Razer Blade Pro 2015 announced

Razer has reportedly updated their Blade Pro.
The new laptop will feature an Intel Core i7 4720HQ and a Nvidia Geforce GTX 960M.

At this point, I have pretty much lost all respect for Razer as a laptop maker. The 960M is nothing but an overclocked 860M. The LEAST they could have done for $2300 is installed a GTX 970M like the new Blade has. It boggles my mind as to why Razer would have a weaker GPU in a larger laptop.

Pricing and other details are available on Razer's website as of now.

 

They did the same thing last time as well. Not sure what their official stance is on why it doesn't have a larger GPU. Probably something about it's supposed to be for professionals and the 14 blade is for gamers. Shrug.

I would never buy the 17 anyway, so I don't really care much, but it is somewhat eyebrow-raising.

 

Yeah, it's still a strange decision to not put the same GPU as the 14 inch...

Glad to see they included a spinning drive as well at least for more space, that's new fro

I actually like the thought of the Pro model. I use intensive creative software every day I turn on my computer, and although I have the 14 inch Blade (and love it), often when I'm working in Premier or modeling in Max, I really pine for the extra screen real estate.

I even owned the 2014 Blade Pro, THREE of them to be exact, but the switchblade UI was so wonky, and the trackpad unreliable that after that final RA, I was fed up.

Now if they ACTUALLY updated the software and/or hardware for the switchblade UI for this 2015 model, then I may be interested again.

 

Switchblade is probably expensive so maybe that's how they offset the cost and I don't think they're marketing this to gamers. They're aiming it more towards developers maybe as a rMBP 15" alternative. At least they added a HDD.

 

Awful, just awful.

960m? Really? This thing desperately needed a 965m, instead, yet another year of the 860m with different clocks. Terrible.

 

I understand everyone saying this is for developers etc. etc. however the keyboard.... Is that keyboard for Developers or Gamers?

 

NVidia must be almost giving away these 960m GPUs to vendors and manufacturers.

 

There is another reason the 17" has a lower performance GPU than the 14" that I don't think people realize.
The thermal solution in the 14" has shared heat pipes so both fans are working to remove heat from the GPU, but the 17" has completely separate thermal solutions for the cpu and gpu, and cannot handle as high of a peak thermal load on one or the other. Of course, if you max out both cpu and gpu, then shared heat pipes wouldn't help.
The marketing reason will be something like only full HD vs QHD+... but that is just marketing.

 

I think it's official, available for purchase

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade-pro

although the 960m is a let down ...............

 

Or just telling them to raise the clocks on the 860Ms before they ship them out and label them 960Ms.

 

I have the Razer blade pro 2013,
I wish I had bought the 14 one. The Switchblade UI is just useless really, just works on paper not in practice.

 

What do you mean by useless? It doesn't work at all, or it's no different than ordinary touchpads?

 

I owned the 2014 Pro model for a short period, and primarily purchased it for the proposed use of the Switchblade Touchpad interface, as this seemed quite useful for us creative software types. But unfortunately, that poor trackpad was so wonky that the possibility of using it reliably for work was a pipe dream. Which is unfortunate, because that should be the selling point of this high end priced product. A reliable and stunning touchpad that justifies not purchasing other 17inchers with better specs and lower prices.

I would like to know if they spent some time putting serious revisions and work into the SBUI this time around (their website doesn't mention any revisions or changes to it...), because its now been a couple generations with a less than stable touchpad/selling point.

 

It reminds me alot of Logitecths dekstop gaming keyboard for desktops. It has anLCD which again seemed cool in theory but in practice it was just more of a gimmick then actually useful, plus not incredibly well supported within various applications or games.I mean even in the stock photo they are showing you an analog clock... .YAY!!!!

 

This announcement I saw while on vacation. I lol'd

 

It's for gamers. Very little travel, virtually no tactile feedback, and it's actually narrower than the keyboard on the RB14 thanks to the SBUI.

 

The touchpad functionality works acceptable, but that is actually what i am less concerned about the SBUI. My main problem is the concept. We have an LCD screen-touchpad, and the LCD buttons. When we think of it, we can easily come to the conclusion that they are just non-productive, because they are intended to make you look away from your screen each time you want to press something. The main reason why the standard keyboard works so good is because we dont need to look down at what keys we are typing, unless we miss a keystroke, allowing us to type really fast and produce (let it be gaming, documents, programming, etc). Also for games, I must confess that I dont need a jump key with an LCD showing beneath a guy jumping, neither for grenades or crouching, neither choosing weapons, it is just not needed. Mapping normal keyboard keys (just letters) to game actions works perfect and does not make you look at what you are pressing, that for me is much more efficient than using the SBUI. In this context is why I say is useless for me.

If I ever buy another blade, I will go straight to the 14 inch model.

 

Thanks for the brief but informative review of the SBUI SBUI almost swayed me to buy the blade pro
By the way, the 2014 blade (256 GB) now sells for $1789 on amazon, if you're ever interested