Razor Blade Stealth - 12.5", i7-6500U, $999

The 2016 refresh of the Blade 14 would be my pick, to me it's slim and light enough to be an ultrabook. Plus with school and all I could use an upgrade with my current system especially with the VMs and GNS3, 16GB at a minimum I would like. I really hate those thick bezels on the Stealth. I'm still looking forward on reviews from you guys and on youtube.

 

Well preorder is done. Specs on my current laptop:

13'' 2014 Macbook Pro (2560x1600)
2.6 ghz i5-4278u | 8 GB RAM DDR3L | Intel Iris 5100 | 256 GB SDD

to

12.5'' Razer Blade Stealth (2560x1440)
2.5 ghz i7-6500u | 8 GB RAM LPDDR3 | Intel HD 520 | 256 GB SDD

Thoughts: To much of a Mac guy to retire the Macbook. It'll probably stay as my go-to device. Might be able to clear my Bootcamp partition off my Mac mini depending how the Stealth is able to handle the games I play with its stock internals (Mini is 2.5 ghz i5-3210m and HD 4000). That'd save me about 300 GB of storage space that I'd rather to use on my OS X partition.

The 1440p unit of the Stealth compares very favorably to my Macbook Pros in price I think. The build quality is said to be outstanding, you can be sure I'll have a comparison up when I get my hands on the machine. Typically I don't have a high opinion of dual-core i7 chips but I am eager to put this one through its paces especially in comparison to the dual core i5s I own now.

One of the big selling points of the Razer is its use of Thunderbolt. I can now attach my Razer to my Thunderbolt monitor (same resolution of 2560x1440 to boot!) and set my Mac Mini to target disc mode and have access to 1.5gb worth of data direct on my Razer. I think this machine will fit into my environment very nicely.

I'm looking forward to benchmarking the Razer's PCIe SSD vs my MacBooks as well. Apple is very proud of the write speeds on their proprietary chips. It'll be nice to see how that holds up in real world usage.

 

I agree with this. My Razer Blade 2015 QHD+ is portable enough for my taste (though I wish the power cable were lighter) and I can play any game anywhere with great graphics without needing a separate dock. At home, all I do, if I feel like it, is plug it into an external monitor. That being said, I'm so jealous of the chroma keyboard! I love my Blade and imagine the 2016 or whichever version comes next will only get better, lighter and prettier.

In my opinion the stealth is for people more interested in a general purpose ultrabook than people interested in a portable gaming laptop. I thinking getting the Razer Core with it would only make sense for those who don't want or can't afford a separate desktop PC for gaming at home.

In my case I travel often enough that I prefer being able to game anywhere with my laptop

 

Pretty much this, I agree 100% and was about to type the same considerations.

 

I am for sure going to be picking up a blade stealth I'm just going to wait on review for that 1440p screen as everyone is touting the 4K display and I havent seen one thing commenting on the quality of the 1440P variant which is plenty for a 12.5 inch screen where your going to be using scaling regardless.

 

I don't think you are wrong, its certainly not going to compare to the performance vs portability of a 17" desktop replacement... But as I said, I'm ok with that. I own a laptop that will play most games reasonably right now, and I've decided that I'd rather get a cheaper lighter laptop with lower performance next time around, because for the price of a good gaming laptop I can get the Blade Stealth and a desktop that is much more powerful than the gaming laptop (not including the Core). Now, you might willing to pay the premium to be able to carry that performance in a bag. I've decided I'm happy to have much lower performance laptop and I don't need (or want) 2 laptops.

I'm happy to see Razer maturing as a company and starting to offer a wider range of laptops. I'm sure that they will still offer a mid-size (~14") and a larger (~17") unit. Hopefully the 17" will get a better GPU. Either way its great to see a gaming focused company making such well designed and made hardware.

 

Owning the Dell XPS 13, I'm sort of torn between the i7 Razer and the new version XPS 13 that I have. The XPS has that awesome screen and a nice keyboard, but the Razer has the i7. Unfortunately, the NVMe drive is soldered on. And that bezel is pretty big.

 

The Stealth has a "U" model low power i7 that is only Dual Core. If the XPS has a Quad core and higher TDP, it is likely higher performance.

 

Unfortunately, the XPS also has a dual core CPU.

 

This Asus isn't released yet, just shown at CES 2016, but it has the same small form factor and has a Quad Core 6700HQ

The laptop comes in after 2:45



Laptop comes in at 00:55

 

Wut?

I didn't even think to ask. I really hope that's not true!

 

wait srs?

 

I believe spthealien is saying that the SSD is soldered to the MB... which, erm, I find hard to believe. The website lists the SSD as being M.2 which implies that its a standard slot-in device. But if spthealien has information that isn't out there yet (like I said, I didn't think to ask a Razer rep at the time), I could well be wrong.

 

I have doubts that Razer has 3 different motherboard models. The m.2 are tiny, replaceable and probably are a lot cheaper to supply than soldering it on. The ram I can see because they only have 1 option.

Still, if you have a source, please share.

 

I'm hoping that it was CES fatigue when they told me that.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

I hope the SSD isn't soldered on. I did put a pre-order in for a 128gb QHD and plan on upgrading to a 512gb, but that soldered SSD would suck.

 

Will the RB 14 2016 come with the EGPU capability ? If that is the case Im sold for a RB14 2016 + the Core and forget getting a new laptop for the next 5 years.

 

We don't know but I will be pretty surprised of the Blade or Blade Pro don't have the right port. It is going to be useful for a lot more than just connecting an eGPU

 

Problem with the ASUS eGPU is that it uses 2 cables and one is proprietary, potentially only being able to use it on ASUS laptops that have this feature is really stupid.
Not to mention its big and garishly ugly looking

 

"Sporty" is the word I think you are looking for

They opted for PCIE x4 via 2 cables, instead of TB3, likely due to some technical advantage. One video mentions you can run with 1 cable for PCIE x2 connectivity. The 2nd cable bumps connectivity up to PCIE x4 and adds charging.

Those ports might be multi-purpose USB 3.1 ports, and indeed offer TB3 *and* custom PCIE x4 dual/ganged connectivity.

Asus likely found it had better throughput and less lag - maybe it helps with the round trip routing of graphical data: laptop => eGPU => laptop screen - that has been a problem with TB only solutions.

It's too early to tell what the ports are, or can be, it's not even documented or on a release spec, so I wouldn't rule out Asus - they are good engineers.

Plus, they aren't really in the market of selling of eGPU's, none of the major makers are going to make a big effort to make their solutions work with competitor laptops - they all want to sell the complete solution: eGPU case, GPU, Laptop, Screen, Mouse, Keyboard, etc, etc.

And, then we come back to the Asus laptop with the Quad Core CPU, that really trumps all the itty bitty laptop's out there now.

Dual Core CPU's are just not the right choice to drive a monster GPU in an eGPU case

 

This is basically it. The Stealth is sexy and so is the Core but with 8GB of RAM and the 6500u as the ONLY configuration option...no thanks. If I buy an eGPU setup, a 980Ti or a Titan X is going in the dock and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $700+ for a GPU and pair it with a dual-core CPU. So I'm seriously looking at ASUS' new secret ultrabook and their "gawdy" dock. At least I'll get a proper quad-core and 16GBs of RAM. And they claim that it doesn't throttle under load?

With the proprietary connectors...I don't really care, the dock will be sitting on my desk at home. The way I see it, two connects to plug in the dock AND it powers the laptop? That's just saving me the hassle of getting the charger out of my laptop bag and plugging it in myself.

The way I see it is if they can price the basic ultrabook to around the same $1,000 price point and have it increase with configuration options, they won. The 6500u will never truly compete with the 6700HQ when it comes to multi-tasking and having the option for more RAM is an attention-getter.

 

I wonder how much of an ultrabook it can be if they pack a quad-core in there. How will that affect heat/noise and battery life?

No question that a quad-core is going to be the ideal machine for plugging into the eGPU but I would expect the tradeoff to be the laptop is less portable (even if we're just talking battery life) when away from the dock.

If Asus can bring a quad-core at $1000, even if it doesn't carry the QHD and battery life of the Stealth, they'll definitely have takers though.

 

Asus has top notch next gen cooling tech at their disposal, and lots of experience applying it.

A slightly larger battery and intelligent use of power saving / balanced power plan could give enough of a boost to battery life to level the comparison.

Since the trend is to eliminate the dGPU, and heat management hardware accompanying it, the Asus laptop looks to be just as svelte as the Razer.

I don't need that small of a laptop, I prefer reading from a large screen, at least 17", it makes me more productive.

I am hoping a svelte 17" makes it into the mix, even without dGPU I might be interested.

But, I would prefer a eDock that would link between my laptop and desktop to make all my hardware work together for better performance and data integrity - backups, sync'ing preferences I want sync'd, etc.

I really don't want to need to purchase another high end GPU to make my laptop useful on the desktop.

And, that brings up another point. If I already have my large home monitors connected to my desktop, why would I want to need another eGPU/GPU to connect to them?

 

ASUS is claiming 1080p which I don't mind...I mean at <15", QHD/UHD is unnecessary and causes too many problems with applications IMO.

And the Dell XPS 15 9550 uses a 6700HQ and a 960M and it's 0.8" thick at the thickest point. But that's the mystery. If ASUS managed to put a 6700HQ in an ultraportable chassis and managed to keep it from throttling, I really want to know how. Battery life will surely take a hit but when it comes to gaming, I'm sure the benefit that the quad-core will give will be worth it.

 

I believe there can be only one reason why razer made a low performance ultrabook, with just a dual-core. Its because later in this year they will release the Razer Blade 14 with CORE compatibility, so basically Razer is covering a wider range of clients with this strategy, without overlapping their market coverage. I would recommend waiting for the razer 14 before making any decision, since these are not cheap products to make a mistake.

 

Oh there's absolutely no question that the new Blades will be Core-compatible. The problem is crippling the machine you're releasing the Core with is not a smart move. I mean, here's my side of the story:

I currently have a MSI GS70 with a 970M in it. I'm satisfied when I'm on the go but when I'm home, i plug three 1080p monitors into the laptop and use an external keyboard/mouse. A lot of people ask me why I don't just build a desktop but that's because I'm on the move much more often than I'm home so I don't want to spend thousands of dollars for something that I wouldn't use too often. Plus I use my laptop for work and personal things and I don't like the idea of having two computers to share needed files. So eGPU's are a strong option for me. I don't personally care if the laptop I get has a dedicated GPU in it...the new onboard graphics for the new Skylake CPU's are apparently equal to 820M's...that's more than enough for me when I'm on the go. But a dual-core CPU? That's when you may really be crippling whatever GPU that you put inside the dock. And if it were a quad, I would've already ordered a Stealth by now because I love Razer's designs but I'm not going to buy a new standard Blade for $2,000+ just to buy the Core and spend another $600+ on a GPU. I'd rather an ultrabook.

I don't know, I'll be waiting for benchmarks from all of these different manufacturers to see what gets the best performance. My money is on ASUS with their two cable dock and MSI with the GS40 dock. MSI's dock is definitely bulkier but it'll be running the full PCI-E 3.0 x16.

 

I suspect a lot of people are making much ado about... not much. We'll see with benchmarks, but I think only CPU-dependent engines will show more than a 10% difference, and nothing that would make the difference between playable and not.

 

I wouldn't characterize it as crippling. This notebook is clearly aimed at a different market than the Blade and Blade Pro. People who want thin and light want just that, an ultraportable with enough battery life to get through a work day of web browsing, office work, and possibly media consumption. That is why the Stealth appeals to me (and why I bought one). I couldn't care less about what it can or can't do away from the Core gameplay wise. Now, being able to plug it in at home and get gaming capability is appealing because it means I don't need extra machines lying around at home.

ex. XPS 15 you mentioned. Great machine, I am with you on that but also 15'' and 4.5 lbs. One day maybe we will reach a point where 11''-12'' machine that weighs 2 lbs can fit quad-core CPU without affecting heat levels and still having 8-10 hour battery life but we are not there yet unfortunately.

I do think people who buy the Stealth and think, "Wow! I have a gaming laptop now!" are going to be disappointed. For me the appeal comes entirely from the ultrabook aspect. Docking to the core and being able to play Fallout 4 at acceptable FPS and resolution is a distant second. Of course if we get more stuff like Far Cry 4 oh well, at least I've got the ultrabook I want, heh.

My guess would be the trend is going to be towards more and more AAA games calling for quad-core CPUs so for future proofing, if you want a "real" gaming machine, you'll do well to buy something quad-core.

 

Did you watch the videos on Youtube, comparing 2 core, 4 core, 8 core CPU's and top end GPU's? There is one video I recall where the 2 core and 2 core + HT couldn't run Far Cry 4.

Update: the 6500u has 2 Cores + 2 Hyperthreads so apparently it can run Farcry 4 using the iGPU 520, as this i5-5200 video shows.


2nd Update: It looks like it is a problem when running at Ultra settings driving a highend GPU, see this post for details:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...2-5-i7-6500u-999.786460/page-12#post-10178975

It's a lot more than 10%, more than 50% of the performance can be left wanting with a 2 Core, and that's with both CPU's being High TDP models, a low 15w-25w TDP 2 Core CPU would be worse.

Do you want some links? I already posted here a few of them in various threads.

 

I think this is aimed at those who settle for medium gaming. I did a lot of gaming on a Haswell ultrabook so I with a 745m before owning my GS60. There were plenty of games that ran fine but not on high or ultra. I learned to cope and I'm sure there is a market for others that will too.

 

I agree that the Stealth/Core combo is geared more towards casual players. It's just a bit disappointing because it's such a practical solution. And I don't think the heat output from a quad-core would be much of an issue in the Stealth. Asus claims that their new ultrabook doesn't thermal throttle at all and it looks to be about the same thickness at the Stealth. I'll also keep an eye out for the XPS 15 and see if Dell decides to either get Razer's Core working or design a dock of their own.

But I will laugh at people who buy the Stealth/Core and buy a 980Ti or equivalent and realize that a very large portion of the GPU performance is being held back by the 6500u.

 

If they put a quad core cpu, there's no way it would be .5 inches thin. Those things absolutely need heat pipes and a decent fan to keep cool. Also the battery life would be crippled. Both of those reasons are what went into their decision.

I'm sure they'll announce what cards are recommended for the core though.

 

Even so, the XPS is 0.8-0.4" thick. It's a reasonable trade off. Yes the XPS is heavier but it also has a dedicated GPU in there, too.

 

Right, but if you're ok with that trade-off, then you have the normal Razer blade.

 

I was stoked to hear about both the stealth and core but a bit let down by the stealth.

I owned an AW13 w/ 5200u along with a graphics adapter housing a Titan X, this package was an absolute let-down and I blame most of it on the CPU (horrible gameplay; choppy, stuttering, unimpressive frame rates).

So, I recently bought the XPS 15 w/ 6700 and I think(hope) it will operate better with the Core eGPU. I am still in the return period and planned to jump on the stealth until I saw the CPU it comes with. Price and design are all there but I don't want to waste time/money putting myself in the same position as I was in with the AW13.

 

Wow, I didn't know that at all. I never experienced that previously so I didn't think things would be going that way. Well... on the bright side, when your eGPU + dock is $1300, $999 for a new TB3-compatible laptop will be the cheapest thing to upgrade.

 

How is the display? did you get the 4k or FHD? I've read that the transition times are ridiculously high (60ms) for pixels on the FHD and so gaming is a disaster.

 

Well at least the speculation on Far Cry 4 was less that it needed a quad-core and more that it was just lousy optimization (what a shocker!) but that doesn't really change the fact that if you want to play Far Cry 4, you won't be doing it on the Stealth even if you have an awesome card in your Core.

I would be very happy to have my dock/eGPU on a separate upgrade cycle from my ultrabook. Almost makes the trend towards everything in laptops being soldered tolerable.

 

Hold on there folks, a TON of misinformation here.

Far Cry 4 will not work on dual core, "straight" chips (ones that do NOT have hyperthreading). Article quote from the link above:

The i7-6500u has two cores, and four threads. It should run Far Cry 4 with ease, given this video of a laptop running an i5-5200u and a 940m:



The i7-6500u is light years ahead of that CPU.

Sorry to interject so rudely, but I'd advise waiting on benchmarks. If nothing else, I'll post my benchmarks when my Stealth arrives, and I play CPU intensive games (Total War series, etc).

 

The Core won't be shipping for a while yet, so tests won't be possible right away.

The main point is that the under powered 6500u 2 Core + 2 Hyperthread CPU won't fully load the eGPU 980Ti, or other high end GPU's as compared to a 6700HQ 4 Core + 4 Hyperthread CPU.

The key metric will be is the eGPU GPU fully utilized.

When you do get Stealth+Core all settled in and running, we look forward to the results

 

I agree with that, hmscott, but the last page or so has been people commenting and accepting a falsehood - that dual core, multithreaded CPU's cannot run FC4.

I would be shocked if the 6500u wasn't the bottleneck with a 980ti, but we shall see. I can see it comfortably matching a 970, which is the most we should probably be expecting from an ultrabook.

I've been an ultraportable gamer for years, and it's amazing so many blithely ignore that even being able to run anything better than an iGPU on an ultrabook is incredible.

 

I updated my post with info that FarCry 4 can run on the 6500u, I will add the video too, thanks for posting that info.

Yes, I looked for 6500u videos and comparisons, but didnt find any.

Indeed it's incredible to have an Ultrabook CPU drive a high end GPU - and it's true - there are no existing comparisons that I could find for a 6500u mated with a 980(ti).

I hope you get a Core + High end GPU right away so we can see the performance results

 

@reloader-1 brought up a good point, you can game using the i7-6500u + Intel 520 iGPU.

Although I didn't find any 6500U (not i5-6500) + 980 / 980ti videos, there are some good examples of gaming on the 6500U + Intel 520 iGPU:

Spoiler

An example of power limit (TDP) Throttling
Intel 540 Graphics (i7-6650U) vs. Intel 520 Graphics

 

I think the Razer Core would best be combined with max a GTX 970. I am planning on updating my desktop system to a new Pascal card when it comes out. If I am also able to get a Core around then, I'll see how much of a bottleneck there is.

The gaming on the Intel GPU will be really low settings, but at least you can play some games on it.

 

Closest I've gotten to "AAA" in the last couple of years has been running SWTOR on 2.5 ghz i5 Ivy Bridge and HD 4000. That easily gets playable FPS @ 1440p so I would certainly expect a Skylake i7 and HD 520 to do better. Although growing up with Nintendo 64, my definition of playable FPS is 20-30 LOL

GTX 970 is the card I am thinking about putting in my Core. Although I don't believe I will get in as big a hurry to buy the Core as I did to buy the Stealth. I want to see what results others get first.

 

The Stealth cleared every check mark on my list but the CPU and RAM did not.

I would pay $1199-1299 easily if they gave the Stealth a 6300HQ and 16GB of ram. Hell give me a 1080P screen and i'll still pay the original $999 for it. I'm all for thin and portable but the 12.5" form factor already makes it up to me even if it were just a tad thicker.

 

You know, you guys are completely out of your minds. The law of physics hasn't changed. You simply cannot run a quadcore processor in a laptop that size with the current process technology Intel is using yet. There aren't any 15w quad-core CPUs out there for x86 yet. There simply is no heat transfer technology that can dissipate a higher wattage CPU in that small size and still be portable (weight-wise).

Maybe in 2-3 years it might be possible, but today, dual core in this size is probably as good as it'll get. The solution is two laptops. One for gaming and one for travel. I'm with you guys in wanting a quadcore 13 ultrabook, but I've accepted it's not yet possible. That Asus in the video is a complete lie. Either that or they have a test Intel CPU that is 2-3 generations from Skylake.

 

I like almost everything about this Razer except the 8Gb limit. Seriously? It's really hard to do any real work these days with 8GB. That's just for casual home users. Any photo, video, programming, etc work will hit the 8GB in no time. Love the spec. Love the price. Putting faith in the Razer brand for the keyboard quality. Just cannot live with 8GB. All my computers have 16GB, and I wish they had 32.

 

That asus looks to be bigger than the Stealth. It's at least 13.3" and it's thicker as well. Looked like a UX ultrabook chasis. I think a quad core skylake would work in that chassis without a dGPU.