Hands-on: The new, thinner Razer Blade gaming laptop cuts into ultrabook territory
Hey, I'm Scott Stein.
What exactly is going on in the world of PC gaming right now?
Well, you've got new Intel processors on the horizon and you've got companies that are trying to redefine Windows 8. In the middle of that, you got Razer, who has made some pretty aggressive products.
Now, they've just announced a brand new laptop, another Razer Blade.
This is a classic gaming laptop but it's very thin.
And we've got one right here and you can see right here, it is thin.
It's really thin and in fact, it has
dimensions that resemble the Retina display MacBook Pro in terms of how compact and solid-feeling it is.
It's all aluminum and it's matte black and it's kinda like a dream mini MacBook Pro dedicated to gaming.
And what you've got inside are specs that fit a higher end type of laptop, a quad-core Core i7 processor that's fourth generation.
We can't even begin to the specifics of that until an embargo that's coming soon.
And we've got graphics in here.
NVIDIA GTX765M GeForce graphics
with 2 gigabytes of GDDR5 memory inside so-- which is pretty nice; 8 gigabytes of RAM and it solid state hard drive in here, not standard mechanical hard drive; starting 128 gigabytes, you can go up to 256 or 512.
You know something's here.
The price is $1799 so that's high but if you're comparing it to stuff like the $2000 Retina Display MacBook Pro or the high-end gaming laptops, it's not as high.
4.1
pounds, so it's not super light but it is designed that fits pretty easily into a backpack and it has a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display.
As you can see here, the display is matte but it is not touch.
A lot of gaming laptops seem to be going in this direction of weight and touch because gamers may not necessarily want it.
It does have a standard track pad beneath with its own dedicated click buttons and a full backlit keyboard here.
That's Synapse 2.0 for those who connect to Razer's programmable ecosystem.
But there are no extra macro buttons and nothing like a touch screen over here.
There are dual stereo speakers on the side that are Dolby-equipped.
They're nice and loud, so surprisingly loud when you first hear them.
And a little power button right up there.
What's it missing?
Well, there's no optical drive.
It doesn't have an Ethernet jack.
It has three USB 3.0 ports and it has HDMI.
Kind of bare bones, but if you're looking at it as a
gaming device on the go, maybe that's the style.
I would have preferred an Ethernet jack.
I'm sure a lot of people would.
And there's no dongle in the box so you'll have to find a solution there.
Is this going to be a success?
We'll have to see.
I mean, Razer had some pretty experimental designs before but the nice thing throughout all of those products has been a really nice attention to detail and design.
This is probably the most accessible product that Razer's made in terms of computer hardware.
So where does that put the Razer Blade?
It is a very nice design.
Will you miss the
touch screen?
Who knows?
Stay tuned for a full review coming up soon.
I'm Scott Stein with the new 14-inch Razer Blade from Razer.
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