It is overkill if you just want an ordinary ultrabook indeed. Needs to see if the glowing razer logo on the back can be deactivated too. (You can switch to plain white for sure given it works like the blackwidow chroma that I have)
Battery life is really not great but is OK for the kind of processor they have isn't it? What's putting me a lil' off is the fact that to make it a gaming machine you do need to shell out at least some 750 additional bucks. Sure the external case will be re-used supposedly but I'm unsure about the future of this solution (Can evolve quite fast with a new Thunderbolt version and/or replacement of the PCI-e interface?)
"Battery life is really not great but is OK for the kind of processor they have isn't it?" nope.. there are quite similar ultrabooks with at least 50% more battery life. Razer put a small battery in the laptop and if you add the backlit keyboard+glowing razer logo to the equation it just makes it even worse. Too bad because I love the design but the battery life is a deal breaker for me.
The battery size isn't the main problem; it's in the same general class as other 13" ultrabooks. The problem is that the laptop's efficiency is bad; if they were able to match their competitions efficiency they'd pick up an extra hour or two bringing the QHD model up to the average for a laptop of its size; and leaving the 4k one with only the penalty related to its ultra high res display (both more GPU work to drive it, and more transistors in the panel blocking a larger amount of the backlight).
I think Razer is struggling with both the pixel race and needing to justify the existence of Core.
Honestly, a 768p display would be perfect for a 12.5" laptop (maybe 900p for a buy-up). But then you could say that Razer should've made the Core a smidge thicker and put a modest dGPU in there for gaming.
Couldn't disagree more about the display. The sooner we get rid of low-DPI panels and the software ecosystem is forced to accept their existence, the better. The problem here isn't the display, it's a lack of engineering experience regarding power efficiency at Razer.
I disagree with that. Higher resolution displays, while nice looking, offer little to no added functionality after reaching the point where it becomes necessary to scale the interface in order to retain visibility of objects displayed in it. At this point, they're part of the specifications for the sake of specifications war that's vital for product differentiation and marketing, but that's where it ends. Sacrificing capability as in the case of battery life to achieve a pointlessly high resolution shows particularly poor engineering. An Intel GPU in a 12.5 inch laptop display that is unable to drive games at much lower resolutions should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles. Anything more than that won't benefit the end user regardless of how much they think they need more pixels.
>should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles.
Except that's the thing. In the year 2016 there is no such thing as a 1366x768 panel of anything remotely decent quality. Panels of this size are just churned out by the factory for extremely low cost/low margin devices such as $300 laptops at Walmart.
If you're paying ~$1500 for a premium laptop, you should expect an arguably premium display. If you can't play the game at 2560x1440, then run the game at reduced settings, and if that's not enough, begin lowering the resolution, too.
Paying ~$1500 for a premium laptop also comes with the inherent notion you're paying for premium battery life, but you're not getting that here, either.
Replacing a good screen on a laptop with a bad battery leaves you with a laptop with bad screen and bad battery and now you have an even worse value proposition than before.
Won't benefit the end user? Are you kidding? If you do any kind of work viewing fine vector images, such as architectural displays, a high DPI display is a godsend. For productivity software, if you have good eyesight and don't mind shrunken UI elements, you fit your work on more of the screen. It's obviously a tradeoff against battery life, but it's a tradeoff some would gladly make. It's simply not true to state there are zero use cases where a high DPI display provides a tangible benefit.
You can disagree all you want, but anything below 1080p should be immediately disqualified from being purchased 5 years ago. An argument about 1080p for the sake of efficiency can be made, but discouraging companies from adopting higher resolution standards is just wrong. The UHD display can be ran as a 1080 for performance purposes.
> An Intel GPU in a 12.5 inch laptop display that is unable to drive games at much lower resolutions should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles.
That is just silly. Gaming performance is never a goal with laptops of this form-factor, not even a secondary one. If you're looking for any kind of decent gaming performance you shouldn't be considering an Ultrabook at all. Their primary task is the ability to handle large amounts of text, non-computanionally-intensive media work, and internet browsing/media consumption on-the-go for as long as possible without having to be plugged in. The difference between a 120 dpi panel and a 190+ dpi panel when working with text or photos is MASSIVE. They aren't even comparable, not if you value your eyesight and comfort at all. Had you experienced that you would never write the nonsense about 768p panels.
Which is why they should have had a 1080P option with a nice Matte IPS screen. 13.3", not the micro size they went with. It fits. Use it Razor. You build this fine ass machine then gimp it with the large bezels. If Dell can do it you can do it as well, if not better.
Why 1080P? Because it uses less power than 3k or 4k, and extends battery life. Why matte screen? Because touch is Intel forced cow poop, and I like to be able to use my laptops with windows behind me. Or even outside. I don't know what kind of profit Intel makes by insisting touch screens are part of the 'Ultrabook' spec, but it is one of their dumbest ideas ever. Touch on a tablet? Of course. Touch on a laptop? Useless.
- Higher resolution displays, while nice looking, offer little to no added functionality after reaching the point - So...it does ! And let's be honest, we are still far from smartphone resolution. I am not pushing for 4K display on a 12" screen but there is a CLEAR difference between 768p and QHD on such size.
- after reaching the point where it becomes necessary to scale the interface in order to retain visibility of objects displayed in it -
Which is not a issue per see. Windows Store applications and UI just scaled perfectly. It is old legacy software that needs to be adapted for that so indeed, it is a good thing to evolve in this direction to force the software manufacturer to make their homework as high DPI support exists on Windows since more than 7 years.
- Anything more than that won't benefit the end user regardless of how much they think they need more pixels.- It does. What does NOT is the aRGB screen, which, as explained, for most of the operation is detrimental to the user experience.
768 is awful, 1080p should be the minimum. Having been spoiled by nice high DPI screens (1600-1700p) I'll never go back to anything less than FHD. For me the QHD model hits the sweet spot at $999.99, for that you get an i7, 8GB Ram, 128GB SSD, and QHD touchscreen, which is higher specs than the similarly priced XPS 13 (i5, 1080p, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, non-touch) and a similar specced MBP is $1299. This laptop also has the added bonus of having a thunderbolt connected dGPU which none of the other options have (Though the Razer dock should work on other pc's with thunderbolt ports, including the Dell XPS 13). This laptop has the ability to serve both as a road warrior and in-home gaming machine, for that I feel it is absolutely worth the price of admission.
I agree. The battery life is a big drawback considering that the competitors offer nearly twice the battery life.
A part of my wonders why won't Razer offer a model for the normal consumer. Kill the fancy keyboard backlight and offer i3 and i5 CPUs, and the Stealth could be very competitive against the likes of Dell and ASUS. I know Razer is all about gamers, but the Stealth looks like a very solid machine and given Razer's higher-end brand status and quality I'm sure they could reach a wider audience with just a few small tweaks.
Exactly. I have been monitoring the ultrabook market for 2 years and to be honest this laptop could have been a big hit with real battery life. It feels like all the ultrabook laptops got some smaller or bigger drawbacks and you just cant get what you pay for. I just hope they consider moving closer to a wider audience in the future.
Since at first glance, it appears that Razer is emulating parts of Apple's strategy, I would guess that Razer is ensuring that every modern system in the Razer "ecosystem" can have a satisfactory experience with their Core.
The Blade 14 & 17 are both easily up for the task. And Razer at least attempted to ensure that every Stealth will be a good match for the Core. However, if they put a weaker 15W CPU in there, then it might not perform as well with the Core.
Is that the right thing to do? Objectively no, but I wonder if that kinda of Apple-esque way of thinking of part of the reason why the Blade laptops seem to be so cool in the first place. You take the good with the bad, I guess.
I got an Acer for $799. With an additional $200 or so I added 512GB of Samsung EVO storage (yeah, no PCIe, but who needs it in an ultrabook?). Same CPU, RAM, 15.6" 1080p screen. Razer is asking an extra $600 for a higher res monitor (I'll take 15.6" instead any day, AdobeRGB is mostly wasted, because you won't do photo editing on a 13" screen and games are not made for wide color gamut) and a Killer NIC. It's still cheaper than a Macbook, so there's that.
I'm not sure about TB as I don't have a single device that uses that interface, but yeah, it's thin and light. Probably doesn't qualify as an ultrabook, because you can actually open it and service it yourself (which is how I swapped the default 1TB HDD).
Also, are you people really ok with paying an extra $600 on something inferior just because it's "thinner"?
I never really got the need for a "gaming notebook". Gaming is far better, faster and cheaper on a desktop. Do alot of people really have the need to game when mobile? I would personally think most people, when out and about are doing whatever task they are out and about for, not worrying about gaming until they get home and have time for it. Is it just me? I guess if you travelled for work alot and wound up with extra time, but that screams niche market.
Most mobile gaming I see happens on a phone and not on a laptop. There are most certainly a lot of people who spend time away from home due to work that might benefit from a gaming laptop, but this particular laptop isn't a gaming box without the not-so-mobile Razer Core and other external bits like a monitor, full sized keyboard, and mouse. The benefit in this to those sorts of people is that they only need to worry about one computer as opposed to a laptop and desktop. The Stealth's potential of using an external, desktop GPU offers some flexibility at an added cost. So yes, there's a point and yes its a niche market.
The "but" in all of this is that the niche market might be larger than you think. People with no legitimate need for the capabilities the Stealth + Razer Core offers might still purchase such a setup or some other gaming laptop in order to have those capabilities. The expense could very well do nothing but address a psychological need that exists without reason purely inside the mind of the buyer. It happens pretty frequently in automotive markets where people buy much more capability than they need in order to be prepared to drive in weather or road conditions that happen for merely a day or two out of the year. They then willingly endure the liability of their purchase the other 363 days happily. Similarly a person with no need for a gaming laptop will be able to play games in a hotel room for a couple of days a year and deal with the cost and performance penalty of their purchase the rest of the time for little to no rational reason.
There are people like me, that have LAN gaming parties. A laptop is so much more convenient. And I can play it at the laundromat when Im doing my laundry every weekend.
I also live in a 1BD apartment. Space is at a premium, there is nowhere to put a nice computer desk for a desktop.
I never understood what makes something "real" or not. Even a nearly ten year old GMA 950 can run games, some of which were flagship releases in the past. Does the age of a game make it lose it's connection with reality? Is something only "real" if it's been released in the last few months because humans can't fathom the relationship of the past to the present?
Depends on the definition of real. CS? It can handle. LoL? It can handle. DOTA2? It can handle. (Even benchmarked here at +60FPS) WoW? It can handle. Civilization 5/BE? It can handle. Football Manager? It can handle. Rocket League? It can handle.
You'd probably want to stay clear of Battlefield 4 or Witcher 3 - but at this point we're talking exceptions, not a norm.
I don't think it's that uncommon for people to have jobs which require a decent amount of travelling. The main point is that it's easily transported from A to B, not that you can use it for gaming on the route itself. If you move, especially internationally, it makes sense. If you don't have a lot of space, it makes sense. If you want to have one main computer for both work and gaming, it makes sense (as a computer for work often has to be portable, i.e. bringing it to work places, meetings, on the plane, etc).
I have a solid notebook that also happens to be powerful enough to run games, and nowadays the mobile GPU/CPUs are fast enough to run most games properly. Of course not with all the bells and whistles, but I can play most stuff on full HD and somewhat medium settings just fine, and my laptop only has a midrange mobile GPU.
Apart from myself opting for all the above mentioned benefits, I would also have to spend considerably more for a gaming capable desktop and a comparable non-gaming capable laptop together.
While the battery life isn't mind-blowing, I wish the storage tiers went 900-1100-1300-1500. Six hour battery life, while bad by comparison, is still more than the average person's working time away from the desk and wouldn't limit most of the people interested in this.
I bought one of these for my son. First power adapter was defective out of the box. The usb-c connector would not 'snap' into place. Returned it and the replacement unit broke in about 2 weeks when the tip fell out of the end of the cable. I assumed my son was at fault, so I purchased another for the princely sum of $140. The tip fell out of that one within 3 days. Razer refused to replacement. Well, sorry, but cannot afford to keep shelling out $140 a pop for charging bricks and they clearly have a build quality defect. Sure, the colored backlit keys are pretty, but Razer quality is sub-par and their support let me down. We ended up buying an Innergie charger for $40 that works, even though Razer support warned me that using it instead of their crappy $140 chargers would 'void my warranty'. Ok, your warranty isn't worth squat. May I recommend the dell xps precision laptops which are also eGPU capable. As for the Core, it does not even offer a thunderbolt pass-thru, so how can that be considered an actual docking unit. There will be other eGPU solutions soon. I would wait. Buyer beware. Out of the two months my kid has had it, he's only been able to use it for maybe 2 weeks.
It has a bunch of USB ports, an ethernet port, and a bunch of video out ports. That looks like a standard docking station to me. If I were to criticize it for anything, a lack of audio ports would be my biggest grumble.
Not including TBs optional passthrough feature was probably a deliberate decision to limit competition for bandwidth the GPU needs. An x4 PCIe connection is enough that most games will run at almost full speed; only an x1 will strangle a large fraction of them. Even with just USB+ethernet you could end up oversaturating TB3: 32gb for PCIe, + 4x 5gb for USB3 + 1gb for ethernet is 53 gb vs TB3's 40gb. In practice that's unlikely to be a major concern; not least because 1 or more of the USB ports would typically be filled with low bandwidth devices (keyboard, mouse, usb headset); and USB3 devices capable of maxing the bus speed for sustained periods of time are relatively uncommon. Chaining a second high bandwidth TB device OTOH could be problematic; giving it half the total bandwidth would hurt the GPU in a significant number of games. Things that would fall under the category of "clever^H^H^H^H^H^Hstupid user tricks" like chaining a TB3 monitor and having it run off the laptops IGP (either due to misconfiguration, or not having video pass through support for the docs GPU due to cost or hardware limitations) could also end up burning people.
IMO with GPUs in the mix any sort of daisy chaining would need to wait for a future standard that supports at least 8x PCIe.
I see your point, but I have a significant number of thunderbolt devices. I need to be able to hook up my external disks. In general, it is frustrating that there are so many thunderbolt devices that insist on being the the last device in the chain. In any case, I would have purchased the Core, if not for the support/wuality issues noted above.
Razer has made enough missteps for me (Synapse 2.0, numerous failed devices which were very gently used) that despite the decent form factor competing pretty nicely with rMBP 13 and such, I won't even consider it (not to mention 16:9 is *especially* poorly suited on a 12.5" display).
For that price, I would have expected for them to use the i7 6560u with the iris 540 gpu, and have better battery life. This thing is just a normal uber expensive ultrabook without the dock, at least with iris it could stand on its own a bit.
I think the only difference I would like to see in this Ultrabook is a more powerful CPU / Intel GPU built in complement making it a slightly higher end mobile laptop. The external add on GPU would then make it perfect for home gaming uses. I suspect I'll have to wait for the next generation of units to see if this happens.
I would never buy it based on the logo alone, but I'm an adult. As long as they know they're ceding that market segment, then I wish them the best of luck.
to be fair I could get 4 hours of browsing out of a 2004 laptop. This laptop has the price of a high-end ultrabook, but not the actual features that would want you to buy an ultrabook.
Razer Core is the only thing that makes this laptop interesting in any sort of practical sense. I gave up on gaming laptops a long time ago and left gaming to my desktop Windows machine. If you use Windows for both work and play, then I could see the Blade Stealth w/ Core as a replacement for a separate laptop and desktop gaming PC... that is assuming you're ok with limited gaming performance when away from the desk... oh, and the combined price in the neighborhood of $2,500 once you throw in a $300'ish video card.
Is the "unique cooling solution" referred to, with the exhaust in the hinge, like the macbooks have had? The description makes it sound the same, but that wouldn't be unique so I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding something.
Still happy with my 2+ year old Yoga 2 Pro, i5/4GB with the 3200x1800 IPS screen that gets over 6 hours of usable battery life with light browsing and back-lit keyboard on. Upgraded the SSD to a 250GB 850 EVO and Intel Wireless-AC 7260 which made a big difference.
As a 'cheap' ultrabook i'm interested in how well it will run a modern linux distro.
Specifically: Whether the backlight will work - even if it just produces a uniform glow (rather than full Chroma glory) Whether the Type-C thunderbolt port will function for data (just PCIe, or USB too?)?
I'm definitely looking forward to 3-4 years from now when hopefully external graphics are a far more common thing and the prices drop. I'd love to have a notebook with a good CPU and lots of RAM that I can hook to an external GPU to game with. But at roughly $900 for the Razer setup, plus one of their laptops, it's a no go for most. Granted I'm sure plenty will soon be putting themselves heavily into debt to have the latest and greatest.
Why are you comparing it to the gimped Zenbook? Compare it to the Zenbook with the same Core i7-6500U. Heck, use the version with the 940M in it as well. It will still be far cheaper than this Razor model.
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ImSpartacus - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
The battery life is disappointing, but at least seems to be alright otherwise.The keyboard appears like overkill, but at least you can presumably switch to a clean white light.
Keao - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
It is overkill if you just want an ordinary ultrabook indeed. Needs to see if the glowing razer logo on the back can be deactivated too. (You can switch to plain white for sure given it works like the blackwidow chroma that I have)Battery life is really not great but is OK for the kind of processor they have isn't it? What's putting me a lil' off is the fact that to make it a gaming machine you do need to shell out at least some 750 additional bucks. Sure the external case will be re-used supposedly but I'm unsure about the future of this solution (Can evolve quite fast with a new Thunderbolt version and/or replacement of the PCI-e interface?)
zeroqw - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
"Battery life is really not great but is OK for the kind of processor they have isn't it?" nope.. there are quite similar ultrabooks with at least 50% more battery life.Razer put a small battery in the laptop and if you add the backlit keyboard+glowing razer logo to the equation it just makes it even worse. Too bad because I love the design but the battery life is a deal breaker for me.
Duraz0rz - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
You can turn off the logo LED thru Synapse.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Wont fix the battery being too small.DanNeely - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
The battery size isn't the main problem; it's in the same general class as other 13" ultrabooks. The problem is that the laptop's efficiency is bad; if they were able to match their competitions efficiency they'd pick up an extra hour or two bringing the QHD model up to the average for a laptop of its size; and leaving the 4k one with only the penalty related to its ultra high res display (both more GPU work to drive it, and more transistors in the panel blocking a larger amount of the backlight).ImSpartacus - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I think Razer is struggling with both the pixel race and needing to justify the existence of Core.Honestly, a 768p display would be perfect for a 12.5" laptop (maybe 900p for a buy-up). But then you could say that Razer should've made the Core a smidge thicker and put a modest dGPU in there for gaming.
Spunjji - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
Couldn't disagree more about the display. The sooner we get rid of low-DPI panels and the software ecosystem is forced to accept their existence, the better. The problem here isn't the display, it's a lack of engineering experience regarding power efficiency at Razer.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
I disagree with that. Higher resolution displays, while nice looking, offer little to no added functionality after reaching the point where it becomes necessary to scale the interface in order to retain visibility of objects displayed in it. At this point, they're part of the specifications for the sake of specifications war that's vital for product differentiation and marketing, but that's where it ends. Sacrificing capability as in the case of battery life to achieve a pointlessly high resolution shows particularly poor engineering. An Intel GPU in a 12.5 inch laptop display that is unable to drive games at much lower resolutions should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles. Anything more than that won't benefit the end user regardless of how much they think they need more pixels.JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
>should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles.Except that's the thing. In the year 2016 there is no such thing as a 1366x768 panel of anything remotely decent quality. Panels of this size are just churned out by the factory for extremely low cost/low margin devices such as $300 laptops at Walmart.
If you're paying ~$1500 for a premium laptop, you should expect an arguably premium display. If you can't play the game at 2560x1440, then run the game at reduced settings, and if that's not enough, begin lowering the resolution, too.
Paying ~$1500 for a premium laptop also comes with the inherent notion you're paying for premium battery life, but you're not getting that here, either.
Replacing a good screen on a laptop with a bad battery leaves you with a laptop with bad screen and bad battery and now you have an even worse value proposition than before.
forgot2yield28 - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
Won't benefit the end user? Are you kidding? If you do any kind of work viewing fine vector images, such as architectural displays, a high DPI display is a godsend. For productivity software, if you have good eyesight and don't mind shrunken UI elements, you fit your work on more of the screen. It's obviously a tradeoff against battery life, but it's a tradeoff some would gladly make. It's simply not true to state there are zero use cases where a high DPI display provides a tangible benefit.niva - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
You can disagree all you want, but anything below 1080p should be immediately disqualified from being purchased 5 years ago. An argument about 1080p for the sake of efficiency can be made, but discouraging companies from adopting higher resolution standards is just wrong. The UHD display can be ran as a 1080 for performance purposes.moozooh - Saturday, April 2, 2016 - link
> An Intel GPU in a 12.5 inch laptop display that is unable to drive games at much lower resolutions should be paired with a 1366x768 panel of decent quality with good viewing angles.That is just silly. Gaming performance is never a goal with laptops of this form-factor, not even a secondary one. If you're looking for any kind of decent gaming performance you shouldn't be considering an Ultrabook at all. Their primary task is the ability to handle large amounts of text, non-computanionally-intensive media work, and internet browsing/media consumption on-the-go for as long as possible without having to be plugged in. The difference between a 120 dpi panel and a 190+ dpi panel when working with text or photos is MASSIVE. They aren't even comparable, not if you value your eyesight and comfort at all. Had you experienced that you would never write the nonsense about 768p panels.
deeps6x - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Which is why they should have had a 1080P option with a nice Matte IPS screen. 13.3", not the micro size they went with. It fits. Use it Razor. You build this fine ass machine then gimp it with the large bezels. If Dell can do it you can do it as well, if not better.Why 1080P? Because it uses less power than 3k or 4k, and extends battery life. Why matte screen? Because touch is Intel forced cow poop, and I like to be able to use my laptops with windows behind me. Or even outside. I don't know what kind of profit Intel makes by insisting touch screens are part of the 'Ultrabook' spec, but it is one of their dumbest ideas ever. Touch on a tablet? Of course. Touch on a laptop? Useless.
jlabelle - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
- Higher resolution displays, while nice looking, offer little to no added functionality after reaching the point -So...it does !
And let's be honest, we are still far from smartphone resolution. I am not pushing for 4K display on a 12" screen but there is a CLEAR difference between 768p and QHD on such size.
- after reaching the point where it becomes necessary to scale the interface in order to retain visibility of objects displayed in it -
Which is not a issue per see. Windows Store applications and UI just scaled perfectly. It is old legacy software that needs to be adapted for that so indeed, it is a good thing to evolve in this direction to force the software manufacturer to make their homework as high DPI support exists on Windows since more than 7 years.
- Anything more than that won't benefit the end user regardless of how much they think they need more pixels.-
It does. What does NOT is the aRGB screen, which, as explained, for most of the operation is detrimental to the user experience.
mikesackett.85 - Thursday, March 31, 2016 - link
768 is awful, 1080p should be the minimum. Having been spoiled by nice high DPI screens (1600-1700p) I'll never go back to anything less than FHD. For me the QHD model hits the sweet spot at $999.99, for that you get an i7, 8GB Ram, 128GB SSD, and QHD touchscreen, which is higher specs than the similarly priced XPS 13 (i5, 1080p, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, non-touch) and a similar specced MBP is $1299. This laptop also has the added bonus of having a thunderbolt connected dGPU which none of the other options have (Though the Razer dock should work on other pc's with thunderbolt ports, including the Dell XPS 13). This laptop has the ability to serve both as a road warrior and in-home gaming machine, for that I feel it is absolutely worth the price of admission.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I agree. The battery life is a big drawback considering that the competitors offer nearly twice the battery life.A part of my wonders why won't Razer offer a model for the normal consumer. Kill the fancy keyboard backlight and offer i3 and i5 CPUs, and the Stealth could be very competitive against the likes of Dell and ASUS. I know Razer is all about gamers, but the Stealth looks like a very solid machine and given Razer's higher-end brand status and quality I'm sure they could reach a wider audience with just a few small tweaks.
zeroqw - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Exactly. I have been monitoring the ultrabook market for 2 years and to be honest this laptop could have been a big hit with real battery life. It feels like all the ultrabook laptops got some smaller or bigger drawbacks and you just cant get what you pay for. I just hope they consider moving closer to a wider audience in the future.nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
They can provide FHD (matte) screen with i5 version at $799, which should last twice longer than this.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Since at first glance, it appears that Razer is emulating parts of Apple's strategy, I would guess that Razer is ensuring that every modern system in the Razer "ecosystem" can have a satisfactory experience with their Core.The Blade 14 & 17 are both easily up for the task. And Razer at least attempted to ensure that every Stealth will be a good match for the Core. However, if they put a weaker 15W CPU in there, then it might not perform as well with the Core.
Is that the right thing to do? Objectively no, but I wonder if that kinda of Apple-esque way of thinking of part of the reason why the Blade laptops seem to be so cool in the first place. You take the good with the bad, I guess.
Spunjji - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
+1 to this.ingwe - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
It does look fantastic.Performance seems good for the price actually.
I am really curious what the external GPU experience will be like.
The keyboard doesn't really interest me.
Battery life is disappointing indeed.
Overall I would really consider buying this if the battery life was better.
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
What good is it to change the color of the WASD keys when there is hardly any game you can avctually play on this thing?smorebuds - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Not sure if trolling or missing the point here...jsntech - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
It is made to connect to the Razer Core, providing an eGPU with all the gaming powah you could wish for.nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
If you connect huge external GPU and external monitor, you'll probably plug in external mechanical keyboard as well.bug77 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I got an Acer for $799. With an additional $200 or so I added 512GB of Samsung EVO storage (yeah, no PCIe, but who needs it in an ultrabook?). Same CPU, RAM, 15.6" 1080p screen.Razer is asking an extra $600 for a higher res monitor (I'll take 15.6" instead any day, AdobeRGB is mostly wasted, because you won't do photo editing on a 13" screen and games are not made for wide color gamut) and a Killer NIC.
It's still cheaper than a Macbook, so there's that.
zeroqw - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
well I wouldnt compare a 15'6 laptop to a 12.5/13' ultrabook. its just a different marketsmorebuds - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Does your $799 Acer have TB3? Is it thin/light for 15"? If not, you can't fairly compare the two as they're designed for very different uses.bug77 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I'm not sure about TB as I don't have a single device that uses that interface, but yeah, it's thin and light. Probably doesn't qualify as an ultrabook, because you can actually open it and service it yourself (which is how I swapped the default 1TB HDD).Also, are you people really ok with paying an extra $600 on something inferior just because it's "thinner"?
nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Xps13 can be bought around 799 nowadaysBrokenCrayons - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
“For Gamers. By Gamers.”Interplay, is that you in there? What happened to Van Buren?
retrospooty - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I never really got the need for a "gaming notebook". Gaming is far better, faster and cheaper on a desktop. Do alot of people really have the need to game when mobile? I would personally think most people, when out and about are doing whatever task they are out and about for, not worrying about gaming until they get home and have time for it. Is it just me? I guess if you travelled for work alot and wound up with extra time, but that screams niche market.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Most mobile gaming I see happens on a phone and not on a laptop. There are most certainly a lot of people who spend time away from home due to work that might benefit from a gaming laptop, but this particular laptop isn't a gaming box without the not-so-mobile Razer Core and other external bits like a monitor, full sized keyboard, and mouse. The benefit in this to those sorts of people is that they only need to worry about one computer as opposed to a laptop and desktop. The Stealth's potential of using an external, desktop GPU offers some flexibility at an added cost. So yes, there's a point and yes its a niche market.The "but" in all of this is that the niche market might be larger than you think. People with no legitimate need for the capabilities the Stealth + Razer Core offers might still purchase such a setup or some other gaming laptop in order to have those capabilities. The expense could very well do nothing but address a psychological need that exists without reason purely inside the mind of the buyer. It happens pretty frequently in automotive markets where people buy much more capability than they need in order to be prepared to drive in weather or road conditions that happen for merely a day or two out of the year. They then willingly endure the liability of their purchase the other 363 days happily. Similarly a person with no need for a gaming laptop will be able to play games in a hotel room for a couple of days a year and deal with the cost and performance penalty of their purchase the rest of the time for little to no rational reason.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
There are people like me, that have LAN gaming parties. A laptop is so much more convenient. And I can play it at the laundromat when Im doing my laundry every weekend.I also live in a 1BD apartment. Space is at a premium, there is nowhere to put a nice computer desk for a desktop.
nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Laptop is more convenient but you cannot play any real game on this laptop.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
I never understood what makes something "real" or not. Even a nearly ten year old GMA 950 can run games, some of which were flagship releases in the past. Does the age of a game make it lose it's connection with reality? Is something only "real" if it's been released in the last few months because humans can't fathom the relationship of the past to the present?DarkXale - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Depends on the definition of real.CS? It can handle.
LoL? It can handle.
DOTA2? It can handle. (Even benchmarked here at +60FPS)
WoW? It can handle.
Civilization 5/BE? It can handle.
Football Manager? It can handle.
Rocket League? It can handle.
You'd probably want to stay clear of Battlefield 4 or Witcher 3 - but at this point we're talking exceptions, not a norm.
DarkXale - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
I should point out that I chose these titles since they're generally where you tend to see the most /played being done -today-.rxzlmn - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I don't think it's that uncommon for people to have jobs which require a decent amount of travelling. The main point is that it's easily transported from A to B, not that you can use it for gaming on the route itself. If you move, especially internationally, it makes sense. If you don't have a lot of space, it makes sense. If you want to have one main computer for both work and gaming, it makes sense (as a computer for work often has to be portable, i.e. bringing it to work places, meetings, on the plane, etc).I have a solid notebook that also happens to be powerful enough to run games, and nowadays the mobile GPU/CPUs are fast enough to run most games properly. Of course not with all the bells and whistles, but I can play most stuff on full HD and somewhat medium settings just fine, and my laptop only has a midrange mobile GPU.
Apart from myself opting for all the above mentioned benefits, I would also have to spend considerably more for a gaming capable desktop and a comparable non-gaming capable laptop together.
bug77 - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
Hear, hear!My desktop has it's place and is the only device I game on (save for PvZ2 on my old tablet).
lmcd - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
While the battery life isn't mind-blowing, I wish the storage tiers went 900-1100-1300-1500. Six hour battery life, while bad by comparison, is still more than the average person's working time away from the desk and wouldn't limit most of the people interested in this.jcbenten - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
The thick bezel makes it look old. After seeing the XPS and Surface Book I could not stand to look at this screen.nagi603 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Yeah, that bezel looks thicker than that of my old 2004 gaming laptop...Naql99 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I bought one of these for my son. First power adapter was defective out of the box. The usb-c connector would not 'snap' into place. Returned it and the replacement unit broke in about 2 weeks when the tip fell out of the end of the cable. I assumed my son was at fault, so I purchased another for the princely sum of $140. The tip fell out of that one within 3 days. Razer refused to replacement. Well, sorry, but cannot afford to keep shelling out $140 a pop for charging bricks and they clearly have a build quality defect. Sure, the colored backlit keys are pretty, but Razer quality is sub-par and their support let me down. We ended up buying an Innergie charger for $40 that works, even though Razer support warned me that using it instead of their crappy $140 chargers would 'void my warranty'. Ok, your warranty isn't worth squat. May I recommend the dell xps precision laptops which are also eGPU capable. As for the Core, it does not even offer a thunderbolt pass-thru, so how can that be considered an actual docking unit. There will be other eGPU solutions soon. I would wait. Buyer beware. Out of the two months my kid has had it, he's only been able to use it for maybe 2 weeks.DanNeely - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
It has a bunch of USB ports, an ethernet port, and a bunch of video out ports. That looks like a standard docking station to me. If I were to criticize it for anything, a lack of audio ports would be my biggest grumble.Not including TBs optional passthrough feature was probably a deliberate decision to limit competition for bandwidth the GPU needs. An x4 PCIe connection is enough that most games will run at almost full speed; only an x1 will strangle a large fraction of them. Even with just USB+ethernet you could end up oversaturating TB3: 32gb for PCIe, + 4x 5gb for USB3 + 1gb for ethernet is 53 gb vs TB3's 40gb. In practice that's unlikely to be a major concern; not least because 1 or more of the USB ports would typically be filled with low bandwidth devices (keyboard, mouse, usb headset); and USB3 devices capable of maxing the bus speed for sustained periods of time are relatively uncommon. Chaining a second high bandwidth TB device OTOH could be problematic; giving it half the total bandwidth would hurt the GPU in a significant number of games. Things that would fall under the category of "clever^H^H^H^H^H^Hstupid user tricks" like chaining a TB3 monitor and having it run off the laptops IGP (either due to misconfiguration, or not having video pass through support for the docs GPU due to cost or hardware limitations) could also end up burning people.
IMO with GPUs in the mix any sort of daisy chaining would need to wait for a future standard that supports at least 8x PCIe.
Naql99 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I see your point, but I have a significant number of thunderbolt devices. I need to be able to hook up my external disks. In general, it is frustrating that there are so many thunderbolt devices that insist on being the the last device in the chain. In any case, I would have purchased the Core, if not for the support/wuality issues noted above.jsntech - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Razer has made enough missteps for me (Synapse 2.0, numerous failed devices which were very gently used) that despite the decent form factor competing pretty nicely with rMBP 13 and such, I won't even consider it (not to mention 16:9 is *especially* poorly suited on a 12.5" display).jsntech - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Er, the MB is probably a better comparison.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
For that price, I would have expected for them to use the i7 6560u with the iris 540 gpu, and have better battery life. This thing is just a normal uber expensive ultrabook without the dock, at least with iris it could stand on its own a bit.foxalopex - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I think the only difference I would like to see in this Ultrabook is a more powerful CPU / Intel GPU built in complement making it a slightly higher end mobile laptop. The external add on GPU would then make it perfect for home gaming uses. I suspect I'll have to wait for the next generation of units to see if this happens.vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
I would never buy it based on the logo alone, but I'm an adult. As long as they know they're ceding that market segment, then I wish them the best of luck.T1beriu - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Typo: " Even switching out displays for the lower-resolution sRGB UHD [QHD?] panel can't fully close the gap."Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Yep, right you are. Thanks.nerd1 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Returned mine as it barely lasted 4 hours with active usage (web browsing with chrome)And screen is too small due to huge bezel, whole laptop is fingerprint magnet due to the finish. Avoid this.
will1956 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
to be fair Chrome is great but it is a resource hognagi603 - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
to be fair I could get 4 hours of browsing out of a 2004 laptop. This laptop has the price of a high-end ultrabook, but not the actual features that would want you to buy an ultrabook.mrvco - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Razer Core is the only thing that makes this laptop interesting in any sort of practical sense. I gave up on gaming laptops a long time ago and left gaming to my desktop Windows machine. If you use Windows for both work and play, then I could see the Blade Stealth w/ Core as a replacement for a separate laptop and desktop gaming PC... that is assuming you're ok with limited gaming performance when away from the desk... oh, and the combined price in the neighborhood of $2,500 once you throw in a $300'ish video card.danjw - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Are you expecting to have a review of the new Razer Blade 14? To me that seemed the much more compelling product.zeeBomb - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Y u surprise me like thatsor - Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - link
Is the "unique cooling solution" referred to, with the exhaust in the hinge, like the macbooks have had? The description makes it sound the same, but that wouldn't be unique so I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding something.NeatOman - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
Still happy with my 2+ year old Yoga 2 Pro, i5/4GB with the 3200x1800 IPS screen that gets over 6 hours of usable battery life with light browsing and back-lit keyboard on. Upgraded the SSD to a 250GB 850 EVO and Intel Wireless-AC 7260 which made a big difference.R3MF - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
As a 'cheap' ultrabook i'm interested in how well it will run a modern linux distro.Specifically:
Whether the backlight will work - even if it just produces a uniform glow (rather than full Chroma glory)
Whether the Type-C thunderbolt port will function for data (just PCIe, or USB too?)?
06GTOSC - Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - link
I'm definitely looking forward to 3-4 years from now when hopefully external graphics are a far more common thing and the prices drop. I'd love to have a notebook with a good CPU and lots of RAM that I can hook to an external GPU to game with. But at roughly $900 for the Razer setup, plus one of their laptops, it's a no go for most. Granted I'm sure plenty will soon be putting themselves heavily into debt to have the latest and greatest.deeps6x - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
"Razer could have easily put a 13.3-inch panel into this notebook."Yes, they could have, and IF they had done that, I might be interested in it. Too bad. No sale here.
If they do come to their senses in the future, stick to 1080P and 4k as panel resolution options.
deeps6x - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Why are you comparing it to the gimped Zenbook? Compare it to the Zenbook with the same Core i7-6500U. Heck, use the version with the 940M in it as well. It will still be far cheaper than this Razor model.