Gadgetory

- Hey guys, this is Austin. And I have switched to the Razer Blade Stealth. See, I didn't need to keep you in click bait suspense. So when Intel reached out and wanted to sponsor a video, it felt like the perfect time to talk about why I personally have switched over to the Stealth. So I'm lucky enough to take a look at a lot of different laptops, and usually I do spend at least a few days, if not a week, using it as my main machine. But you know what I keep coming back to? This Blade Stealth. When we first took a look at it last year, mind you it was a prototype, but I absolutely fell in love. So as Ken always likes to point out, even though I like to do videos on gaming laptops, I actually don't spend a lot of time gaming myself anymore. And that's for one simple reason, I spend all that time in emails and writing up video scripts and doing research instead of playing that next game of Fortnite. Now there's nothing wrong with a 15-inch gaming laptop. Honestly, that is where you're going to get the most performance in a portable form factor, but for me, I would much rather go to something that's smaller, lighter, and importantly will fit in areas that I actually use the laptop, like, you know, the back of a car or an airline seat or wherever the case is, I know that I can always use this Razer Blade Stealth to get done whatever I need to get done. I mean, if I'm going to be completely real, the only reason I stopped using this laptop in the first place is because Razer sent over a prototype of their Blade Stealth which they very sort of nicely asked for back after I tried to keep it for a little while because I didn't want to give it up. But (chuckles) I know. I tried a few other laptops. I did a lot of other videos. And yet, I end up with the Blade Stealth yet again, and this one is all mine. Inside, I'm really not giving up performance. Now sure, in 15-inch laptops such as a MacBook Pro or the larger Razer Blade will give you more core, more graphics, all that kind of stuff, but as far as what I need to do, this can do absolutely everything besides for editing, which of course I do have a dedicated system for. 95% of what I do every day is done on this Razer Blade Stealth. A big part of that is the eighth generation Intel Core i7 processor inside. And yes, Intel is sponsoring this video, but I have tried a lot of different laptops and a lot of different laptop processors, and this really is a sweet spot between performance and battery life right now. The i7 8565U is a processor that's found on a lot of premium notebooks and for good reason. It has a 15 watt TDP, which is especially suited for something like this 13-inch form factor. And importantly, it does have a full quad-core design that can boost over four gigahertz which is really nice, considering that in the Razer Blade Stealth, it has plenty of cooling to actually handle that. Now it's not a Razer product if it can't game, and the Razer Blade Stealth is surprisingly powerful given its small form factor. So there is an optional Nvidia MX150 GPU, but the real way to game on this guy is to take advantage of Thunderbolt. Now we have talked about Thunderbolt before, but what I really like about it is it turns a thin and light laptop which is great for travel, great for portability, into a full gaming powerhouse. So with that single Thunderbolt cable, we have power going to the laptop, so you don't need to charge it or anything like that. And we also have USB with a mouse as well as an external SSD. But the real kicker is the extra graphics horsepower we get with the RTX 2070. Now there are a wide range of different external GPU options that you can go with. I like this one because it's super tiny. And of course, it has the power to drive a full 5K ultrawide monitor like this. The nice thing is you don't have to deal with any of the downsides of a big, heavy gaming laptop. I have all the power I need when I want it and the portability when I actually need it, which is like 90% of the time. Also, shout-out to these speakers, man. They are actually properly loud. I don't even feel like I need to use another set of normal desktop speakers. It might seem like a smaller point, but something I do like about the Blade Stealth is its port selection. So in addition to the Thunderbolt 3, we also have USB-C as well as a pair of USB-A. And both the USB-C and Thunderbolts can also charge the laptop. So as long as you have something like this to be able to plug it in, you can pretty much game for as long as you like. The nice part about this is that I'm playing on a 5K ultrawide right now with full maxed out settings, and the Razer Blade has no problem with it whatsoever. Even if you do opt for the internal GPU, you just don't have this kind of power. All it takes is literally that one Thunderbolt cable, and as long as you have a decent GPU, which honestly most of the time you're going to have something that's at least somewhat decent as far as the external side goes, you're going to have a lot of power to play with. Battery life is a big part of any laptop that I use as my daily. So inside the Blade Stealth is a decent sized 53 watt-hour battery, but what really pushes it over the edge is the display which in theory can give you up to 13 hours of battery life on a charge. I talked a little bit about this in my previous video, but this is using a 13.3-inch 1080p panel. Now there is a 4K touchscreen option, but battery life is absolutely the reason why this is my main choice. So first of all, it is a solid panel. 1080p, in my opinion, is really the sweet spot for a laptop of this size, and the major advantage here is that you get some seriously improved battery life thanks to the fact that it is a one watt panel. I actually got to chat with the team who put this together and it is pretty cool. So the display is almost always one of the biggest power draws when you're using a phone, laptop. Specifically with a laptop that's this size, it can pull a lot of power. On average, a 1080p panel might pull two watts and a 4K panel can pull double that. However, this display has been heavily optimized, not only on the hardware side but also on the driver and the software side, bringing that down to around one watt, which absolutely equals more battery life without really any downside. It's still a really nice screen. It still looks great. It just takes up less power, which directly means that the laptop is going to last longer without a charge or with a charge. It will have a charge for longer. Now, all this being said, 13 hours is a little bit of an optimistic estimate. That makes sense if you're just sitting around watching video all day. When I'm doing stuff like keeping Slack open, listening to Spotify, watching videos with tons of Chrome tabs open, I'm averaging around eight hours or so on a charge, which is really not too bad considering that a lot of laptops with my load, especially these Ultrabooks, can only last about five to six hours. So they're doing a lot here, and a lot of it I do think is due to that one watt panel. The Stealth also has Intel's Gigabit WiFi built in. You may have caught a couple videos we did recently where we talked about upgrading the WiFi here at our studio. So let's see what we can actually get over just purely a wireless network. So in theory, we do have a Gigabit connection, and so, 400, 500, almost 600 megabits a second. And that is actually without even upgrading our WiFi router to something which is technically Gigabit capable. Maybe it's time to go for WiFi six. Regardless though, these are incredibly impressive speeds and the nice thing is is that this is capable of Gigabit WiFi no matter where you are. So I'm traveling, if I find some super fast airport WiFi, sometimes the airport WiFi actually is pretty good, I can take full advantage of it with the Razer Blade Stealth especially when it comes to stuff like uploading videos when you're at a trade show and things are very, very slow. The real downside with the Blade Stealth is that it is on the pricey side. There are certainly other laptops which can give you a similar level of spec for a whole lot less money, but the main reason why I really like this and I continue to use it is because it is such a killer blend of power, portability, build quality, and battery life, which is, as far as I'm concerned, just can't be beat by any other laptop that I've tried this year. Thank you very much for watching. So I'm actually here in Taiwan for Computex right now where I'll be taking a lot at some of the other stuff that Intel's releasing at the show. Simply be sure to stay tuned. And of course if you're interested in anything I talked about in this video, the links will be in the description. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to sleep.