Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unboxed back in February I reviewed the previous generation razor blades stuff and loved it it featured a great design very portable form factor and decent internal hardware but despite succeeding in many ways some potential buyers were put off by the laptops enormous bezels ultimately settling for a device that offered more screen real estate in the same footprint razor acknowledged this criticism of their ultra portable and rather than waiting for a new Intel processors generation to debut I refreshed variant the company has pushed out an updated razor blade stealth well under a year after its predecessor hit the market you won't see massive improvements II but there's enough small changes to push this laptop closer to perfection so what are these changes well the first addresses the main issue the bezel size the blade stealth is now available with a 13.3 inch display instead of 12.5 inches in the very same chassis this means slimmer bezels and more screen real estate 13% more to be precise without sacrificing anything from a design perspective the resolution of the entry-level model is higher as well moving from 2560 by 1440 at 234 ppi up to 3200 by 1800 at 276 PPI the new blade stealth also swaps out the decent synaptics touchpad in the previous model for a superior precision certified unit this means the trackpad is fully compatible with Windows 10 gestures and supports basically the best and most accurate tracking experience available in modern Windows machines the trackpad used here is seriously responsive and undoubtedly provides an excellent experience in all facets the glass finish it also feels simply superb the other notable change comes to the configuration options available razer has called all models with less than 16 gigabytes of RAM a core i7 CPU and a 256 gig SSD that means the $900 model with the core i5 CPU eight gig of ram and a 128 gig SSD and that non-touch display is no longer available the new entry-level model comes equipped with a core i7 7500 u 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 gig SSD and will set you back one thousand three hundred and ninety nine dollars unfortunately this is a $150 price hike on the equivalent model from the previous generation and models with 512 and one terabytes of storage available for sixteen hundred and two thousand dollars respectively the same price as the previous top-end four cameras from last gen oh and there's a new gunmetal gray more available which swaps out not just the matte black finish but the acid green Razer logo for a more understated gray finish with black logo I received a black mole to review and after seeing the photos I think I still prefer this variant to the gunmetal though you know it's still nice to have a few new color options design wise the new blade stealth is basically identical to its predecessor aside from the slimmer bezels you're getting the same outstanding machined aluminium unibody which looks premium both slim and light and if you loved previous Razer builds you love the MacBook Pro style of laptop then of course you will love the blade stealth 2017 the keyboard is also the same with great tactile feedback and individually customisable RGB lighting it's also a breeze to type on IO ports well they're also the same with Thunderbolt 3 USB 3.0 and a 3.5 ml headphone jack on the left as well as a full-sized HDMI 2.0 a port and another USB 3.0 port on the right so let's go back a little and talk further about the blade stealth new display a 13.3 inch exile LCD with a resolution of 3200 by 1800 the smaller bezels here make a significant difference to the aesthetics of the laptop previous models looked a bit ridiculous with the massive black strips around all sides but this new model is much more reasonable sure you're not getting Dell XPS like no bezel frames however I still think raises screen to bezel ratio use T is now perfectly acceptable looking at display performance on the new plates Dahl's was tricky as razors seem to have implemented a dynamic contrast and brightness feature that cannot be disabled unless you contact customer support for this reason I won't give exact numbers for how the display forms because performance vary significantly depending on the amount of dark colors on the screen it also makes the blade self largely unsuitable for color accurate work anyway however I will say brightness is very good rich is a peak of over 400 nits windows blank or white contrast as best determined in static conditions is ran the same as the previous blades stills contrast of 1,100 to one color temperature is also pretty good falling around 6700 K on average the gamut is significantly impacted by the dynamic contrast and grayscale delts where 2000 performance changes dynamically as well as for colors the eggs or panel glossy finish low gap between the glass and display leads to fantastic viewing angles and colors that really pop for casual use the dynamic contrast feature doesn't detract from how good the display looks in general color results have heretofore on the average Delta 2000 range of 3.0 to 5.0 now that wouldn't be suitable for car accurate work even if the dynamic contrast feature was disabled and it's also worth mentioning this play covers 97.6% of the srgb spectrum compared to previous generation blades Stealth's with their 1440p display the new blade stealth car performances you know roughly the same so there's no degradation from the increased display size or resolution in fact the brightness is better from this new display which helps when using the laptop outdoors as I mentioned earlier Razer has simplified their configuration options with the new blade stealth so it's easy to get a read on the performance provided by this laptop as it stands right now there is only one main hardware configuration available an Intel Core i7 7500 u processor with 16 gig of ram and a qhd+ touchscreen display storages are the one hardware component that can be modified there's 256 and 512 gig options as well as a one terabyte option all available the core i7 7500 you isn't a new CPU in fact it's the same cable a dual core fan in the previous Razer Blade stealth I reviewed earlier this year so we're still seeing two cores four threads clocked at 2.7 gigahertz with the boost frequency up to 3.5 gigahertz the blade stealth has integrated graphics only in this case Intel's HD 620 some people seem to get surprised when I mentioned that a razor product doesn't include dedicated graphics considering you know razor's roots PC gaming but the blade stealth isn't designed for gaming it's an ultraportable just like other slim 13-inch machines I'm not going to spend a lot of time discussing the performance of the new blade stealth because it's well basically identical to its predecessor this is surprising you know both the CPU and RAM is the same as in its previous model in some tests - the old blade stealth is faster in other tests the new one is faster but on average everything is about equal I actually like the fact Razer has removed the core i5 model with a gig of ram and a 128 gig SSD instead opting for variants to include better components I think 128 gig of storage it's too light or too tight for modern machine so I'd always recommend people purchase you know the more expensive model anyway one of the more interesting areas of the blade stealth to assess is the battery life this model comes with the same battery capacity as its predecessor 53.6 watt hours however we're now seeing a large display at a higher resolution razor still claims the blaze stealth is good for up to nine hours of battery life the same as the 1440p model previously so in their eyes the new screen has had well no effect on bachelor in practice though Bachelet has been reduced slightly from the previous model I don't think battery life is particularly fantastic however at the same time in general usage I didn't think it was terrible you still get a fairly decent length of time out of the battery in this model the previous blade stealth was a fantastic ultra portable but this new version addresses some minor flaws to make it a near-perfect option for those wanting a capable 13-inch productivity machine sometimes you only need to make a few tweaks to a winning formula and Rosa has really demonstrated that here I do think it's a little strange though that razor didn't wait and two Intel's eighth generation Core processors were available before launching a refreshed blade stealth while this laptop includes top-end Hardware right now it might be superseded by new CPUs in just a few months perhaps razor will unveil yet another blade stealth when Intel's new CPUs hit the market though you know it's too early to say at the moment but in general when all the factors combined the razor blade stealth ends up as a superb option and there's no doubt that razer knows this because the company has increased the price of the now base model by 150 dollars now sitting at 1399 u.s. dollars which makes the laptop pretty expensive even considering its decent array of hardware this is another one of those cases where if you want the best on the market you'll have to pay a premium whether or not you can you know stomach the price is up to you but you know as far as I'm concerned the Razer Blade stealth is the best ultra portable currently available anyway that's it for this review of the Razer Blade stuff for mid-2017 I really hope Razer it doesn't ask for this laptop back too soon because I'm loving using it at the moment if you're interested in buying one we'll have links to that in the description below and I'll catch you in our next laptop review