Gadgetory

the latest iteration of one of the only two products to ever win an Editors Choice Award from me is finally here this is the new razor blade from well razor mass drop is currently hosting a drop for a set of csgo themed key caps learn more about them and many other awesome drops at the link in the video description so let's get this out of the way right off the hop razor is actually calling this thing the new razor blade are you freaking kidding me for starters razor you already had a product called the razor blade it had a 17 inch primary screen and this weird supplementary one with a trackpad built into it that was why you called the 14 inch model the blade 14 when you launched it in 2013 you even remember this but okay fine I'll forgive that if for no reason other than that you've already been doing it for a few years at this point and while we're at it I'll forgive the way you call each new iteration the same damn thing forcing retailers and reviewers to augment these with long ass part numbers and/or release years you didn't start that I blame Apple for that no no the reason I'm mad is that you keep compounding the problem you've actually removed it now but shortly after the launch of this one you actually had last year's model on the site as the blade qhd+ something it was never called and something that's not helpful because the new blade that you had on the site at the same time also has a qhd+ screen I mean stop this who do you think you are Nvidia anyway with that out of my system let's get down to business the new blade features an 0.7 inch thick 4.25 pound unibody aluminum chassis with decent stereo speakers and as I mentioned before a 14-inch 3200 by 1800 XO LCD just like last year and while the panel still sports a larger than ideal bezel still doesn't handle off angle viewing as well as the best IPS displays out there and still lack support for g-sync or higher refresh rates I understand that the bezel is big to allow for more room for cooling and it still got the 10-point multi-touch screen something that most other gaming laptops lack which is a trade-off that I personally will take I didn't realize quite how often I use it to zoom in or reposition something on the screen until I ordered an XPS 15 for review check that out here by the way that didn't have it also back for another round is in videos Maxwell architecture gtx 970m graphics processor it's unclear if anything about the silicon or binning process has been tuned to improve thermals or battery life both of which are improved but we do know that it's been upgraded to six gigs of VRAM this time around let's take this opportunity then to run through the rest of the specs the Haswell 4700 HQ quad core has been booted out the door in favor of a shiny new skylake core i7 6700 HQ which I left running the i-264 stress test the entire time I wrote this review only to see it reach about 80 to 85 degrees max at room temperature an acceptable result the one that does come at an acoustical cost and it's one that won't hold true with a GPU load added to the mix so the thermal system improvements seem to be more focused on keeping heat away from the users hands with actual CPU temperatures as a secondary objective since it does still throttle here's a shot though with our thermal camera to show how well they achieved the primary objective very impressive my favorite notebook webcam and it's excellent microphone return yay the old Intel Wireless gets replaced with a killer 1535 solution that I was skeptical about but that behaved very well and managed some of the fastest most consistent wireless file transfers that I've seen 16 gigs of DDR 4 RAM is now standard on every model and storage across the board has been upgraded to nvme instead of SATA based solid state drives they are using the value PM 951 model instead of the 950 Pro from Samsung but this is still a big improvement so there's nothing to complain about here but nothing really earth-shattering either the big stuff actually happened on the outside at first glance it the same but IO has gotten much much better on the left you'll find power in magnetic next time please a couple USB 3 five gigabit ports and a headphone microphone jack then on the right you will find an hdmi 1.4 B port another USB 3 and ok so this is the only actual improvement nothing else changed a USB type-c connector that can handle an additional USB device or Thunderbolt 3 with DisplayPort SiC right Type C is just so cool in so many ways little things like charging your type C phone faster all the way up to big things like plugging in high-speed external storage devices or even an external GPU with products like the razor core set to be available very very shortly the one thing really missing here for me is an SD card reader and then it would be there I say it perfect there's more to I can't quantify this but the touchpad definitely feels like it tracks more smoothly and more consistently and the keyboard has also been upgraded it is still my same favorite laptop keyboard from a tactile standpoint and now that Luke has won his word for something along the lines of I never really understood why you're always raving about this thing but wow I get it now except that it now has the same RGB upgrade as the blade stealth so gone then is the gamer II font you've got all the usual controls that you would expect out of an RGB keyboard it WAV this breathe that change color there I think it's something stupid like 14 different brightness level adjustments with the only downgrade and this is a huge bummer for me actually being that backlighting on the secondary functions of the f keys and the number row razor tells me this is due to the position of the switch but frankly I'd have preferred a smaller font and just kind of cramming it over there is no longer backlit which sucks because these are the things that I'm most likely to have trouble remembering in the dark let's move on to the gaming experience that frankly hasn't changed much some games that push both CPU and Jeep very very hard will cause you to encounter your thermal limits and the 970m is still not beefy enough to really gain at higher than 1080p in most titles if you want to turn details up so there's not much to report here but one key difference is that whether it's gaming or whether it's productivity the new blades battery life is better enough that I actually noticed the difference day to day I didn't turn the keyboard lights completely off / the reviewers guide but I did dim them to about the same level that I normally use about 30% which leads us into the conclusion I think the blade 14 2015 was already good enough that it was my first choice with the blade stealth given how little I came on the go and how freaking light yet well-constructed it is being the first device that I've encountered that looked even capable of dethroning it only to never even enter the ring due to its 8 gig ram limitation so then it shouldn't be a shocker that the new blade 2016 model is going to hold its throne almost everything about the old blade I cannot emphasize enough how butthurt I am about the half key illumination is undeniably superior and that's impressive but what's really impressive is that they've done all of this while significantly lowering the razor tax as I call it in the past friends would ask me they'd see this laptop they'd be like that looks sick should I get one I'd say wow I really like mine but that's easy for me to say I didn't pay for it it's very very expensive well that changes here and I am really liking the path razors on bringing down the cost of their machines but without the compromises to spec or build quality that have made pcs a second-class citizen compared to Mac books for anyone who wants a beautiful well-constructed mobile device good job guys keep it up and good job - ting keep up what you guys are doing there the mobile carrier that is focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first I mean yeah sure there's all the little details like only paying for or exactly what you use with the average bill being only 24 bucks a month there's the whole thing where you can go on their site if Linus ENCOM we've got that linked in the video description enter your last few bills from your existing carrier and finding out easily in just a few minutes if ting will be cheaper for you but the most important thing is that when you call ting if there's some kind of a problem let's say something goes wrong someone picks up and says hello can I help you there is no automated phone system not because they couldn't figure out how to do that but because they don't think it's a good idea they're very customer centric and if you want to become a customer they've got an offer for you they will cover up to 25% of your cancellation fee so it's up to 75 bucks and if you use our link again that's Linus ENCOM you'll also get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so go check it out so thanks for watching everyone if this video sucked you know what to do if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one or with the direct monthly contribution to our community forum linked in the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button up there the top right corner to check out our Mexico series over on channels super-fun