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

Exactly. If you put a quad core in, it can't be .5 inches. If you did, it would be one loud fan to keep it cool.

 

Hell, give me 16GB of RAM, a 1080p screen, and a 6700HQ and I'll pay $1,500-$1,700 for the Stealth. I like Razer's build quality that much.

Having to have two laptops completely negates the purpose of this technology, though........the ENTIRE purpose is so your travel and gaming laptop would be the same machine. If you still need to have two machines, there's no point in upgrading anything, really.

And I wouldn't completely doubt Asus. It does look like the ultrabook that they had at CES tapers from the bottom of the IO to the actual bottom of the laptop...what I mean is it's slightly slanted as seen here:


That being said, I really don't see the laptop being thicker than 0.7" and weighing more than 3lbs. But we won't know more until exact specs are released.

 

All the UX laptops have the same wedge design, and the i5/i7 UX3xx series are .7" thick at the thickest point. It definitely isn't going to be less than 0.7", given the hardware.

 

You're probably right. I may be the only one on this forum that is willing to increase the thickness of my ultrabook by a fraction of an inch to get a CPU that can actually run with top tier GPUs, though. I stand by saying that if Asus' ultrabook is less than 0.8" thick, doesn't throttle with a 6700HQ, has 16GB of RAM (really, 32GB isn't necessary but I suppose that was just the demo), can unplug and plug in the dock without shutting down, AND they can match around the same price point ($1000-$1200) then Asus by won in my eyes. I love Razer's design so much but I won't buy a dual-core computer at this day and age. I'd be willing to buy the new Razer Blade since it's a 99.99% chance it'll be compatible with the Core but over $2000? Nope. I don't even want a dedicated GPU. I'll be fine with 820M power for light gaming on the go and carrying around a ~10lb dock is still easier than carrying around a tower, monitor, and a keyboard/mouse.

 

And you're probably right about the Asus being better. It probably will be, at least by the stats. The issue with Asus might be about overall build quality. The hinges on the UX notebooks apparently break after a year, and it hasn't been fixed over generations. Razer has never been about best bang for the buck- it's about the construction and style at a premium.

 

I think it's do-able, but what do I know.

Judging by the pictures of the bottom panel of the stealth, there are two fans. I can't imagine the low voltage dual core i7 they have in there would over heat or get near anywhere near those temps with two fans taming it. I am excited to see reviews and for them to crack it open so we can actually see the layout of this little guy. If the temps are well managed with the low voltage i7, a 6300hq with a xtu undervolt could probably be do-able but of course maybe the purpose of the low voltage CPU was to extend the battery life.

The solution of two laptops isn't ideal for everyone, but could see this fit in for anyone who is interested in that.

 

Only reason I have an ultrabook in addition to my GS60 is because of battery life. And to get decent battery life with those quad cores, you need a massive battery which weighs a lot and defeats the purpose of portability. Even this ultrabook isn't going to get a lot of life with that small battery. Fact is, I can't rely on a gaming laptop for long term use away from a plug.

 

My GS70 can get like 4 hours with half brightness and normal use. 5-6 hours if I put the screen brightness down all the way and put it into "eco" mode.

 

Heh, I've been on machines that run 9+ hours since Haswell came out, so 5-6 with screen brightness at 0 seems terribad. It's still a tradeoff at this point. I'd rather the extra battery life which is why the razer stealth appeals to me. Hopefully one day it won't be such a pick and choose.

 

I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere - but that Razer Core will like "mate" with plenty of other laptop designs. Seems like a lot of the argument here is that ULV Dual core CPU mated to the eGPU. If that's really your struggle, I'd suggest the Dell XPS15.

I have a feeling the Core (w/o GPU) will run $299 - so add in a $300 buck graphics cards (GTX970) - and well - it's a sizable investment for the "mainstream". I'd be shocked if Razer charged less.

I do like the idea of a big graphics boost to my XPS15 in 2017. I've heard some upcoming GPU leaps on 2016 will be pretty incredible - I think the current 960 in the XPS15 can hold me over this year with my current games library. Obviously 2017 and beyond will challenge that, especially with VRAM needs in modern games (already challenged in some recent titles).

So here's to a 2017 with a Razer Core 2 at $99 bucks and some late 2016 GPU in it!

 

The Blade Stealth (+ Core) is SO close to the kind of implementation I've been seeking for over a decade. Ultimately I'm baffled that they came this far and then decided to include a i7 ULV dual core processor DDR3L 8gb / RAM ; I'm worried that one or both of these could be soldered for that matter. The rest of the Blade Stealth's hardware looks great both in terms of big components (ie 4K IGZO 10 bit display!) as well as luxury build quality and smaller features (per-key RGB backlighting!). With the Core (which looks great, though it would be nice to see USB3.1 ports instead of 3.0, as well as another Type C for TB3/USB3.1 daisy chaining) and Thunderbolt 3 via USB3 they finally have come up with a realistic implementation to allow upgradable graphics in notebooks (most importantly, it actually acellerates the built in display, not just externals!) in a non-proprietary manner thus extending the useful life of the product.

However, they provided a CPU that is already likely to be compromised in gaming use, not to mention future usage. Having only 2 cores (yes, there is hyperthreading at least) and neither of them going very fast even at turbo, thanks to the ULV, is frustrating. This goes double if the DDR3L is soldered, a single slot, or otherwise non-upgradable. This CPU is going to be more likely to bottleneck when gaming, especially at the native 4K resolution even if a user has a good GPU in the Core. Had they included a Skylake mobile quad core i7 (and perhaps 2 slots of DDR4, upgradable?) I'd consider it nearly an instant purchase (especially if the Stealth's components were well supported in Linux). From the comments here and elsewhere, it seems many share this view so I wonder why Razer, who focuses heavily on gaming, made this decision. I can only assume it is to make the Stealth even thinner/lighter...but honestly, I rather would have seen it be a bit thicker w/ a better battery especially as I doubt it would need to be much bigger! Consider that the Blade itself is a 14" which packs a quad-core i7 plus a high end GTX 970 mobile GPU and still manages to be quite thin and light, with the battery power to handle all of this. So given that the stealth is a 12.5", it couldn't have required too much to just disappate the heat from an i7 quad alone, not having to worry about powering and cooling a discrete GPU! I'm almost inclined to wait for the 2016 Razer Blade and/or next gen GPUs. Its nice that the Core can empower any laptop with Thunderbolt 3, but

Should Razer decide to offer full power quads, I'd certainly buy. Otherwise, I may wait to see what the competition presents and then decide if I could stomach the ULV. I like the idea of the Stealth + Core and I'm glad to see Razer releasing more "luxury gaming" laptops that are (hopefully) well built. The Stealth came so close to a purchase I could make with no reservations about the hardware, but the ULV decision compromises that.

 

Hi again, I thought I had seen a CPU comparison where 2 core and 2 core + HT CPU's failed to run Far Cry 4, and I found it again, look at the chart at 5:20 :

CPU Cores for Gaming: How many do you need? - Q1 2015 Update



It may be that at Ultra settings using a high end GPU there is a problem not seen when running at low resolution / settings from the iGPU 520?

Here is that article again, I had pulled it from the previous post after you noted it should work, just in case it ends up applying to the Razer Stealth + Core combination with a high end GPU:

Far Cry 4 woes with dual-core processors point to a bleak future for budget PC gamers
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2851...t-to-a-bleak-future-for-budget-pc-gamers.html

The video says there is was a fix to allow FC4 to run with Dual Core CPU's, but Ubisoft pulled it down.

Far cry 4 dual core fixer (Ubisoft's support forums)
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...6a60a84c27&p=11278700&viewfull=1#post11278700

When you get your Stealth + Core + GTX970/980(ti) up and running, please benchmark FC4 to see how it runs.

 

Just out of curiosity, why does everyone want a 4k ~12" display? I've heard that they LOOK great but in terms of practicality they cause more problems than they're worth. I mean I've heard plenty of people saying applications scale weirdly, integrated GPU's can barely run them, etc.

 

Not everyone wants a 4k display but it supposedly has better color reproduction that helps with photo editing and what not.

Just thought I might add this, MS Surface Book running Far Cry 4 just fine.Dual core i7.

 

If I were doing photo/video editing, yeah, 4k makes sense but still, on a 12" screen? If anyone is serious about editing, they're going to be doing it on a 24"+ 4k screen. Idk, just my two cents.

 

Quickly passed on the 4k myself. It lowers battery life by around 2 hours. To me seems completely contrary to why you would buy an ultraportable to begin with (different strokes for different folks I guess). I'm also not gaming on a 12.85'' computer display...particularly if I have to have it docked at my desk.

There are very few laptops offering 4k resolution though so it is pretty cool that Razer got it in there.

 

On the AW13 it was the 1440P touch.
On the XPS it's the 4K touch. It's not nearly as bad as the FHD but it's still far from a gaming panel.

 

I'd say people typically buy higher-than-practical-resolution laptop screens for one of a few reasons:

1) If the higher-res screen is more color-accurate, and color accuracy is more important to the buyer than a reasonable screen resolution.

2) If there are other "features" to that screen that are more valuable to the buyer than a reasonable screen resolution (e.g. touchscreen, glossy or matte display, etc).

3) If the buyer is uneducated, and is simply buying based on the "bigger number must automatically mean better" mentality (megahertz, megapixel, mouse dpi, etc arms races).

Can anyone think of any other reason why someone would want a screen on a Windows machine that is impractically high-res?

Edit: One more came to mind:

4) If the buyer legitimately wants to use the screen without high Windows DPI scaling, and can actually read ultra-small text (I'm thinking about an Excel jockey with hawk eyes). They are exceptional when it comes to finding unscaled high-DPI screens usable, or rather finds the lower-resolution version un-usable.

 

Unless your eyes are <14" from your screen or you're a photographer and plan on doing serious photo editing, the 4k screen is practically overkill for you and should probably be avoided.

If you're a photographer, chances you're not doing any serious editing on a 12" screen anyways since it's hard enough on a 15" screen. On top of that, many will argue that full gamut is useless unless you plan on editing with aRGB and printing with it. If you're not printing with it, you're merely correcting the colors to your screen only(or anybody else with a wide gamut screen which is almost nobody). Anybody else will not see the difference on their screens since they'll likely have normal gamut screens.

Also keep in mind, the scaling issues are going to be even more difficult than before(as if they weren't bad enough already). If you want a taste, go check out the Surface pro 4 in your nearest store. You pretty much have to max the scaling out in order to make things look right and if you plan on using legacy apps that don't support Windows scaling, you're SoL. If you're using anything before Adobe CS6, you need a hack in order to make the text even legible on the Surface Pro 3(2160x1440). Never tried Adobe CS the Surface Pro 4 but I bet it's even worse. Origin still has scaling issues to this day and Solidworks won't have their fix until 2016. There are many many more and I could go on forever.

Of course, tech enthusiasts will probably get the screen anyways. I certainly consider myself one, but I'm staying clear.

 

Like many in this thread, I too was on the fence about ordering a stealth. But after performing an experiment, I am positive I no longer want one.

BestBuy happens to sell a Razer Stealth right now in stores only it's officially called a Toshiba Radius 2-1 12.5" 4k.
Similar in size and weight to the Stealth. (Granted the Toshiba is thicker at 0.61", but the Stealth is wider)
4k IGZO Touch Panel 100% RGB Technicolor Color Certified
Intel i7-6500u
Intel HD 520 Graphics
8gb of Ram
256gb SSD
USB Type C port
HarmonKardon Speakers (Sound fantastic!)
Currently on sale at BB for only $1000!
Oh yeah and its a 2-1.

I knew if I loved the Toshiba, I would definitely spend the extra $$$ for the stealth. But I returned it because...
Yes the display is beautiful, but it is a killer on battery life. Watching a movie (MKV) at full brightness in eco mode, i was down to 20% battery after a two hour movie. Yea you could dim the display some but it won't help much. With a dimed display (50%) and eco mode, browsing the internet I got just barely over 4 hours of battery life.
Intel i7 is too weak. Even in High Performance mode the machine felt a little laggy toying around in Windows 10. 4K youtube videos played with an occasional stutter.The machine just felt overall a step too slow when performing tasks.

I predict once members receive their Stealths, these forums will be filled with battery life and poor performance complaints. This machine has reminded me I would much rather sacrifice a little weight and size and stick with a Blade 14.

 

Sorry, I think you're off the mark here on that.

Just because the Toshiba laptop is kind of garbage, doesn't mean a laptop with similar specs will also be garbage. This is why you have laptops with varying battery life, instead of every 13.3" / 14.1" / 15" / 17" laptop having exactly the same battery life.

I think that it's a bit too early to say whether the Razer Blade Stealth will/not be awesome, without getting hands on review units. I know there are some people out there confident enough to buy a new product sight-unseen; but I'd rather wait for reviews to come in, before I decide to buy a product.

 

Never said the Toshiba was garbage. Actually I think its at a great deal right now for only $1000. Build quality was great, and it's cool that it's a 2 in 1.

While battery life can vary (probably slightly in this case so don't hold your breath), processor performance doesn't.

Don't get me wrong I think the stealth is a great addition to Razer's line up. It's a beautiful Ultrabook at a great starting price, and nothing on the market can match is right now as far as quality/keyboard goes.

However, a similarly spec'd Stealth ($1400 + Core + Graphics Card = pushing $2k), to still only have a i7-6500u.... to me just isn't worth it.

 

Thought about comparing the 6500U to the 4720HQ I've currently got:

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-6500U-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4720HQ#differences

I was surprised to see that in basically everything but multi-core focused CPU benchmarks (3dmark CPU score) it outpaced the quad core 4720HQ. Since I already find the 4720HQ powerful enough in my blade (even at without any turbo, because I don't like my $2700 devices burning up their components), this has allayed most of my concern about the CPU in the Stealth. The blade does have 16gb ram, though.

 

I checked out the Toshiba at a Microsoft store. The keyboard is horrendous. Tiny keys. Even if it could get 20hrs battery and was fast as a quadcore, I wouldn't buy one. Thanks for confirming my suspicions about the 4k screen. 4K on integrated graphics, esp one that is non-Iris, seem like a recipe for disaster. It's really too bad. The 100% gamut was really enticing. 4K laptops are just not ready for prime time. I have a Dell with a 4K screen. Battery life is a disappointment. It has discrete GPU so performance isn't an issue. We'll need to wait for the next gen die shrinks for CPUs and GPUs before 4K is flawless. The 14nm GPUs are coming later this year, but the 10nm CPUs won't come for another 2-3 years.

I was on the fence with this 8GB laptop before, but now after reading your comments, I'm simply no longer interested. The XPS 13 is still the best ultrabook you can get unless Apple upgrades the MBA to 16GB.

 

One of the main reasons I HATED my RB+970m; completely inadequate cooling for a system in that price category. I had better cooling performance in my GS60+870m.

 

But is even a 4720HQ powerful enough for a top tier GPU? The 4720HQ is definitely a league behind the 6700HQ.

 

I've never run into anything CPU bound.

 

So, anyone here have theirs yet? Ready to pull the trigger on one but would like to hear about the official word on battery life. I'm not looking for anything spectacular like my rMB but would like to see 5+ with a slightly dimmed screen. The Razer online store return policy doesn't sound that great at 14 days and up to 45 days for the refund.

 

I've e-mailed Razer asking to have an option for the i7-6560U CPU (Skylake with Iris Graphics). They said they'll forward the request to their engineering department. If everybody e-mails them asking for this feature, it might get supported. This will be quite handy when you need some extra graphics horsepower, yet you are mobile and far away from the Core. Plus it has the same 15 watt thermal envelope to fit in. A win-win situation, IMHO.

 

Is that cpu even released yet?

 

Perhaps not, but the Dell XPS13 is supposed to be released with the Iris Graphics option in February 2016, so if it's not released yet, at least the date is close.

 

I am in a similar circumstance. I have the gs 60 064. I have been incredibly happy with it but.... And it is a big but.. Battery life is simply not business friendly. I travel for work thus the portable gaming laptop was for me. My work allows me to use web access and VPN so I am able to take one great computer with me when I travel for work.

My meetings are typically an 1 hour and then I will drive to a second 1 hour meeting. The gs 60 has to be plugged in forcing me to bring in MSI's giant charging block. Because of this I have hijacked my wife's MacBook Air 11 for business meetings and then taking the gs 60 for gaming at night after work.

I don't mind carrying two laptops especially with the MBA being so light. So a Stealth may be for me.

How about this succession (conditional on bottlenecking not being a deal breaker)

- Buy stealth. Continue using gs 60 as primary gaming laptop at home and on the road. Move the stealth to primary business laptop.

- Buy Core with 980 card. Make Stealth primary and Core Egpu home gaming computer. Gs 60 stays on the road.

- 2 years later. Buy 2017/2018 Blade to connect to Core. Stealth is sold or retired to casual use around the house. Gs 60 is sold or whatever. 2017 Blade becomes home and travel gaming device.

The other option is wait for the 2016 Blade 14 and going that direction. Blade will need to be at 6 plus hours for battery life.

Obviously, options will open up over the next 24 months but this is what I'm thinking.




QUOTE="AkiraSieghart, post: 10177124, member: 657336"]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.[/QUOTE]

 

Considering the i3-6100 will run a full 1GHz faster and is not TDP or thermally limited I think it speaks volumes about performance penalty. i3 was showing a 40-50% penalty compared with i5. Imagine the CPU penalty with a CPU that's 30% slower. For best CPU/GPU balance a desktop GTX 960 or maybe 970 will be adequate. In that case why not just go with a Blade 14"?

 

I have a Blade 14, and it can't run fallout 4 nearly as fast as the demo does. And the battery life is quoted as half. So that's why not.

 

I seriously doubt you will get 6 hours of battery life from an RB14 anytime soon. The company values form factor and performance too much.

 

This.

Now I'm just going by what I heard about the demo but like Eason said it ran much better than a laptop with a dGPU, trust me I'm taking everything with a grain of salt until I see some hard numbers but so far it looks promising.
I just hope all eGPU's will be compatible with all laptops that have a TB port.
I'm more interested in the core itself than the RB Stealth.

 

****balls.

Word on the street (razer inside forum) is that battery life is more like 4 hours. :/ That's no goose..

 

The point is that you have to buy a much more powerful video card to perform as well as a much lesser card if it were with a more powerful CPU. More or less need a 980 Ti to run like a 960. But we'll just have to wait on review samples with hard numbers.

Fallout 4 isn't a good example though. It can run on a potato and also is limited to 60FPS. I know you can unlock it but it screws the world's physics up.

 

Sweet, mine shipped and will be here Saturday

 

Congrats Xentar!
Any chance you do a review? Which model did you get?

 

I got the base model since I think 4k is overkill and Razer said it affects the battery life. I'll put my initial thoughts up this weekend but it'll take me a few days to do a proper review.

I still haven't heard back from Razer about getting a review unit for the core. It's almost impossible to get anyone on the phone there. No return emails either. It seems like their customer service is all online now too.

 

Here is an unboxing video I found on YouTube. It looks nice very nice. now Someone should open it and check if the ssd is upgradable.

 

battery life battery life battery life! please let us know

 

Lots of excitement with that power brick. I just hope it doesn't charge slow because it's so small though.

 

Razer Blade Stealth UNBOXING!!!

Spoiler

Update: The video got reposted under another channel name

 

I think the ssd is most likely upgradable since it uses aIt's a samsung m.2 MZVLV256HCHP. I wish the ram was upgradable aswell.

 

Mine might show up tomorrow. The delivery date was originally for tomorrow, but it now says pending delivery, so it may be later than originally stated. I picked up a 500gb M.2 Samsung 850 ssd to put in it. Hoping that it's upgradable.

 

Is this the one that would fit? http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-E...qid=1453949858&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+850+m2

I can't see the dimensions on the original one, only that the 500 is 80mm.

 

That's Sata. It needs to be pci-e or it won't work. The length will be 80mm most likely.

 

Shoot. I didn't notice that it was PCIe. I'm gonna have to return the SSD and get something else, then.