or bus, or if they do they never had to take engineering textbooks along for the ride. However, $2.8K is a bit too expensive for the portability tradeoff.

Finally some people always make the mistake of evaluating a product based on its value to them when evaluating its overall succes. There are many products that don't make sense to me at all (Cable TV) that make sense to other people because of personal preferences. If your #1 priority in a gaming laptop is stats, Razor Blade is a terrible idea. If your #1 priority is cost, Razer Blade is a terrible Idea. If your #1 priority is appeal and portability with power, Razer Blade makes sense if your fine with anything sub $3K.

 

The point is that you can get appeal and portability with power (if you can even call it power) at a much lower price point.

It's not powerful in the slightest.

 

Depends on how much money you have. I would say the price is still ridiculous, especially because its a 17" laptop so the 0.88" is off set by that. But the M14X is 0.88" thick and I don't know if it weighs more or not. 0.88" is very thin, thats smaller then an Envy/MBP.

I would say the Razor Blade is a very good looking laptop and the trackpad looks cool if you play MMOs.

If your loaded and you play MMOs it makes sense. It doesn't make sense for most other people. Its a great idea, just too high. I think like $2K with GTX 560/570 might have gone better. That would probably appeal to a lot more people. The thing is though Asus G73 with 560m and around the same processor is about $1.8K. With that in mind even like $2.2K would have been fine with a GTX 560.

 

A brand new G74, with 2630QM + GTX 560M + 12GB RAM, is going for $1.4k on Newegg.

 

Yes, but the simple specs do not tell the whole story. Sure, you can get an Asus G74. But some people want other things beyond just pure specs, like construction materials and laptop design.

You can buy an inexpeisnve tuned / modded Honda Civic that can beat a Porsche 911 when it comes to performance and price. But at the end of the day, you're still driving around in a Civic.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that the Razer Blade is a *good* purchase by any means. But what I am saying is that there is a lot more to the story than just technical specifications and price.

 

Yeah but that is not MSRP.

You can't price compare MSRP to a sale price. That doesn't make any sense.

 

Most gamers don't spend money based on looks. It's true that some people spend huge amounts on their gaming rigs, but that is because they have to spend that much to get something of that level, it's not simply throwing money away like some people claim. Whereas with the razorblade, you are throwing away money unless you're too naive to think for a second.

Secondly, to most gamers performance>looks.

If/when someone here actually gets one, I'm tempted to ask them to make a list of all the componants in the system and work out its actual value.

 

The MSRP of a Logitech G400 is $49.99. The mouse can be bought at Newegg or Amazon for $38-40, a savings of 20%. Taking 20% off the Blade brings the price down to "just" $2,240, which is still nearly 40% higher than the price of that much more powerful Asus.

 

It depends, portability/weight decrease/thinness are expensive. Like I said if your buying a computer on pure performance the Razor Blade = pointless.

If your buying the Razor Blade because you are going to take it everywhere and you want a thin and light gaming laptop it makes a lot more sense especially if you shave off another couple hundred. Portability = expensive. All electronics that are smaller and more portable with the same power have a huge premium.

My friend bought a Vaio Z (first gen) for like $2.3K but he bought it because its 3 pounds, not because of the stats. He also wanted a powerful computer that weighted 3 pounds. Like I said for some people a gaming laptop = move once a month which means weight, size and thinness don't mater. For some people who take it wherever they go, these things do matter. You can't just evaluate the Razor Blade on power because of its size. For some people that matters more.

Rather then the G74 better laptops to compare the Razor Blade too are the Samsung 7 Series and the HP Envy series. The main difference is the "trackpad" but that probably isn't worth more then $100 to $200. And it is in this comparison why you see that the Razor Blade is pretty over priced. But not quite as much as what other people say.

 

But none of that matters at all because they're marketing it as a GAMING COMPUTER. It's like this. If I built a car that was moderately fast but looked sexy as hell, I wouldn't say "THIS IS THE FIRST RACE CAR EVER BUILT!" It's not a race car. It's a luxury sports car.

The Blade is not a gaming computer.

 

And that is a valid point. I know it's not marketed as a "gaming" machine, but the 17-inch MacBook Pro has a better CPU (quad core i7), larger hard drive (500 GB 7200 RPM), dual-band wireless, 1920x1200 screen, weighs less, has a smaller overall form factor, and at $2,499, costs less. Its GPU is not as good, granted, but the 6750M is in the same ballpark as the 555M. The Mac also comes with less RAM, but that's easily upgraded for not a lot of money.

 

If the Blade really has the 96-shader, 128-bit GDDR5 version, the Mac's 6750M is like 25% faster than that particular 555M.

I'd rather take the Apple and dual boot Windows.

 

Well, I was giving Razer the benefit of the doubt, but looking at the specs again, they claim it's the 2 GB 555M, which would most likely be the one you describe. In that case, yes, the Mac will outperform the Blade in graphics as well.

Razer is designing a supposed "gaming" laptop and is getting shown up by Apple in the hardware department.

 

Their putting the emphasis on the "Laptop" part not the gaming part. I agree the gaming part is pretty bad.

The Blade is massively overpriced (as seen how a Macbook Pro 17" beats it out).

But to me it seemed like a cool idea. I think Apple has a market share of over 91% in $1K + Laptops. I think part of the reason is that Windows laptops only focus on price to performance ratio. This means only gamers get value when spending over $1K. So most $1K laptops are either gaming laptops or macs with the exception of the Vaio Z and HP Envy. If the Razor Blade was a lot cheaper then I could see as Razor targeting that 91% market share of Apple in that market.

If someone controls 91% of a market you might as well target them.

Source: Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD

 

double post

 

Right, but you can't take someone's market share when the only thing you offer that they don't is a goofy touchpad.

 

Pretty much which is why I say the Razor Blade has to be cheaper then the MBP 17 (they don't have Apple's brand/marketing or anything near it) and probably the MBP 15 or so so maybe $2K would be an ok price for it. Even then in comparison to the Apple you still don't get an Apple Store (have to send your computer away if it has a trouble) its not an established PC maker, there isn't as good marketing like I said before so $2K is pushing it.

All I'm saying is that at a much cheaper price point its an interesting concept for gamers/people who want some power who take their laptops everywhere. Maybe like $1.8k "actual price" (not MSRP) or lower.

It is of course really funny that a Windows manufacturer who tried to make something that looks like a Windows version of a MBP 17 with a special touchpad ended up charging more for it.

 

If they went for the switchblade instead then I think thye might have a chance of tapping into a new market. They'd actually be able to truthfully say it was "the first" if they did that.

 

And MAC looks cooler

I'd rather buy Sager or AW with that kind of price than Blade.

 

Tremendous fail indeed.

But hey, it's the first real portable 17in sleek-looking with-a-cool-touchpad gaminglaptop to ever be released!

 

There's gotta be a cool acronym tucked in there somewhere!

 

walll of text but i actually read all of that, good read and i agree

 

I agree with everything in that quote too. Great points, great ideas, too bad it will never happen. I'd be all for it though, sounds like Razer just needs to hire him, I'd think they could make much more money implementing his ideas, while also creating a whole new competitive market.

 

i wud have to cross my hand to use it haha

 

THe Razor Blade Laptop Ships with a 256 SSD!!!!

Razer's Combat Knife-Inspired Blade Gaming Laptop Will Be Home For Christmas

"After the announcement of the Razer Blade, they were floored with the response from the press and the community and we managed to negotiate a price down for the components. We were able to convince them to bring the cost down and with the cost savings; we decided to upgrade the 320GB HDD to a 256 SSD drive."

256 SSD and price stays same, so they reduced the price around 400$ give or take

If they just upgrade the 555m gpu to a mere 560m, I would buy it for 2800$, what do u guys think?

 

i would at max pay like $1600-1700 for this...

 

Throw in an SSD that probably scored at mass buy for $250 and they call it good? Even with a GTX 560m, still barely worth $1500.

Their markup is clearly quite high if they can go from a 320GB HDD to a 256GB SSD without worrying. Granted with the cost of hard drives skyrocketing, the difference is smaller but still a $150 difference. I can bet their markup is $1000.

If this launched 18 months ago, I could almost understand an $1800 price tag with 256GB SSD and GTX 560m. But now, no way.

 

It looks like the ridiculous price tag was due to in part by their bribes or erm... "Mark-ups" the vendors instated on Razer. In other words the vendors are laughing at Razer right now for their gullibility and are profiting from a flop lol.