Razer Blade Stealth 13 (2019) - Expensive But Still Worth It?
Razer Blade Stealth 13 (2019) - Expensive But Still Worth It?
2019-01-28
what everyone ever hear with hardware
connects and this is the new razor blade
stealth more particularly the 2019
edition
now the word stealth really does reflect
the product design razors going for in
the first place because when you look at
this notebook from every possible angle
it doesn't show anything aggressive but
rather it's very low profile but it
packs some interesting specs under the
hood so what are we talking well for
starters it's got the latest whiskey
leak cpu from Intel in this case the
core i7 85/60 you it's a quad core
design with eight threads you've also
got sixteen gigabytes of RAM a 256
gigabyte nvme SSD and an nvidia geforce
MX 150 discrete GPU while we're at it
racer is offering two other models of
the blade stealth I happen to have the
mid-tier version but the max they offer
is a graphics 4k model that costs $1,900
now we're slowly starting to see brands
implement this type of graphics card
into their ultrabooks just to give a
little bit of boost in terms of
performance but is it really worth
spending $1,600 on something like this
stealth let's find out but first a quick
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some of you know I recently switched my
primary editing notebook to the razor
blade 15 base I actually did a full
review on it so if you're interested in
checking that out I'll leave a link
right over here but basically our CEA's
coverage was mostly edited and rendered
on that notebook and it did not crash or
once which I'm very grateful for and my
overall experience with a notebook has
been pretty amazing so far now the new
stuff is a complete design overhaul from
the previous generation if you recall
that model featured rounded corners
thick bezels and it just wasn't a try
the design the 2019 version looks a lot
like a mini Blade 15 with the boxy
design around the edges the super thin
bezels with a webcam placed at the right
location kudos racer now the logo at the
front doesn't come back lit like the
15-inch but rather razor has implemented
this tone-on-tone logo that looks sleek
at certain angles I don't think you'll
have any issues bringing this to an
office meeting or something because it
does look discreet and I like that Razer
hasn't sacrificed build quality with the
new stealth as well the chassis is still
constructed out of cnc anodized aluminum
and it feels amazing seriously this is
one of the best-built ultrabooks that
have tested so far port selection is
respectable so on the right hand side
you get a Type C Thunderbolt 3 port and
a USB 3.1 type-a port switching to the
left there is a standard USB 3.1 type-c
connector which does not support
Thunderbolt so keep that in mind
there is another USB 3.1 type 8 port and
a headphone / mic jack the notebook does
charge via USB type-c and you can plug
it into either one of these ports the
lack of an SD card reader is a bummer
though moving on to the display it
features a 13.3 inch 1080p IPS panel at
60 Hertz and the screen is matte it
supports 100% of the srgb color spectrum
and I thoroughly enjoyed my time
browsing the web and doing some other
casual things like watching the latest
season or the Grand Tour the color
reproduction is excellent you really
can't complain about it the brightness
levels could be improved a little bit
since I did have some trouble of doing
content outdoors but it is adequate
enough to get the job done now this
whole reduction vessels have not only
reduced the form factor of the new
stealth but it's actually quite smaller
than the previous generation which is
awesome now this whole bezel approach is
expected to be a 20-19 thing so you know
every notebook that's coming out in the
market whether that's gaming oriented or
not has to have minimal bezels because
it's starting to become the norm and I
don't think I have anything to complain
about that because it sort of immerses
you to the content that you're consuming
now what do I have to mention that razor
does offer a 4k display option with the
Razer Blade stealth and I think that's
utterly pointless because 4k on a 13
point Finnish display is first of all
very difficult to drive with the given
hardware configuration that we have
and it also affects battery life and you
know if you want to actually view
content you have to scale the display to
150 percent or a little bit higher just
so you can see things because it's so
small
so I'd highly recommend staying away
from that model because you know it's
just pointless moving on to the keyboard
and the layout hasn't changed that much
from the previous generation except this
time you do lose the perky chroma
lighting instead it comes with a unified
Lenny solution that does cost some bleed
around the keys on the positive side
these secondary keys are backlit so
that's nice are the keys do x''b it at
respectable amount of travel distance
it's certainly not as good as Lenovo's
or HP's offerings but you know what it
gets a job done
now if you recall my review of the Razer
Blade 15 base model I did talk about the
arrow keys positioned awkwardly it's the
same case for the Razer Blade stuff
they're the same size as the rest the
keys and I've run into many instances
where I would accidentally you know hit
the left or the right shift key instead
of the front arrow key so it it's a
little bit confusing certainly get some
time used to but yeah I'm just overall
not a fan of this keyboard layout
especially on the right hand side now
another interesting or I guess a rather
weird
implementation is a power button it's
actually a physical key and not
something that's separated from the
keyboard layout so yeah I mean I wish I
had I wish if Razer implemented a
dedicated power button just like what's
found on the previous generation stealth
model the trackpad is really good the
glass surface is very smooth from
navigating around they still use Windows
position drivers so you'll be able to
take advantage of all those gestures
baked into Windows 10 so that's nice
there are two front-facing speakers on
the new stealth and they're positioned
appropriately for the best audio
projection now in terms of audio quality
it's actually amazing for an ultrabook
there's fantastic definition in the
higher ends I will mention that the base
is a little bit on the minimal side it's
very under powering so you're not gonna
feel the drop at when you're listening
to music or something like that but
honestly for just getting stuff done and
just listening to a few casual Tunes
this is phenomenal moving on to the most
interesting part performance now one
thing to keep note of is that these
stuff isn't a fully loaded gaming
notebook think of it as a hybrid between
gaming and portable
in a 13.3 inch form factor naturally you
should keep your expectations low
so first up by Ren Cinebench r15 I got a
multi-core score of 658 and a single
core score of 189 I need to mention that
the single core performance on the razor
blade stealth is phenomenal it actually
is a lot better than my 15-inch razor
blade base model because clock speeds
can hit easily up to four point five
gigahertz and I've clearly witnessed
that as I was monitoring the clock
speeds video editing is not the best in
terms of rendering but a playback at
half-hour solution was actually pretty
smooth with 4k jh5 footage it's also
pretty odd to even with hardware
encoding enabled the system took well
over 40 minutes to render the video so I
think it's more of an optimization issue
of the kids when I looked at the stats
or when I looked when I was monitoring
CPU resources the CPU was not fully
utilized but rather the integrated GPU
and the MX 150 were at 100% so I feel
like Adobe has to somehow optimize that
again it's really odd but I wouldn't use
this notebook for video editing because
the rendering performance is pretty
terrible but for photo editing and other
casual stuff it's it's amazing moving on
to gaming performance and I'm gonna kick
things off with fortnight because it's
quite the popular game right now so a
1080p set to low settings to stealth
averaged around 70 frames per second
battlefield one attendee piece set to
low averaged around 50 6.9 frames per
second so it's relatively playable over
watch a 1080p set to low averaged around
124 frames per second doom at 1080p set
to low averaged on 45.6 frames per
second so it's it's okay it's definitely
not the best experience now in terms of
temperatures the CPU a built around 40 C
and the clock speeds were hovering on
1.8 to 3 gigahertz in certain scenarios
a few cores clocked all the way up to
four point five gigahertz so it's well
within the spec now under load the CPU
hovered around 70 C but by default the
system locked all the cores at roughly 3
gigahertz which is very respectable for
an ultrabook
if you ask me I even monitored clock
speeds while rendering a 4k video using
Adobe Media encoder and frequencies were
reaching 4.5 gigahertz as I mentioned
earlier without a problem so that's
awesome the system also does a really
good job dissipating the heat so most
the exhaust is right at the back so it
doesn't actually feel you don't you
won't be able to feel the heat while
they're gaming on it fan noise is also
respectable what's really awesome is
doing idle scenarios the fans actually
completely stop spinning which is kind
of amazing because you basically won't
be able to hear anything but when you're
actually gaming on it you're gonna be
hearing them ramp up eventually and you
can't control the fan speed through
Razer synapse and lastly I do want to
talk about battery life so the new
stealth features a 53 point 1 watt hour
battery and it lasted for um 6 hours and
48 minutes around 7 hours under my light
load test which consists of refreshing a
webpage for 15 seconds and then during
my heavy load test which consists of
running real bench on a loop until the
battery completely died the system last
was around 2 hours so it's not
definitely not the best battery life on
an ultrabook
I've seen other ultra books featuring 11
plus hours on just my light load test so
definitely keep that in mind battery
life is not the Stealth's Forte on the
positive side the included AC adapter is
very compact so he can easily toss us in
your backpack and you won't even feel
the weight because it doesn't take that
much space alright so concluding
thoughts on the new Razer Blade stealth
guys I really like this laptop I mean
for one the design is very discreet and
you know if I were a student that I
would absolutely rocking this you know
to classes and whatnot but after looking
the price tag I wouldn't pay $69 for a
notebook of this caliber because for
perspective to put things in perspective
the Razer Blade 15 base bottle cause the
exact same price but you're getting
better specs the GTX 1060 max-q you know
a an hn a core i7 6 core 12 farad CPU
and better specs like to spend overall
specs with that regard however do keep
in mind that this is the mid-tier
version with the MX 150 GPU razor does
offer the standard stealth with just the
integrated graphics for three hundred
dollars less so if you feel like that's
a compelling option then it's a great
buy provided that you really know what
you're getting into because obviously
you have your own priorities if you're
looking for a notebook with
best gaming performance the stealth is
completely out of line you really
shouldn't go for it but if you're
someone who's looking for a clean laptop
that can just can't work done like you
know basic stuff like web browsing or
content consuming whatnot then I would
actually recommend the base model style
over the mid-tier version because I
don't think the MX 150 GP is going to
come of that big big of a use in that
regard
now if you compare the stuff to
something like the XPS 13 or HP Spectre
x-360 or even lenovo's x1 carbon the
benefit of considering the stealth is
that you're getting the MX 150 discrete
GPU provided that it's adequate enough
for your needs
I think customer support is also
something that needs to be considered
since Razer isn't really well known for
that compared to dealt for instance and
so that about wraps up my experience
using the Razer Blade stealth guys let
me know what you guys think about the
Razer Blade stealth and the fact that
you know Razer was able to implement an
MX 150 GPU what you guys think about it
because I know it's not a fantastic
gaming GPU and you know it's definitely
not as close to a GTX 1050 or whatnot
but do you think it's worth implementing
on an ultrabook especially for a
notebook of this size let me know in the
comments down below I'm Eva with hundred
connects thank you so much for watching
make sure to make sure to check out some
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off and I'll see you guys in the next
one
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