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Performance
While we have yet to run the laptop through our complete gauntlet of benchmarks, our preliminary experiential run-through playing Counter-Stike: Global Offensive yielded very solid framerates. With all settings maxed, FRAPs recorded average framerates around the 60 frames per second mark.
On the audio front, the Blade was plenty loud at full volume with no unwanted distortion. While the sound quality was adequate, audiophiles aren't going to be blown away by these fairly run-of-the-mill laptop speakers.
In terms of battery life, the Razer Blade features a 60-watt hour battery. What this translated to for us was about 2 hours and 45 minutes of non-stop video footage running off the hard drive. While this should get you through the majority of movies, if you're looking to get through an extended cut of a Lord of the Rings movie, consider yourself out of luck. Luckily, Razer has created a small and light battery charger that easily allows you to use the device as a portable gaming desktop.
While the laptop can get warm under load, we haven't encountered any temps that would melt our pants off.
Conclusion
We were impressed with the look, performance, and build quality of the Razer Blade, but its expensive price point makes it difficult to fully recommend. For the money, gamers can build a much stronger desktop PC AND purchase a decent gaming laptop.
For the final verdict along with more performance and benchmark comparisons, stay tuned for the full review.
Comments are closed on this article
Ninjawithagun
October 02, 2012 at 8:22am
Waaaayyyyyyyyy overpriced and underpowered. This laptop should cost no more than $2000...NUFF SAID!
dakishimesan
October 01, 2012 at 3:50pm
With Macs, what you were really paying a premium for is the build quality; so if the razor blade has that kind of premium build, there are some customers out there who might justifiably pay the premium.
But I have to say that, in comparison, the retina MacBook Pro which is 2 pounds lighter, has seven hour battery life, 256gb SSD, geforce 650m (only downgrade), and the same processor is a better deal at $2199.
15-inch: 2.3 GHz Retina display
2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz
8GB 1600MHz memory
256GB flash storage 500mb/s read/ 475 write
Intel HD Graphics 4000
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
Built-in battery (7 hours)
In Stock
Free Shipping
$2,199.00
Nimrod
October 04, 2012 at 6:09pm
LMFAO no you are not paying for build quality. It is a special tax just for being stupid.
bobthegoat2001
October 02, 2012 at 1:00pm
A couple other downgrades you forgot to mention is the screen size (15" vs 17") and the mouse screen. Just sayin'.
prince_david
October 01, 2012 at 7:25pm
So pay another hundred bucks for Windows to dual boot and it's still less than this and of a higher build quality.
HeartBurnKid
October 01, 2012 at 2:32pm
I really, desperately want to like the Blade. I love the styling, and I love that special trackpad. And if money were no object, I'd own one. But unfortunately, money is an object, and even if I could afford it, there's far more bang to be had for the buck elsewhere.
Still, I guess I should be glad that somebody's at least trying to do something different in the laptop space.
djhicks1
October 01, 2012 at 2:16pm
The ad before the video wasn't skippable and too long to wait through.
Nimrod
October 04, 2012 at 6:11pm
Ad Block Plus. The only site that still has ads in front of the video is Hulu. Theres no fucking way in hell i would ever sit thru a dumb fuck video commercial on the mother fucking internet.
Ad Block Plus
Pyrophorics05
October 01, 2012 at 12:49pm
Between tech used and software/drives, Razer has made some of the worst products in my experience. Maybe building their own machine will allow their own devices to work flawlessly, however I would never trust that amount of money with this company.
Stick with their mouse pads.
RaptorJohnson
October 01, 2012 at 9:41am
I'm curious how well these will sell. It seems like the high end PC gaming customer is pretty well informed about how much hardware should cost.
The people who are willing to spend premiums on their computers without premium performance already have bought Macs.
This seems like a PC that comes with the "Mac Tax" but not the "I've just bought a new apple product and now feel better about myself" thing that makes people camp out in front of stores for yearly incremental upgrades.
tekknyne
October 01, 2012 at 1:50pm
LOL well said. You get what you pay for except in post mortgage-crisis, post oil-futures fail sauce USA, where companies try to charge what they want and if the market isn't aware, snowball people and call it "good business" or "maximizing shareholder value" aka fucking people.
Fortunately for us Razer is hardly the only player in town. Supply-side sounds nice except when people go " $2500? HAH" and move on.
TommM
October 01, 2012 at 9:25am
The term "gaming laptop" is an oxymoron.
Unless you are one of those that has more money than sense, paying that much money to play games on a laptop is just plain dumb.
prince_david
October 01, 2012 at 7:27pm
I've been happy to have a portable gaming laptop for over 4 years now, still runs what I need it to run, and I can take it with me on the road. If you are a person who enjoys games but travels a lot, it's very valuable.
Electrik
October 01, 2012 at 8:32am
You can build a helluva desktop for that much money...in fact, I just did.
TheMissingPiece
September 30, 2012 at 9:17pm
Hey, good job with putting up videos, Jimmy! Look forward to similar posts in the future. It's nice to see the website post videos again.
