Razer Blade 2014 vs MacBook Pro Retina 15

Hey RB owners!

I am reading this forum since several months already, and trying to understand if RB2014 worth changing from MacBook Pro?
So far i can say MacBook is a perfect laptop, best touchpad and retina display is awesome. Keyboard has no issues, its totally silent while browsing, handles battery for 5+ hours, magsafe connector is the best of the best and there are no issues except OS X. Can't get used to this OS for a year already, it's too simple and hides some things i want to see (file system), MS Excel is totally unusable, and there are no games i can play under OS X. So i just thought RB 2014 would be a nice switch and moreover i would get a gaming laptop.
But now i am really afraid that the new 3K screen in RB has problems, AC power brick fails in every second laptop, touchpad sucks and more and more... considering that i live in Europe, every warranty claim will result in quite expensive shipments.

MacBook Pro owners! Is RB 2014 better than your Apple friend?

Thanks in advance,
Din

 

Unless you need a gaming laptop stick with the Mac

 

I never used a MacPro so I cant really comment on how good it is but to tell you the truth I have no issues with the RAZER touchpad , seems to work just as good as any W8 laptop I have tried and I have tried many.
If you want to game a lot its the way to go.

 

If you can't get used to OSX and want to play games the Blade is a better unit.

Myself I like working in OSX but I have a 2011 MBP 13 for that.

 

Having both the rb 2014 and mbpr 15--I would say if your only problem is with OSX, just bootcamp your mac. The blade is a better machine in my opinion, but if you're happy with your mac you can easily get it to work like a windows machine.

 

This is s good compromise. The battery life suffers due to drivers for Windows on rmbp leaving a little something to be desired due to lack of optimus. It'll work though.

 

I had serious graphics throttling issues in Bootcamp; not sure if the issue afflicts newer MBPr models, but it was definitely widespread on the late-2012 model which I bought. Around halfway through last year, Apple released an SMC update which they claimed would stop the battery draining while playing games. It worked, but did so by capping power usage at 80W. Before the update, I was able to play most games on high settings at 1080p by overclocking my graphics card (650M). After the update, I would get the same performance for ten minutes or so in games like Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 3; after ten minutes the game would become incredibly choppy, dipping down to 30fps or lower for a few seconds and then jumping back to 60fps. The inconsistency in framerate made most shooters a pain to play. Underclocking my graphics card helped, but it was only a temporary fix: the 650M's core clock would throttle as low as 325MHz after a while, which was far too slow for me.

I don't know if a solution to the problem has been found, but there were no effective and lasting solutions around four months ago, when I sold my MBPr. Not sure if the Blade is your best option given your location, but I wouldn't recommend the MBPr for games.

 

thanks everyone! that was very helpful, i will risk and go for RB

 

At this point it isn't a fair fight due to unequal product cycles.. I bought a RB but mainly due to the fact I wanted a 15" gaming laptop now instead of waiting for mac's to get broadwell in late 2014 with an unknown gaming graphics card upgrade. At the moment your current Mbpro retina choices have outdated graphics and simply can't compete fairly.

 

Hi

I have had a mac pro for a few years and lets be honest... There build is amazing.... However i am sick to death of it just not coping with basic games.... My alienware 17 is coming next week and i cant wait!! Its my first gaming laptop so i dont really know a great deal about them but hopefully all goes well

 

I sold my rmbp late 2013 for the new razer blade. Playing d3 ros at 60fps 3k wipe the floor with mbpr. I also think the razer curves are better than mbpr. And i love the looks in starbucks about my strange "dark" mbp in tokyo. Priceless

 

Hey folks

Did you see Steam In-Home Streaming ?
It could be a nice option to keep MBPro and stream from a high end Desktop

 

I'd love to try this, I'm betting lag will be a factor and compression of the video will look crappy.. I may hook it up and stream something from my Blade to my mbp 13.

 

It works flawlessly with me

My setup is wired connection from the host and wireless for the client

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

More details please?
What games did you try? 1080p? FPS?
And of course was it an AC WiFi or just N?

Thanks!

 

It was on N I have a very basic router and the fps were stable at 40

However the rest was also low at 768p

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

How does the Razer Blade do for battery life during regular (non-gaming use)? Both with videos and with normal productivity?

 

normal productivity should be around 5 hours. videos and media i would say 3-3.5 hours

 

Hello RB owners,
Just wanted to share my feelings and somehow consolidate them in a separate post.

Early January 2015 i became a happy Razer Blade 2014 owner with 256GB SSD. It costed a hell of money and i was the first one in 5 million city to buy it (its sold by only one retail company and they know it for sure). I had to sell my MacBook Pro 15 in order to afford such a laptop, this was scary.


I wont describe its pros as everybody knows them well (CPU, videocard, display etc).

What disappointed me most:
1. Touchpad. Touchpad!!! Synaptics does a wonderful job releasing drivers for a hell variety of hardware, and theoretically should be able to have a lot of feedback's from the manufacturers, but they don't. I was struggling for several days to make it feel like a MacBook, and it was always a mess. How could it be that you set scrolling sensitivity in the system for example to 5, in the Internet Explorer it feels good, but in My Computer or Control Panel it feels like sensitivity is 3 and even worse - in Google Chrome its 25. And you can't change it !!! How do you guys live with that? The most thing i love in laptops is to sit on a sofa and browse the Web without a mouse.
To add some functionality as two finger tap (simulate right click) i had to install a separate program, hey Synaptics! WTF? Three or four finger action is a dream as well.
2. Fingerprints. Razer Blade is a fingerprints black hole, i could not touch any part of the laptop without a need to clean it afterwards. And i am not talking about the touchscreen which becomes dirty after less than an hour of use.
3. Black painting. I've tried to use Kensington lock in order to secure it while i am away in the office, and it easily scratched the surface so that i could see aluminium under the paint. After 3-4 days of use, i have scratched the area under WSAD with my watches and i wonder what will happen in a year or so?
4. Noise/heat. I really thought i could live with that, but no. Its hot as hell. Volcano. An hour of playing Ultra High Skyrim showed what it can. I could not stand the noise without the headphones. Every colleague of mine came to my desk to ask whats going on, is it gonna blow?
5. OS. Once i was sitting in front of RB at night just surfing the Web. At some moment of time, i've heard fans spinning without any reason. I have launched the Task Manager immediately in order to see the reason and saw "Malicious software Windows Defender smth blah blah" occupying 25% of the CPU (i7, the most powerful mobile CPU ever). Then it stopped. Then it started again, fans are spinning, i am annoyed.
I could not find any way for the battery icon to show percentage values. How could it be? I want to know if its 10% or 30%, is it 1 hour more or 20 minutes! Why do i have to install some crap software to display that? Oh my, i hate Windows now.
6. LED indicators. Please tell me how? How could it be that you can't see if your laptop is charged to 100% or not? Why can't it change from red to green when its completely charged? I don't need a green indicator at all to know if its powered or not. And there is no possibility to change anything there. Totally useless LED functionality ever.
7. Battery. I know its a gaming laptop, but ... 3 hours of browsing on a comfortable brightness ... and its empty. Even when you don't use that 870M beast. Really small MBP 13 are capable of holding 7 hours having less capacity. Why Windows can't?
8. Scaling. I have installed several gaming programs such as Steam and ... Origin. And found out that Origin does not support high DPI displays. How the hell could it be??? Origin = gaming, gaming = best quality systems ever. Even windows 8, some icons have nice resolution, some not. Some windows look nice, some not. You never ever meet such thing in Mac OS.

That's my list. After 2 weeks of trying to adjust myself to Razer Blade i felt its enough, and went to the shop and exchanged it to a MacBook Pro 15. I could not find compromises between me and Razer Blade.
I was always a Windows fan, switched to Apple only 2 years ago. I have Lenovo T430 laptop for work and never thought it would be so much pain to move myself to an old platform at home.

 

I recently (December) purchased a 512GM Macbook Pro (mid-2014 with a 750M), and it's an excellent machine with super-fast storage and superb display connectivity. It's my primary work machine, supported by the fact that battery life is 7-10 hours of normal use.

With that said, I'm considering the 2015 Blade, either as a replacement for this or as an addition to use at home. I also have a relatively well-spec'd desktop gaming rig, so I'm not sure which direction I'll go in yet.

 

I have the 2015 RB, and a RMBP 2012-13 with 650m. To be honest besides for the fan noise (Yes it gets loud) I absolutely love that little RB. Gaming is a pleasure, I actually got away from PC gaming on the road because of my RMBP and the constant throttling. My RMBP was replaced several times to try and stop this. No solution ever came from apple. This little green and black gem just rips, build quality is just as good as any Mac I have owned. Customer service might be a different story, Apple has always been excellent to me. Needless to say I have moved my iPhotos to folders, deactivated iTunes on my RMBP and doubt I will ever go back. I actually feel that Apple took me for a ride in some ways (DARN COOLAID), premium price point for low end components. Razer has a good thing going here, lets just hope they follow it up with GREAT Customer Service.

 

If you already have a decent desktop gaming rig, i'd stick with the MacBook Pro, and spend the money on upgrading the desktop. Maybe a new graphics card? or CPU?

As a Blade owned, that's what I would do. I changed from a Macbook Pro to the Blade because I didn't want to have more than one machine, and I like gaming.

So I'd stick with your mac, and upgrade your desktop

 

I would second @Rikg09. If I was still using a desktop to game I would definitely not have the blade. The fact that I have no interest in owning a desktop and I want a thin and well built gaming notebook is why I have it.