Gadgetory

welcome back to hadron box one of the most popular gaming laptops on the market continues to be the razor blade and with the new model for 2018 razor has refined the design and improved the internal hardware to make it even better than before and with more competition from devices like the msi gr6 t5 stealth thin and the gigabyte air of 15 X using the same design in the last few years just wasn't gonna cut it this time with the 2018 blade razor is fully on board with the thin bezel revolution previous models included small 14-inch displays with massive bezels on all sides and it was a look that I think frustrated a lot of people I mean why can they have just put a larger screen in the same chassis well clearly raises engineers have been thinking the same thing because the new blade features a 15.6 inch display in a body that's essentially the same size as the old model the result bezels on either side of the display that are just five millimeters thin and it looks a whole lot better because of it there's no nostril vision camera here either which is good news the bezel along the top of the display is slightly larger than the sides allowing the webcam to be positioned above the display just like with the msi ge62 5 you're not quite getting that Dell XPS bezel look but it's close enough and still significantly better than razors previous design the rest of the chassis has been redesigned slightly with a more squared-off look as opposed to the rounded corners of the previous gen blade and that gives it a more modern look while still delivering razor signature high-quality all-metal built I love the design of the old way but this new look is even better it's just that touch sleeker plus the black metal unibody is almost unrivaled in the gaming laptop space in terms of build quality there's more competition these days but razors still does it best and in fact comparing the blade to other laptops in general you really only get this sort of build from a MacBook Pro and we know how the latest MacBook Pros perform in terms of thermal throttling from weaker internal hardware so we'll see how the blade fares in that regard a bit later Razer positions the blade as a dual purpose laptop suitable for both gamers and professionals so there's plenty of ports on this laptop three USB 3.1 type a port a thunderbolt three USBC port full-sized HDMI 2.0 mini DisplayPort 1.4 a 3.5 mm audio jack and a proprietary charging port of course due to the higher power draw charger that's pretty much everything you'd want on a laptop of this size perhaps an SD card slot would have been nice but I'm glad there's plenty of other full-size ports in terms of thickness the blade is very impressive in just sixteen point eight millimeters thick despite packing a six core Intel coffee-like processor and up to nvidia geforce gtx 1070 max-q graphics the size of the laptop relative to its internal hardware is one of the best on the market if not the best though it's weight of a touch over 2 kilograms isn't as class-leading though that is down to the solid metal construction you get the minimalist base of this laptop has only three elements the keyboard trackpad and speakers as you might have noticed there's no numpad on this 15 inch laptop with razor instead opting for large speakers on either side not sure that decision has paid off the speakers aren't that impressive certainly not as impressive as the large grilles would suggest the keyboard though is very good the travel distance to each key is ultrabook class but that's not a bad thing if the response is solid and reasonably clicky from a non-mechanical design typing up a few documents and gaming on the blade is a decent experience and of course you get to enjoy the bright perky RGB backlighting Razer still hasn't managed to illuminate the keyboards symbols though which is still a bit frustrating for nighttime users as for the trackpad its massive and extremely responsive the perfect companion for productivity tasks on the go unfortunately there's no Windows hello integration on this laptop though so no fingerprint reader or facial recognition support and that's a bit of a disappointment considering several other gaming laptops of this class have been integrating those features lately the display is one of the big areas that's received an upgrade not only is it now larger than the 14 inch panel used in the previous blades it's also high refresh in some models the main display that most people will be buying is a 15.6 inch 1080p IPS LCD with a 144 Hertz refresh rate so quite similar to most other gaming laptops out there in 2018 there is also a 60 Hertz 1080p option for the entry-level blade and a 4k 60 hertz option available at the high end I'd only recommend the okay touchscreen if you are primarily going to be using this laptop for productivity tasks like video editing for gaming the 1080p 144 Hertz panel is a much better choice the good news though is razor up factory calibrating every screen across their blade 2018 lineup so even if you get the 1080p 144 Hertz panels it will be color accurate to the srgb gama and the 4k options even support 100% Adobe RGB coverage in my testing the blade 2018 is on par with the gigabyte error 15 X when it comes to color accuracy with Delta is right on that 2.0 mark across greyscale saturation and color checker tests white balance is very good as well with an average CCT very close to 6500 K it's not a perfect display but for content creators the screen is accurate enough from the factory to really not have to worry about further calibration however a razor is still limited by the characteristics of this panel so its brightness of 285 nits and a contrast ratio of below 1000 to one isn't fantastic and uniformity is only okay for a display this size for gamers though you'll love the high refresh rate even if there's no Jason support performance wise the razor blade doesn't include any hardware we haven't tested before all models come equipped with the Intel Core i7 87 58 and there's two GPU options either the nvidia geforce gtx 1060 max Q or the gtx 1070 max q and my review that came with the 1070 max q all blades also come with 16 gigabytes of ddr4 2666 as standard and that's user upgradeable to 32 gigabytes and you'll get either 256 or 512 gigabytes of PCIe nvme SSD storage because the blade uses hardware we've tested before I'm gonna summarize his performance relative to this system we use for my original I 78758 plus gtx 1070 max q review if you're after a more in-depth look with comparisons to other laptops and all that sort of thing check out that review to see how these components perform and then you can use the percentage differences on show here to see where the razor blade sits cpu performance was actually quite disappointing from the blade 2018 fully 9% slower than a gigabyte era 15 x reference system across our tests weight in some cases particularly video rendering the performance drop was upwards of 15% in fact it was usually these longer tests where the blades suffered more though almost every test revealed the play to be slower now you're probably wondering why is the blade slow when it uses the same hardware well OMS have the ability to configure how the CPU runs in terms of power limits and these power limits govern the clock speed behavior things like turbo boost and so forth the error 15x we test with has a turbo power limit of 52 watts and a short burst limit of 70 watts and in a Cinebench r15 run you can see how the CPU reaches those limits in stages with the razor blade 2018 it's a bit different Intel's XTU reports estate and short burst limits of 60 and 80 watts respectively so that's actually better than the era 15 X but in actual practice these aren't the limits the CPU adheres to instead there appears to be a hard cap of 45 watts for both short bursts and turbo and I should note this is regardless of the power plan you choose this suggests razer has opted for the 8750 HHS's C TDP down state which limits the sustained TDP to 35 watts and that's exactly what is observed in longer workloads the result of this power limit is reduced performance as I showed earlier interestingly enough though in CPU only workloads the cooler is more than capable of cooling the components leading to temperatures around 75 degrees Celsius and a noise output of just 38 DBA which is outstanding for this sort of laptop I wouldn't be surprised if the blade could actually handle the full 45 watt configuration in these sort of tests but they've gone with a power limit so it is what it is though is upgrading from an old laptop with a quad core Core i7 7700 HQ you will still see a performance improvement of 15% on average and that's up closer to 30% in some multi-threaded tests that's not as good as the full 50 percent performance improvement you can expect in the a 750 H configured at 45 watts but it is still an improvement so with the lower-than-expected CPU performance how does the GPU very well it's much better news here the gtx 1070 max-q performs exactly as expected and it's only in a handful of games that the slower CPU has an impact looking at average frame rates compared to our reference system with the same specs the razor blade was within the margin of error in all but three games watchdogs to pry and Assassin's Creed origins however some other games are up to 7 percent faster and that leads to an average result really that's no different to our reference system looking at 1% loads there are a few more losses including rise of the Tomb Raider but again the average result only puts the blade 2018 1% slower than our reference system it will depend on the game you're playing but in most cases the CPU configuration razor has gone with will not have a significant impact on the game experience you also find the blade a decent 9 percent faster in average frame rates and 5 percent faster in 1% lows compared to a laptop with the gtx 1070 max-q but just an i7 7700 HQ an aside so that new CPU is providing a performance improvement in games it is important to note here as well that the new blade does push up to a gtx 1070 max-q whereas the last gen blow topped out at a GTX 1060 we actually tested the old blade in a smaller selection of games and the new blade is more than 25% faster on average in that group with wins in every single game the max-q gtx 1070 may not be as fast as the fully fledged gtx 1070 but it is faster than the gtx 1060 used in the previous model and that means we're getting more performance in the same form factor and that's exactly what max q is designed for unfortunately while gaming the new razor blade still runs hot and loud in our standard watchdogs to test run the CPU reached around 88 degrees and the GPU set at 81 degrees with cool it noise levels exceeding 45 DBA which is quite loud to make matters worse the cooler noise is quite annoying with a prominent high-pitched whine when it really ramps up and it's here you can see the reason razor used the 35 watt configuration for the CPU there is simply no more thermal Headroom when gaming had the CPU been allowed to run at 45 watts the cooler would have either been overwhelmed thermally or it would have to crank up even louder from an already loud state rather than throttle down the GPU raised it decided to hit the CPU and while throttling down neither is obviously ideal tuning down the CPU makes more sense than tuning down the GPU because it has less of an impact in games it would be awesome if the razor blade could crank the CPU up to 45 watts in tasks like video rendering and then jump down to 35 watts in gaming then you'd get the best of both worlds with gaming and productivity performance on par with laptops that don't use the C TDP down state however they haven't done that and it might not be possible anyway so what we're stuck with is cat productivity performance to ensure the system isn't overwhelmed while gaming despite running hot and loud surface temperatures are ok the middle area above the keyboards scorches at above 50 degrees Celsius under gaming load however the left side of the keyboard where the important gaming Kizer is quite cool somehow kept around 35 degrees Celsius or less some parts of the keyboard particularly in the center towards the top can hit over 45 degrees but the blade is otherwise comfortable to use while gaming using the WASD Keys I wouldn't want to use it on my lap though as the other side could burn you at over 50 degrees Celsius so stick to using it on a desk a couple of other things to finish this one off the blade uses the Samsung PM 9 81 SSD in my case with 512 gigabytes of capacity and as we've known from previous reviews this drive is very fast and performs well in both sequential and random transfers as for battery life we're looking at an 80 watt our integrated cell and that's good for ok battery life it's not bad not amazing just ok for this sort of form factor luckily the lack of G sync has allowed razer to use optimist technology so we can switch off the discrete GPU when not in use and that does help with battery life but the blade 2018 won't last as long as high-end 13-inch Ultra portables which is pretty typical for this class laptop all up the new razor blade is a bit of a mixed bag and that's similar to previous models in this line there are plenty of things it does really well including it's awesome metal unibody design excellent updated high refresh gaming display and it's factory calibrated you're a decent keyboard and trackpad plenty of ports and good internal hardware it's gaming performance is also very site matching our reference system with identical hardware across our test suite of games considering the blade now comes with this 6 core CPU and up to a gtx 1070 max-q that means it's more than 25% faster in games compared to the old blade model in what is essentially the same form factor and that's hard to complain about however the blade still runs hot and loud while gaming and that's meant razor hesitated to use the 35 watt configuration of the 8750 H while this doesn't have a significant impact in games it does hurt productivity performance so compete laptops like the msi geo 65 and gigabyte era 15x are better choices for those that want to edit videos and game on the same system then you have to factor in the pricing the blade with the gtx 1070 max-q inside starts at a huge 2400 us which is $200 more than a GS 65 with equivalent hardware lower team walls are also more expensive the design of the blade is far and away the best on the market with this hardware inside and gaming performance I guess is pretty similar to the GS 65 but I'm not sure those factors justify the price difference and then on top of that the G R 65 CPU is not limited in productivity workloads so MSI is offering is at least on par with the blade for gaming but it's faster for productivity all while costing less I really want to like the razor blade as it has the makings of a great system there's so many things this thing does well but the pricing situation and the issues with its CPU makes it difficult to recommend unless design I guess is the most important factor for you I think most people looking to buy a blade would be better off with the revamped and aggressively priced msi gs70 of its portability as well so you're not losing out a whole lot by going with the GS 65 that's it for this review of the new razor blade for 2018 I think it's only a few tweaks away from becoming the standout gaming laptop option on the market so I do have high hopes for the next generation anyway if you're interested in the laptops I've been talking about you can check their prices through Amazon links in the description below consider supporting us on patreon to get access to our exclusive discord chat where you can talk to me and ask questions whenever you like and I'll catch you in the next one you