New Razer Blade & Razer Blade Pro

I use a low end DELL 23 inch IPS screen at work, but still, the difference between that and my 17xr3 is very noticeable. Even though the m17x r3 is one of the best TN screen out there. We are simply moving into an era of IPS screens and Razer's choice was most likely economical rather than design. But now that the alienware 14 has an ips i can't see razer not getting on board for the next refresh. There is simply no way Min can still say 'we have the best 14 inch screen' with the alienware on the market.

PS: I hope someone from razer is picking up these suggestions. Lack of TB and IPS screen seems to be universally recognized as the major drawbacks on this release of the blade 14.

 

my hopes as well. TB specially now that we finally see a more constant flux of products is a good option to add connectivity. Specially those that complained about the lack of ethernet or other video out options

for example this one, is a example of the new docks, incorporating, storage, ODD, and multiple ports, you can have all that with just 1 port, 1 cable, TB.
Sonnet - Echo 15 Thunderbolt Dock

and I hope that with maxwell we see a higher res and better quality screen

I hope that goes for the blade pro as well, with the mac pro and its dependency on TB for expansion, we shall see products focused on things that graph pros need

 

hey john both blade and blade pro got the same screen ? or different ? ( not referring to size of coz lol )

 

given that they are different sizes you can guess that they are different screens

 

John, would you mind running GPU-Z to see what clock speeds the 765m and its ram are running at when gaming? Thanks

 

Re: docking station thing

Yeh, something like that is awesome, although i doubt the utility of having a HDD in there. Would much prefer a smaller form factor instead.

To be honest i think everyone should be hooking up their notebooks to external IPS displays at home. With the price of IPS screens dropping like they are, there is no excuse not treating your eyes while at home. if anything it gives you better sitting posture.

And then to have the convenience of unplugging one cable to go down to the cafe. Hopefully all this can be realized soon. I urge Razer to get into the docking market as well.

 

those are the new ones that come with coffee machines and mints powered by usb

Thunderbolt

Matrox DS1 Technical Specifications

those can be more to your liking

 

Personally, if I were given the choice between 1920x1080p and 1600x900p, I would go for the latter. In fact, I'm having to replace the display on my VAIO Z1 (broke it through sheer stupidity) and I'm getting the 900p one, even though for me both resolutions are available for exactly the same price. The text on a Full HD display is uncomfortably small on screen sizes 14" and below (mine is 13.1"). You can increase DPI, font sizes, zoom levels, etc. but 900p is still better.

Therefore, I support Razer's choice of the 900p resolution, but the quality of the display has me worried - I guess I'm spoiled by the VPCZ1's display which is the best TN display I've seen, and a lot better than many of the cheaper IPS screens out there.

 

its a matter of preference, i like using 1200p in a 13

 

One of the concern is there are no IPS screens of 1600x900 resolution? Maybe im wrong. but certainly seem like 1080 screens would be more common. So for razer to go IPS they might have to move up to 1080p. Maybe thats what Min meant when he said its the best screen available. maybe it is the best 900p screen available?

$@#$@!#@! that belkin dock is EXACTLY WHAT I NEED.. common razer, give me a TB PLEASe

 

I think the best screen available for 14" is the IGZO 3200*1800, that one that I keep saying and annoying everybody with it

IPS, good gamut, terrible color accuracy (despite reds being rum, greens being smoked, and blues are still blues), and good enough black levels (low black levels on a bright screen are really hard), that though is for their 13" model, I dont have info on the 14" yet.

I like that belkin dock as well, though I would probably go for that sonnet one or from a taiwanese company that I saw some weeks ago, both provide the same things, internal storage and ODD, the ODD for me is nothing, I like the internal storage part though

 

Has anyone who ordered the 512GB seen their order status change to anything other than "order submitted"?

 

I ordered mine on June 5th, with 512GB, but no change in my order status. Just says it will ship post launch on June 21st.

I haven't received any e-mail, as others have indicated that there is a delay.

e4

 

My 512gb order of the 14in blade says it will ship after June 18th release date. Order status is still "Order Submitted"

 

Any ideas of when we might see some real world video reviews?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

I would imagine soon since people are starting to receive shipment.

 

"order in process" here for the blade pro 17" 512GB.
I hope it arrives within this and next week.

 

Yeah I was actually searching YouTube for 'Razer Blade' and filtering it with uploads from this week. Lol.

 

i am not constantly shifting my screen while gaming or anything, think some of you may be blowing my comments out of proportion. sorry i don't have a way to accurately gauge the display. from a layman's perspective i enjoy using it, i can see if i can look up the manufacturer. not home at the moment.

 

So for $300 Belkin gives you a Bose looking attachment that connects 3 USB 3.0, an Ethernet, headphone/mic port (useless), two thunderbolt (net +1), and a FireWire (useless). I'm sorry, but what?

I was excited about the Echo 15, but now I'd imagine it'll probably cost around $500-600, which is insane.

 

so ?

 

Think of it as a very good breakout cable. Get one for the office and one for home and wire them up permanently. Now all you need to do is to plug in one cable and all your peripherals are available. Printer, external storage, monitor, mouse, joystick/gamepad, even a full sized keyboard if you need it (for people typing in other languages, especially).

 

After reading the latest posts, I feel like I'm the only one out there with the Blade Pro, heh.

I got the problem with Synapse not remembering my profile solved by uninstalling it and installing it again; it's all been peachy after that. I'm just getting used to having the "touchpad" on the side and not under the keyboard.

My only "concern" is that the fan is on most of the time; but I don't blame in on the computer... it has been a very hot summer here in El Paso, TX. Even my desktop - an 3770K cooled with an H100 - idles at high 30's.

I haven't installed much on it yet. Just Visual Studio 2010 and 2012, Diablo III, StarCraft 2 and Borderlands 2. I do have Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider, but I'm not sure I want to get them there since I'm already done with those games. Besides, that's also part of the reason I have a full-on desktop. I play that stuff there.

Battery life so far when not gaming - just surfing, listening to some music, surfing some more - was just a little bit under 4 hours - which, being used to 1h tops on my G73JH, it's more than enough.

I've never been much of a display junkie, but the screen looks good to me. Granted, I probably don't even know what are "good colors" and "bad colors", but it looks okay to me. To be honest, I haven't consciously checked the viewing angles - though a friend who came over and does some Photoshop work did mention "yeah... they're okay"... I'm not sure what that means exactly!

Oh, another thing I loved is that there is no bloatware; just the Razer Synapse and Comm utilities. But other than that, it seems like a good, clean Windows 8 installation. Though I wonder a little bit about the drivers, particularly the Killer WiFi. I did upgrade the Intel's 4600, installed the nVidia GeForce Experience and that's it.

Honestly, I like this machine very much. I really, really feel like it was worth every penny. A friend of mine said I could've gotten a more powerful laptop with that amount of money - probably a Sager with one of the extreme i7's and a 780M - but honestly, I was tired of the big, block and plastic-y laptops.

I'm a happy camper!

 

Tomb Raider has a nice benchmark.

Good news about the bloatware, or lack thereof.

 

I understand that, but all of those devices use USB interface (except Monitor), so why wouldn't a $15 USB hub do the same for 1/20 of the price? I'm just saying, people who want thunderbolt on a laptop need to be reasonable from the economic perspective. That $300 3-port USB hub doesn't even come with the $30-40 thunderbolt cable.

I would like to see the Blade come with Mini DisplayPort though, I think TBolt is unnecessary.

 

so you dislike one dock, thus all docks are just junk?

 

Does the lid open all the way back to 180 degrees? Seems like a small thing, but I find myself missing this feature that my old Dell 700m had.

 

Thanks for this review! I'm looking to get mine within two weeks, hopefully.

Regarding the fan, did you have a previous laptop? Any comparison to the fan noise/discharge as compared to your previous ones? How's the heating?

Thanks for the time =) Enjoy!

 

fan on the blade 14 when its running is quieter than the 17r2. definitely quieter on full speed than the r2 as well.

 

no the hinge design doesnt allow it

 

About the Belkin Thunderbolt Dock - I read about it online, and it seems to have one major flaw. It does not supply power to the USB ports. So, you can't use an external hdd, or a CD driver with it. The reviews I read were on Amazon and Apple.

 

hey 3dmark11 your new blade pro, wanna see how it scores vs the 14

 

I don't know. The cheap USB hubs seriously degrade the transfer rate if you plug in an external HDD into one of those ports. I always have to plug my external HDD directly into the laptop itself. Maybe this $300 thingy doesn't have that limitation.

 

sorry haven't had time to shoot any video of the blade 14, will be kind of lame without the keyboard lights, but if i have time to squeeze a few clips i will and put them on youtube.

 

wonder if razer would be willing to get into the android tablet biz as well with the new tegra 4 from nvidia. they've proven they can make a sweet tablet/controller combo.

 

Right now I think Razer is overwhelmed by the demand. Give them time to catch their breath before starting new product lines. They have some serious upscaling to do - the Razer Blade seems to have really taken off.

 

I never at all said they were junk, I actually liked them quite a bit (especially the Echo 15 with the CD drive/3.5" HDD/6-port hub), but the 3 mentioned in this thread cost ~$300.

I see people claiming PCs should start adopting TB, but it's still 3+ years away from being a universal standard. I use a $2 AR Belkin 4 port powered USB hub and I'd like to have an a nice one cable solution, but at that price point the utility from a spare 256GB SSD/23" FHD monitor far outweighs this stylishly solution with limited connectivity.

 

Isnt 85 C for GPU temps a little bit too high?

 

My previous laptop is an Asus G73JH which has the fans on almost all the time - though you must remember that model has a Radeon 5870M, which doesn't have the magic of switchable graphics. Actually, now that I'm actually thinking about it, the fans on the G73 never really did turn off, just had different speeds depending on what I was doing. Also, I remember that having it on my lap meant to burn my legs... and probably potential offspring.

The Blade Pro has two fans; the one on the left side I believe has the heatsink connected to the CPU. The fan only comes on when CPU load reaches around 30-50% in my case, which is around 40ishC. In this case, it is whisper like.

The fan on the right side I suppose is attached to the nVidia GPU, since I've only heard it spin when gaming. To be fair, when at load they do make some noise, but not as much as my G73. I mostly don't notice it because I have the volume up or wearing a headset, but it is there.

Nevertheless, it definitely feels cooler to the touch. At least, when I sit it on my lap, it doesn't feel like my legs are gonna melt. Warm, but not hot. Note I don't game like that, hahaha, but I do surf while watching TV or whatever with it.

I think the cooling is adequate. I haven't run any benchmarks and actually measured temps, but I'll get to it if I have a little extra time after rehearsal tonight.

 

docks were never cheap, there is no simpler way to say that. aside that they were only available for enterprise class hardware. in the end, I put my preferences on one that has HDD, i.e. the sonnet (it could have more sata in there though), or the taiwanese one that I didnt link (it actually looks like the madison cube garden), there are others, its a matter of googling and they will be in the 250 to 300+ range

 

i was monitoring the gpu temps for the integrated intel gfx when i gave that number i think. i need to rerun those.

gpu temps maxed out at 72 degrees after running tomb raider benchmark 3 times in a row. will have to game longer to see how much higher they go. fans did not kick into high speed at all, will do 3dmark demo loop instead. tomb raider with all settings maxed out except hair set to normal and anti-aliasing only at FXAA averaged 36.6 FPS.

 

Ok, I've come to the decision this thing is super, super quiet for a gaming laptop. really, really quiet. GPU fan when it picks up is not distracting at all, you have to put your ears closer to the back of the blade to hear it running. the cpu fan is the one that will run louder, but only when the CPU is being severely taxed. When running 3dmark, the CPU fan only becomes audible during the CPU test, and after its over it throttles back down to a very silent, inoffensive whirl that is (in my opinion) near undetectable unless you are trying to hear it. and then I already mentioned while just typing on this little guy the fans are dead silent or maybe even off, can't tell. GPU temp maxes out at 75 degrees after 3 3dmark11 tests. scores all stayed around 4050ish, had some background things running.

 

75 C is with the laptop plugged in and basically running on max right? 3dmark11 is like a heavy GPU test correct? Earlier when you had 85 C or w/e, what happened?

 

Oh, God... just reading around in this forum and thinking about it makes me wanna skip my rehearsal and go straight home after work to my Blade Pro, hahaha. I seriously love it.

The only "problem" I have right now is that I don't know what to do with ye ole G73JH, heh.

 

You can probably sell the G73JH, but before you sell it make sure your Blade Pro works and see whats up

 

Oh, it's already up and running. I received it last Friday.

For some reason the first thing I thought about installing was Visual Studio 2010/2012, even before games... is that maturing? To be completely honest, I haven't thoroughly benchmark it because... well, I think if one does, then you start finding all the little blemishes and I just wanna be in love with it, hahaha.

I remember when I was looking to buy the G73JH that there were reports about the WiFi sometimes dropping connections, and also with the cooling. But instead of worrying about it I just bought it and enjoyed it. Never had an issue, lucky me.

By the by, what mouse are you guys thinking of using with this? I was thinking of a Razer mouse just to keep the same aesthetic, and I even considered using the Orochi; but I think I would be going through batteries like a bat out of Hell. Maybe a Deathadder or something else... hum...

===== Edit =====

Ooops, I meant the Orochi; the Ouroboros is not out yet, heh. But it is also an option.

 

I hate too ask this but can you run the benchmarks for TR using default high and ultra settings without changing any other settings? Thanks a ton.

And it's awesome to hear your thoughts on the fans. I like that you consider them quiet. Very tempting....

 

Any idea if the GPU in the 14" is running at stock clock speeds?

 

Hey John, From my testing when running GPUz on the Intel gfx, Its not polling the GPU temp at all. Its polling the CPU temp. Kind of makes sense for the higher temp. The new intel chips get hot real fast and cool just as fast.

 

Yeah I made that mistake. The CPU integrated hits 85 when running 3dmark11. Change to video card number 1 on gpuz to measure the nvidia one. It hits 75 (plugged in). I assume the 765m is clocked at the same speed as the alien ware m14 as the scores are nearly the same. This one is just 2lbs lighter and one inch thinner

Razer support contacted me today and are working on getting me my replacement. In the meantime I get to hang on to this little beast.