well it finally happens guys I am in the
market for a new laptop because my
previous one my blade stealth 2018
decided to off itself quite literally I
was sitting in a job interview I was
interviewing I'm not quitting don't
worry I was sitting in a job interview
and they just boot up no that's fine the
issue isn't actually that it won't turn
on the issue is that I can't charge it
just to clarify that statement a little
bit i plug in my charging cable and it
goes something shorting something's
wrong with it it is time for a
replacement so we have assembled a flop
heard fried murder whatever it is a
bunch of laptops to determine which will
be my new daily driver and there's going
to be quite a few considerations screens
gonna be a major factor I type fast and
I type a lot battery form-factor and of
course I would love to have I oh that I
can actually use although it should be
noted that I do always carry a dongle
because I have just embraced that dongle
life and my dongles not on me because
I'm actually using it for a review that
I was working on but trust me I almost
always carry a dongle so in front of me
are the five candidates let's find out
which one gets the cheap and expired
chocolate rose 2016 this thing goes best
before speaking if that's before my
segue thing has gotten pretty stale now
hasn't it but I'm gonna keep doing it
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I think this is gonna be a lot of fun
and I'm actually really looking forward
to it so of the five ultrabooks in front
of me some of them we paid for but some
of them were submitted by the
manufacturers thing is I don't know
which was which so if I pick one that we
paid for then I'm gonna go with that and
ultimately I'll be buying a notebook for
the first time in a while and if I pick
something the manufacturer provided
we'll send the other ones back for
refund but we did it this way to ensure
that I wouldn't be able to have any bias
as I'm making a selection another thing
that this was actually the idea of one
of our new writers was evaluating
without actually knowing which device
I'm using so this is my first time
standing here in front of this and I
guess apparently they snuck a MacBook in
there so this is a MacBook of some sort
like what's what's the challenge do I
just sit down and start trying to type
something wow those are not very
pronounced home row nipples oh wait
there they are
okay I really like this keyboard I did
struggle with the backspace but I think
part of it might have been the do
routine on my hands so I'm not gonna
hold that against it too hard I'm gonna
give this keyboard an eight and a half
nine out of ten I really like it
this is already a different style of
keycaps that I do not necessarily prefer
accuracy on this one is not bad but it
feels a little bit slower it's got those
kind of borderless square key caps this
one's like a seven and a half for me I
think I already know what I think of
this one but okay I had the same
feedback that I had about this before I
feel like it's really easy to fire off
quick bursts but as soon as I try to
take the longer sentence I really
struggle to keep up limit for some
reason those short keystrokes really
don't work well for me these have kind
of a it's a long travel but kind of an
empty feeling travel the really long
keystrokes make double characters a
little bit tougher on this one and my
weaker finger my ring in my pinky
fingers struggle a little bit it's okay
seven it's probably the worst play
minutes so far I like this one too I
think it's between this is an eight and
a half for sure
and then which one was the hoops well I
kind of saw which one that was whoops
so keyboard test is pretty clear to me
this one in this one stand above the
crowd
this one is shortly behind this is
shortly behind that and this is honestly
probably somewhere in this territory as
well for me because I do do a lot of
sort of short bursty typing as I'm
thinking you know go go go go go go go
go now our content consumption test
might end up telling me even more that I
need to know about these things because
at this point in time I would have a
hard time switching to something without
a touchscreen so this one has one that's
good to know I would describe the
speakers as okay it's not nearly as
oversaturated as contestants 2 and
especially for our but it doesn't look
as good as the MacBook so the ones on
the end I'd say are the closest to the
MacBook with these two trailing behind
that you can see there's a lot of green
in the water here oh right it's a
netbook their speakers are sort of samey
across the board so far touchscreen good
good this is the worst offender as far
as the oversaturation goes honestly this
one speakers sound like they're doing a
bit of weird tuning it's a little harsh
sounding as far as content consumption
goes it's clearly the ones at the end or
the MacBook I mean you can calibrate the
display but I want the one that is as
neutral and accurate as possible out of
the box I know for a fact Brandon
wouldn't shoot anything that looks like
that so with that out of the way the
next part of the challenge is apparently
for me to find out exactly what all of
the notebooks are and identify them so
that's definitely a MacBook Air oh shoot
okay well I saw that one so I'm gonna
guess the one with the good display but
subpar keyboard is an HP Spectre
I don't know who to blame for this
poorly calibrated display over here you
know what I'm gonna throw LG under the
bus and I'm gonna guess that that's a
razor blade stealth and I don't think
there's a surface laptop to here let's
find out what's actually back here
though
wow that was a surface laptop to wolf I
gotta say I don't think its keyboard is
as God Tyr as Alex does this was an LG
Graham whoo-hoo-hoo hell gee I was
hoping I was wrong about you and that's
a blade stealth so actually the thing I
didn't have was the spectre x360 I did
get the rest of them right though so the
next step is to go through and sort of
talk build quality how they feel what
the IO is like you know it totally makes
sense that I would have liked the
keyboard on the blade stealth as much as
Alex might hate this keyboard I
personally really liked it so this one's
only got two USB Taipei's but that is
enough for a keyboard and a thumb drive
which is sort of my typical maximum when
I'm traveling it does have Thunderbolt 3
as well which means you can either use
just a standard type C dongle like I
already have or something like an
external Thunderbolt GPU it's got a
quad-core processor
Razer switched over to Intel networking
from killer networking and I'm
personally a fan of that move overall
the only thing I didn't really like
about this from the original review was
kind of the the boxy shape but I kind of
feel now like I might have been a little
bit unfair to it because it really
doesn't feel that bad in the hand at all
and the touchpad being nice and big like
that I'm a huge fan of that the RGB
backlit keyboard is obviously a nice
touch actually wait a minute
this doesn't have dual Thunderbolt does
it oh dang oh that's really nice now the
Grahams main selling point is the
massive 72 watt hour battery and I've
daily driven one of these before and it
is really nice basically charging every
two or three or maybe four days
depending on how heavily you use it
something to note about this one even
though we do have the barrel adapter
plugged in is that it does charge over
the thunderbolt type C port so that's a
huge plus or a more than I really
thought about before I
this because it means I can carry a
single type-c power adapter for my
switch my laptop and my phone while I'm
traveling but only a single Thunderbolt
port native HDMI out though full size
that is pretty nice to see but they're
still using an M SATA SSD there's no
discrete graphics like this one and
unlike most of the other contestants
it's using only a 1080p display which
strikes me as a little bit ironic given
that LG is the only company here that
actually manufactures LCD panels on the
subject of things that it has to make up
ground for the build quality is just not
up there with the razor blade stealth on
the subject of build quality Apple still
does it like few others do this thing is
hyper thin super rigid I mean even the
screen it's almost like they have a
bunch of experience building tablets you
know like super thin tablets super thin
phones you know that bent once before
and they learn their lesson from
the thing that's really hard for me to
get over here is the IO not having even
a single type a USB is the kind of thing
that can end up really inconvenient for
me because maybe I do go out and buy a
type C you know USB thumb drive or
something like that there's still things
where I might have to like a two-factor
authentication key or now I have to go
get that and I have to go get a dongle
and I'm usually using something like
that at a time when it's really an
opportunity to be slowed down the other
thing that kind of kills the MacBook Air
for me is the dual-core processor if
they refresh this thing with a quad-core
CPU now they got my attention again
because the keyboard is not my favorite
but the trackpad is hands-down the best
out of anything in front of me so it
does have touch ID built in both power
buttons something I really liked when I
spent time with the last MacBook that I
reviewed but some of the Windows
machines here including the blade
stealth and our next one have Windows
hello with facial ID and I definitely
prefer that I'd also have to get used to
Mac OS again but I mean it wouldn't be
the end of the world it's just not my
preference unless this really blew me
away I wasn't gonna go with it moving on
to the surface laptop to to Microsoft's
credit magnetic power cords are pretty
cool and like a 2008 chic kind of way
but unlike the meg safe connector this
one you can actually pull the laptop a
fair distance with it before it
disengages depending on the angle you're
using so you could actually conceivably
pull pull it off the tape actually
coming off biometric authentication it's
three by two which is really nice for
productivity that aspect ratio makes a
huge difference it was far from the
worst display and it feels really good
in the hand but it's not as stiff as the
others although I get it because they've
got this you know soft touch surface
here and it's just it's really expensive
I just don't think it's really a
candidate for me now this one was kind
of surprising to me when I saw the
pricing so the Dell XPS 13 as equipped
has 16 gigs of ram 512 mb me storage
it's a similar spec CPU to everything
else we're looking at here so if I was
going to you know do some light photo
editing or very very light video editing
or
plays a casual steam game or something
on the road it would perform similarly
to anything but the blade stealth 4k
which is going to outperform it by about
doubling games if 3dmark is anything to
go by a single Thunderbolt port no dual
Thunderbolt again with another type C on
the other side microSD and not a single
type a man it already had one Rose but
the pricing the pricing the pricing for
this guy is really reasonable and when
you consider the build quality which is
you know what I seem to remember it
being better it's okay it's not up there
with Apple or Razer in terms of the
actual flexibility of it I really like
the keyboard and I really like the
screen and I really like the price and I
really like the look it's been a long
time since I've used to dell I actually
don't remember the last time I daily
drove at Dell yes I do
Wow my old XPS 12 two and one that thing
was a tank though I mean I've yet to
have a razor laptop lasts me more than
two years and that thing got rained on I
took it apart dried it out put it back
together and it is still working to this
day honestly when it comes to i/o and
external build quality and looks there's
really no question that has to be the
razor blade stealth it doesn't have a
full size HDMI which really bums me out
a lot but that's becoming harder and
harder to find so I guess I'm carrying
my dongle around anyway but at least it
has a couple Taipei's still has dual
Thunderbolt and it is just plain built
more rigidly than the other Windows
machines anyway I wish I had a little
bit more time to do this because I'm on
my way out the door to go on a trip so
whatever it is I'm gonna set it up for
this trip I'm going away and that's it
that's gonna live in my backpack but
it's tough so the Dell config for a
similar spec is about three hundred
dollars less but when I say similar I
mean similar because the razor blade
stealth it has discrete graphics which
means I'm not going to get as much life
out of it but they don't have Windows
hello facial recognition on this model
is it
sensitive power button that'll make a
big difference to me it is it's a
fingerprint sensor see that's pretty
good but it's not quite and go you know
what I've been gaming quite a bit more
lately
I'm giving Razer another chance don't
let me down this time Razer big shout
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which you should totally join now I was
going to eat this chocolate rose as a
laugh until I opened it and realized
just how fossilized it is these aren't
like some kind of fancy white milk
chocolate hybrid this is milk chocolate
that's terrifying
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