Gadgetory

so I really wanted to be able to wholeheartedly recommend and love the razorblade when I initially tested it but there are a few things that just stopped me from doing so mainly that absolutely abysmal battery life I had with my review unit but a few things have changed on that and I've got an update to that problem and after using this thing extensively for the past two months my thoughts may have changed this time really heal all wounds let's talk about it before I begin for a more detailed look at this new razor blade 2018 check out our full review we published a few weeks ago you're definitely gonna wanna make sure you watch that video first because I've got an update to a few the problems I discussed in that original review and in that video I was admittedly pretty critical about the blade specifically the battery life I got because I only was able to get about three and a half hours of use before the machine just completely ran out of juice it just wasn't acceptable and many of you guys in the comments called me out for that you said I was doing something wrong others were a bit less harsh and offered some suggestions and thank you for that but in the end it looks like some isolated software issues on my review unit may have been the culprit and the cause for that abnormally poor battery life and interest a full disclosure to you guys I want to tell you guys I did work with razor directly after that video went live we ran additional tests I even sent the machine back to them for their own testing and in the end we still don't know exactly what was the issue but it seems like some weird software issues in the machine were the cause for that poor battery life in the meantime though razor did want to send us another blade to check out to put through the ringer once again and tests and results are much better this time around and the you know I've been testing for the past few weeks has the exact same processor screen RAM and everything else about it is the same only difference is it has a gtx 1070 max-q instead of the 1060 mxu we had in our other unit so when this new unit came in the first thing of course I wanted to test was the battery life and I'm happy to say that after using the battery a lot the results are much better this time around I've ran the same programs had the same setting set on the machine even the screen set at the higher 144th refresh rate and I was able to get about five five hours of battery-life while browsing the web and watching videos much better than the three and a half hours I got the four and if you only wanna squeeze just a bit more battery life out of your blade you can drop that refresh rate from 144 Hertz down to 60 and you get close to seven hours and I ran a bunch of additional tests on this laptop we're even starting to implement a custom battery drainage test that we're gonna put through the wringer on all the laptops we care techni buffalo and i'm happy to say that after running up multiple times the tests were consistent and the battery life on this plate is much better something I suspect for all the blades out there and I just had some isolated abnormal issues with the other unit that I tested battery aside the machine still performs just as well as ever there's no doubt that an eighth gen i7 processor 16 gigs of ram and a gtx 1070 max-q make for one powerful machine and i've yet to find anything that i do on a daily basis that bogs this machine down or makes it sluggish or slow in any way and this is the gaming laptop after all and it runs games on here just as well as before again you can run pretty much any game on this machine but the quality is gonna depend on the game and how taxing it is on that GPU and CPU and if you're curious on how games like pub G and GTA v play on the blade it check out our full review we've got more coverage on specific games in that video it is revention again that the fans are gonna get a bit loud when the machine is under heavy workload I was running some benchmarks for this video and I had the blades sitting on my desk here in the office and it did sound like a jet engine was beginning to spin up and take off from my desk when you're doing things like playing games exporting videos doing anything that's really gonna push that CPU to its max especially when the machine is in gaming mode if the laptop is gonna do everything that it can to cool itself down which is going to result in some fan noise though I will say if you're just browsing the web and watching videos it's gonna remain near silent and speaking of running benchmarks we ran a variety of different tests in both PC Mark and 3d mark on the blade and if you're curious about what those results were and you love to compare spec sheets and benchmarks here are the results up on the screen right now you can look at the results and you can see there's just no doubt that this thing is a very powerful laptop still really like the 15-inch display colors look really good and vibrant I still would like the extra resolution you're getting on that 4k model but I don't want to give up that 144 Hertz refresh rate even if it's a 10 DP panel it's a nice feature to have is 100% srgb color accurate and it's an excellent display for both content consumption and content creation also you may not think of a touchscreen being a big deal on a laptop specifically a gaming laptop and it's by no means a deal-breaker but I will say once you use a laptop that has it it's hard to go back to one that doesn't so the 4k touch model obviously has that touchscreen built-in would have loved to have seen it on this one but that might be more of a technical limitation more than a razor decision my opinions on the speakers have not changed at all they still get really loud and they sound okay but they're just not very good in fact the Lenovo y50 mean laughs stuff that we took a look at a couple weeks ago cost less than half the starting price tag of the baseline blade and has built-in speakers that's I think sound much better much more full much less tinny and hollow than the blade take a listen for yourself but an easy fix to this problem is obviously just a good pair of external speakers or headphones but I did see some questions about this in the review and I wanted to make sure I addressed it here for you guys I still think not having Windows hello incorporated into some aspect of this machine is a really big missed opportunity especially for a high-end premium laptop like the blade that cost two grand though I will say the keyboard on a trackpad on the blade are an almost unbeatable combo razor sure knows how to make a good keyboard and the trackpad is only runner-up in my opinion into Apple's MacBook Pro I think that this is one of if not the best trackpad you can get on a Windows laptop it's big it's spacious it has windows precision drivers and it's just very nice to use the more time I spend with the blade the more I can confirm my original thoughts and conclusions things I like the first time I still like just as much this time and the shortcomings were just as annoying the second time around with the better battery performance my opinion goes from being a little more on the fence to much more willing to recommend this to those who are looking for one beastly gaming machine though that's gonna come at a very premium price tag and I know I know that there are better spec systems out there for a similar price maybe some even cheaper and there are lots of other options for the money you're gonna spend on display but for me it's gonna come down to a couple of things that are important build performance battery life and just how long and how well this computer will stand up to the test of time for starting price cycle almost $2,000 this laptop better have the components the build and the power to justify that kind of investment especially for a gaming laptop but I think the 2018 blade fits the bill it checks almost all the boxes and certainly at least for me did not disappoint so I opinions on the blade I've changed it but definitely the better battery life is going to really make me want to recommend this more to family friends and you guys who really want a great gaming rig on the go and what are your thoughts on the blade I know a lot you guys own this machine leave your comment down below and let us know what you think also are you more tempted or more curious about upgrading to the new blade you have an older razor laptop or what are you using to play games these days leave a comment and let us know I appreciate you guys watching this video thank you so much be sure to of course to subscribe to the channel click that bell to turn on notification so you're notified about all our videos come up appreciate it guys I'll see you in the next one