Gadgetory

I was in a dimly lit room in Vegas CES 2014 I was in the middle of a meeting the shady character min-liang tan and I were sitting across from each other on couches I had recently given the razorblade 14 2013 edition a mostly positive review but I was in the middle of laying in damn about how frustrating that notebook had been for me because I thought it was basically perfect if it wasn't for the TN screen midway through he kind of started smiling and then finally he said okay so lonnis than what you're saying is that if I fix the screen for you in the next iteration you'll call it perfect on-camera not being able to think of anything else I want to changed I agreed let's find out if I held up my end of the bargain is the razor blade 2014 perfect with its power loss protection affordability and performance the SP 924 may data makes upgrading to an SSD remarkably safe and simple so here is my review of the 2014 blade 14 and apart from my customary complaint that razor really needs to fix their bloody product naming scheme I may have to give this my first-ever Editors Choice Award it's expensive but it's a truly remarkable piece of technology on top of ditching the rubbish panel type razor quadrupled the pixel count to an extremely sharp 3200 by 1800 made it a 10-point multi-touch screen and they improved the core specs of it as well so we're getting an upgrade to a fourth gen core i7 4702 HQ quad core with hyper threading we're getting an upgrade to a gtx 870 m with three gigs of gddr5 memory which is remarkable given the form factor that's anywhere from sixty to a hundred percent faster in real world games versus the last gen blade 14 and as long as it's running at full speed which amazingly on a flat surface it does we're getting 2.5 gigahertz on the veer and a slightly boosted over base nine hundred and sixty-seven megahertz on the GPU in heaven with the graphics core running 82 degrees of the CPU running at 77 degrees on battery these values dip a little bit down to around eight hundred and seventy five megahertz core and two gigahertz Ram but I guess that's to help conserve battery life although I still got a very respectable if not overwhelming forty-five minutes of continuous 3d use out of it not bad considering its size alright so let's move on to the physical overview the power brick is incredibly small for a 150 watt just like last time and that's about it for accessories onto the machine it features an aluminum unibody construction that gives off a definite Apple would make notebooks like this if they were cool vibe that also assists with cooling and keeps it extremely light and just under four and a half pounds or about two kilos it's got an illuminated Razer logo on the back with subtle sort of accent bumps and basically it looks just like the last blade 14 which means it is still beautiful the bottom has two cooling intakes and two rubber feet to keep the notebook from sliding around then moving to the left side we've got power into USB 3 ports and a headphone / microphone combo jack finally on the right is a Kensington lock in HDMI output and another USB 3 port which brings us around to the top the trackpad has a very pleasing finish and satisfyingly clicky if a little bit narrow dedicated left and right buttons the speakers are unhindered by obstructions and sound loud even if they're not particularly deep and booming the power button sits below the screen above the exhaust that spits hot air out above the keyboard here and that keyboard razer has outdone themselves here the layout is spacious and nearly perfect every key is programmable the backlight has an extravagant 20 levels of illumination and the keys have a satisfying tactile click enos that is unlike any other chiclet type notebook that I have ever used it is outstanding now I know I already kind of awarded it an editor's choice but that doesn't mean I'm not going to ask for a few things to be improved in the next revision and number one is actually related to the next stop on our tour the screen the resolution makes it super sharp whenever text scales correctly and colors and viewing angles of the screen are much better than the last check like world's better but there's still a noticeable color shift when viewing off-center and although it makes up for it somewhat with an incredibly bright backlight and therefore a very solid contrast ratio black levels of this screen are not as deep as I'd like especially for use in a dimly lit room number two razor the memory is soldered on and you only gave us eight gigs that's good enough for today but what about tomorrow I regularly use six gigs of RAM on my desktop just browsing the web the 256 gigs skew and up need to have 16 gigs of RAM for this machine to last long enough to justify the sticker price especially if it's not going to be upgradable and number three well I think we got just enough USB 3 ports and while I appreciate the upgrade to Intel solid 7260 AC wireless solution I don't think a gaming machine is complete without an Ethernet port even if it requires an adapter or something and then while we're at it I would have much rather seen mini DisplayPort in the place of HDMI out due to its higher resolution support and ability to be inexpensively adapted to anything else but that's it that's all I got it's an engineering marvel I mean out of my measly four complaints one of them could have been resolved with a $25 USB Ethernet adapter a trivial amount of money for anyone buying a blade 14 which I guess leads into one more like extra bonus criticism one that's very different from the others and that I don't expect Razer to be able to fix it anytime soon the blade 14 is very very expensive I don't have to like it but I do understand it and that's the reason why I'm not taking its editors choice award away for costing as much as my car for a 512 gig model for the same price you can of course get a much more powerful gaming desktop or even a much more powerful gaming notebook but this is a luxury item that a lot of R&D went into so someone has to pay those engineers and that's why it costs as much sadly it's too expensive for my tastes but for affluent gamers who want something beautifully crafted that they can take on the road with them this notebook will absolutely annihilate similarly crafted machines like Apple's 13-inch MacBook so here's the conclusion with network streaming gaming technology advancing so quickly right now how long lived thin and light gaming notebooks will be as a category remains to be seen but one thing's for sure in my mind right now it's alive and this one rules the roost if you can afford one I wholeheartedly recommend the blade 14 2014 nothing is perfect so I'm reneging on that deal where I have to call it perfect but I will say it's the first notebook I've ever seen that just plain doesn't feel like a compromise in any way it's been light beautiful and powerful and it's my new favorite well done Razer thank you guys very much for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under the video letting me know what you think of the Razer Blade 2014 if you think that Razer should really let me keep this instead of making me send it back which is making me very very sad right now as I try to finish this review anyway in the video description you can check out the support link guys where you can buy cool t-shirts like this to maybe help me afford a razor blade 2014 you can also look a festa monthly contribution if you love our content and if you don't want to give us anything directly which is great you can change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code we'll get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff that you already would have been buying anyway so that's another awesome way of helping us out when you appreciate it thank you very much for watching once more and as always don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips if you haven't 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