The 2014 Razer Blade Review
by Brett Howse on October 10, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Gaming
- Laptops
- Razer Blade
Speakers
The Razer Blade comes with two front facing stereo speakers. Unlike a lot of laptops that are this thin, the speakers are not down firing so you do get a better sense of stereo space. As with most laptop speakers, they do not have very good low end output, with a pretty sharp drop off below 200 Hz. At maximum volume playing some music, the Blade was able to achieve right around 80 dB.
Needless to say, I would not replace my home theater with this laptop. The front facing stereo speakers are great if you are watching a quick video, but if you want better quality sound it's best to pair the laptop with some headphones, which will also help when gaming to keep the fan noise subdued.
Software
Razer has done a great job by not including any of the software you often see from other OEMs. For many of us, the first few hours with any new device is spent removing all of the unwanted trial-ware that gets shipped. On a system with this price tag, it is good to not see any of that. They do however have some of their own custom software that you can use to customize the keyboard functions, create macros, enable Gaming Mode, and adjust the lighting. It's simple, it looks good, and it works well.
My only complaint with the software is that it requires you to create an account with Razer in order to use it. If this was optional, it would be fine, but it is not, which is disappointing.
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tekeffect - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Hopefully they don't wait a whole year before updating to a 970m and 16gb ramnathanddrews - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Seems like a missed opportunity. Unless you have an immediate need or have the money to upgrade in four months, it seems better to wait for a Broadwell + 16GB + 970M combination or at least 16GB + 970M. Also, the markup going from 128GB to 512GB is more expensive than MSRP on a 1TB SSD... I expect some margin in the price when buying pre-built, but that's just excessive to me. Otherwise, it's a great looking machine!hammer256 - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
This. The timing is a tad strange, frankly.JarredWalton - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Technically our review was delayed, as the updated Blade launched a few months back. Razer hasn't announced a 970M release yet, but I expect that will come soon enough.nathanddrews - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Funny, I didn't even realize. I just assume that everything you folks review is brand new. Looks like it came out in June/July, so that makes more sense then. Let me restate my above comment as though it were July 1:Wow, this notebook is amazing! I can't wait to buy one! ;-)
spencer_richter - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
As for gaming, it is nowhere close to the ASUS ROG G750JM-DS71 (I recommend seeing https://tr.im/d3342 for example).eanazag - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
I think the next Razer should be a Broadwell + 970M + 16 GB RAM. It should have a bare minimum 256GB drive for gaming.I love this thing and was considering this last tax season against a rMBP and the Dell XPS15 with the high res display. A 750M was just too weak for me for gaming anything but Blizzard games. I ended up with an AMD R290 gpu for my desktop upgrade, which was a more sensible choice when discussing the non-sensible cost of gaming products.
Morawka - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
this laptop they are reviewing is almost a year old. It came out 8 months ago. Razer will no doubt release a 2015 model in febSamus - Saturday, October 11, 2014 - link
You either can't count or you are trolling, because this laptop is 5 months old and didn't even retail until June 15th.We will probably be able to pick these up at a huge price cut after the Maxwell model is released, a lot like how GTX 770's were going for $350 before Maxwell and are now selling for <$200 on eBay (used)
I've always though this was a beautiful machine, and the Maxwell edition will be an amazing boon to battery life and cooling...but that doesn't make this unit irrelevant.
Connoisseur - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Love mine so far. Wishlist for the 2015 model would be a 970m, 16GB of RAM, DisplayPort and/or HDMI 2.0. If they throw in a Broadwell CPU in there too, I can't imagine that this wouldn't be the perfect laptop for 95% of use case scenarios.