Just got my Razer Blade 2014 - A few thoughts and video

So here we go. Got this a couple of hours ago haven't had a lot of time to play with it.

So far everything has been pretty smooth just a few points, I will follow up with any other info you guys want.

Screen is spectacular for a windows machine and the build quality is near Apple quality. Keyboard is awesome (would like a home/end key, but that is just me being nitpicky) and the back light is spectacular. Haven't had time to get any gaming in yet. The buttons for the trackpad do feel cheap, would have hoped for something of a similar quality as an Apple trackpad, the pad itself works really well.

Video next to macbook pro retina 15 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWQ85lRsMcc

Drive space 256GB SSD fresh out of the box


Installed programs fresh out of the box:


System page:

 

This a great, thanks for the video!!

 

Cold boot vs Macbook Pro Retina 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8-xRN2VW0

 

Thanks for the videos! That's some speedy booting.
Keep the videos coming, helps me survive the wait!

 

Nice with a notebook vendor that doesn't prefill the computer with alot of bloatware.

 

Any chance of a Crystaldisk check of hard disk speeds?

 

The drive is a Samsung MZ-NTE256HMHP

 

Many thanks. Very interesting.

1) I didnt know that Samsung made M2satas. It is good that they do because they have the manufacturing capability of making a 1TB unit.

2) In fact at least 2 sites say they already do. See here.....
Storage Solid State Storage Parts - Avnet Express
Unfortunately this same part number (the one for the 1TB) is also listed as M2PCIE elsewhere.

3) The bad news is that the performance is decidely mediocre especially on the write side. Doesnt really surprise me as the 2013 Blade msata was even worse. Still here is the Crystaldisk for a recently installed Samsung EVO 840 I TB msata on my Blade 2013.

View attachment 111517

Arguably the right hand side Crystaldisk numbers are a bit of a red herring as it is using Samsung's 'rapid mode'.

 

As a FYI, high dpi on windows is making me cry from the pain of trying to get programs to look good while still being usable. Come on microsoft get on the ball.

 

That's not a Microsoft issue, that's an issue with whoever developed the program you're using. Windows support high-dpi, so it's up to developers to make their applications DPI-aware. Most don't, which gives you the crappy experience you described. Microsoft could enforce it like Apple does in OS X, but Microsoft favors supporting backwards compatibility, Apple rarely does.

 

Thanks for the video. Can you elaborate a bit on the viewing angles?

I see from extremes it shifts, but do blacks shift if you sit up or down in a chair? The 13 would look fine exactly positioned but if I so much as leaned back in my chair the blacks shifted. I couldn't tell from the video if the viewing angle is that limited or if it's only at severe angles.

Thanks again for posting these!

 

Honestly the viewing angles are extremely good.

i'd say about 20-30 degrees off of ideal viewing angle you lose about 10-20% of the brightness/color accuracy and it stays that way to 180 degrees. The glossiness affects it more than the panel itself for the most part.

When I get home tonight I can try and see if I can record it better.

 

Some more pics size wise vs macbook pro

 

Does the image/text get even remotely blurry when you switch the new Razer Blade down to 1080p or 900p resolution? If I do this on my 1080p monitor for my desktop (LCD 24" monitor) and reduce it to 900p it makes everything blurry and distorted (games or setting it as the resolution for the desktop). I am hoping that this doesn't happen on the IZGO panel (I am certainly not a screen expert or anything close). I will probably always game on the new Blade at 900p or 1080p to ensure high FPS and want to make sure it looks as beautiful as a native 1080p or native 900p screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

In terms of using it at 1080p it actually didn't look horrible, native of course looked better.

I do have an update:
I returned my Razer Blade 2014 today. After using it for a couple of days my eyes couldn't handle something about the display, I tried different brightness settings and resolutions but any prolonged usage (30+ minutes) would give me an incredible headache. I sincerely hope it was a problem with my eyes or just a defective screen and that no one else has issues. All in all the razer blade is an incredible machine and extremely innovative, I would have loved to hold on to it.

 

Was it the refresh rate? If it was low that could have done it. I'm still trying to discover what it actually is.

 

The refresh rate was at 60hz (the first thing I looked at, I still remember the days of CRT monitors and refresh rate headaches).

 

Yea glossy screens tend to give me headaches

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

 

So does that mean the max refresh rate of the 2014 Razer Blade is 60Hz then?

If so, I'm guessing the issue with the "ghosting" or "blur" people talk about must be the response time.

 

The internal screen can be set at 40, 48, and 60. I could not force anything above 60 for any resolution on the internal screen. I even tried creating a custom resolutions/refresh and couldn't get anything above 60 there either. I would assume its 60 hz max for the internal.

I would assume that the blurring is response time, but many people don't really notice it as bad as some of us do. Some games show it worse than others too.