From the article: "The 2016 Razer Blade Pro is a great gaming laptop. I certainly wish I could afford one for myself. My life right now is characterized by frequent moving due to work and university, and something like the Blade Pro would allow me to bring an incredibly powerful machine with me wherever I go. While the Blade Pro fulfills its role as a high performance gaming machine, it did let me down as a mobile workstation."
The last sentence feels like an unintended scenario for this laptop. Mobile workstation to me says you need to do activities like CAD and/or purely business work, and requires a CAD card instead of the mainstream variant. This laptop's intended audience clearly isn't the business world.
Yeah that was my point. I'm actually willing to shell out $3700 on a laptop if it can replace every other computer in my life. If it can only replace a gaming machine then it's going to be limited to the niche of users who can afford paying that much just to bring their games around with them.
I'm with ya Brandon - always have been, as my laptop pays my mortgage, son's tuition, and wife's car payment;) As an OS X/macOS user over the last decade, their last half year 'computationally, has excited me as much as a three hundred mile road trip to grandpa and grandma's in the station wagon as a kid. And I can't be totally sure, but I think I might not be their 'audience' any longer...kinda feel unwanted after a pair of 17" 2008/2011 & two 15s in the Intel era, 2012 and 2015. Plenty between my '83 IIe and current 2015 15" ... I was very excited for your review Needless to say, I'm shocked at the results (even in comparison w/their small 14" model you reviewed, as the objective 'scores and analysis' are in the charts with both machines represented!)
From a few sentences later in the article it's clear that he's talking about a image/video editing workstation not a CAD box; for the former only the screen is really holding it back.
Mid level technical professionals... The business is buying it, so the price is pretty insignificant compared to salary and overheads. Sure, most of my workload is offloaded to a DB or compute node somewhere, but loads of prototyping and presentation workload is done on the laptop/client side.
Quadcore is essential just to run things like Excel/Tableau, and a decent graphics card is useful for Illustrator, or running neural nets; or spending a bit of time relaxing playing a game on an international business trip.
And if they want "pro" buy-in, it has to look like a professional tool - I can't turn up to a client meeting with a flashing garish "gaming laptop". The XPS 15 is a pretty good compromise on this front, it's just a pity it was limited to GTX 960M.
Rich kidz who play games and content creators who think that their web sized images will somehow load on this machine faster...
Price is ridiculous, screen, GPU & CPU should not cost more than 1000, the rest 500 leaving 500 margin for Razor if sold at realistic $2000 but no this costs $3699. What a joke.
That GPU alone was $700 in the desktop form up until a couple weeks ago, and the "recommended" price on that CPU is $378. I know Razer isn't paying retail on these things but if you believe $1,000 for the screen, CPU and CPU "should not cost more than 1000" then I think you are unaware of component prices. Yes this thing has huge margins, yes it's ridiculously overpriced, but I think your numbers are pure fantasy.
I just wanted to agree with the author on one point, I also have the deathadder and it is the greatest mouse I have ever used for any purpose. It has been beaten on relentlessly and still operates flawlessly. The rest of Razer's products are overpriced garbage (I say that from experience) but their mice are top notch.
I hope the current model deathadder chroma lives up to all the hype. I'm buying one as a gift for a certain mmo addict living in my home that's used a cheap Dell mouse to the point where the left mouse button isn't working anymore. I'm genuinely surprised the Dell lasted for so long (5 years) considering how much rage-clicking, grunting, and anger it endured. Even my son wasn't as hard on his mice back in the day when he was young and prone to gamer outbursts.
Plus one for the Deathadder. I've been using them for, I think, over 7 years. In my office I let anyone choose any mouse they like, and over half the staff have gone for a Deathadder. Conversely, for keyboards, no two people have chosen the same (I went for a Corsair K70)
Ah thanks for the insight! It's kind of funny this even came up here since I was planning to order one today. It's great to have a few thumbs up on it since it's a present...kind of makes it matter more that it works really well.
Don't bury the keyboard yet. :) It's also an OEM Dell board and it's holding up pretty well so far with no complaints. Unlike the mouse, I've not yet heard a complaint about it. I suppose if I ask, I might be opening the door for the next gift though. Haha, it's got to be timed well so it can fall relatively in line with a birthday, Christmas, or Baby Daddy Day yet not close enough to any of those so it can stay a surprise.
I'd love to see a review of the Koenigsegg One:1 and the journalist making a comment "but the bulk of the chassis is carbon fiber reinforced polymer, which is still plastic no matter how you put it." ;)
I mean, come on. This plastic bashing needs to stop. There are some products made of cheapo plastic that are absolutely terrible, and completely deserve to be called out, but it's not like every plastic product is bad and especially if the plastic we're talking about is carbon fiber. We use carbon fiber to replace aluminium in hypercars, planes, and spaceships, but suddenly it's not premium enough for a laptop?
Sorry if this reads like an angry rant, but I'm really tired of this notion that everything needs to be made of metal and glass or is otherwise inferior.
Let me know when the sensibilities of cars apply to laptops. It's not a coincidence that Razer is the only OEM who can pull off these thermal designs and are also basically the only one making gaming laptops out of aluminum. The material used for the chassis has a significant impact on the thermal profile.
You are right that aluminium is great from a thermal point of view but Barilla has a point that, as long as the thermal are OK, plastic is not inherently a bad design choice. Glass is a terrible material for everything except displays and yet reviewers never criticise it.
Plastic laptops usually survive long enough to provide an adequate service life to the owner. Cracks from fatigue and abuse that do happen sooner often don't adversely impact functionality enough to make a laptop unusable. Its not an ideal material for longevity, but computers have historically been produced with a limited useful lifespan in mind anyway. Although I'd also prefer some metal, in lower priced machines (certainly not the Razer Blade Pro in this review) plastics are a good enough solution.
I bought my wife a cheap $350 Acer (because she doesn't know the difference) and despite her repeated attempts, she has been unable to destroy it. Plastic is not premium, but is great when you are building things to a price point. Most consumer electronics sold are not the top-end gear.
I think the part I don't like about plastic laptops are those metal-in-plastic screw fittings where there's a little threaded cylinder for the screw that has that knotty outside and get stuffed into a hollow plastic tube. (No idea what the technical name for those things are.) The plastic sometimes will crack around them and the screws along with the threaded cylinder thingies will break free.
Ok, just to clarify - I have no issue with this laptop being made of aluminium, I even agree it's a good choice, although if I wanted to be picky, there are carbon fibre materials with thermal conductivity equal to or higher than aluminium.
I meant it on a more general level as your comment about carbon fibre mentioned Dell XPS, which in it's 13" version houses a 15W CPU and no dGPU, which means it needs to dissipate at most 1/10th the heat this laptop does.
Really, nothing against aluminium. Or magnesium either, as I'm typing this comment from a Surface. All I'm saying is that plastic, and especially carbon fibre, is a perfectly fine material in many - not all - applications, including some laptop and smartphone chassis.
I wonder whether people will ever get beyond that 'it looks more premium' mindset with CFRP (or even polycarb) vs. metals. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to buy 'plastic' versions of any portable electronics for impact resistance, metal devices are far too easy to dent and break. It's all very well having a metal phone or laptop, but if you have to keep it in a plastic/rubber case all the time to keep it safe, I don't see the point.
Carbon fibre is strong but to the best of my knowledge not usually a good conductor of heat except for certain specialised versions.
So unless Razer went with some kind of super carbon fibre the case won't be able to facilitate cooling (like an extended heat sink) as well as if it were aluminium. I doubt Razer did use a high conductivity fibre or they'd be marketing the hell out of that.
Instead they chose it probably for its high strength/rigidity to weight ratio, lower cost than aluminium and marketing because it sounds cool and high end.
If money (and weight) wasn't an option you could use lots of metal alloys that are more conductive than aluminium. Copper... gold ;)
PS: So I think most people are looking down on the CF for its thermal properties when compared with aluminium. Aluminium offers good weight and thermal properties but with high expense and lower hardness/rigidity than carbon fibre.
With a 1080 packed in there and a 180 W power adapter I reckon you'd want as much help dissipating heat as you can get. So carbon fibre seems like something of a compromise.
In order to plate the silver to make it strong enough I think it would interfere with the thermal transfer. I think nickel-plated copper would be the better choice, although it would still be soft. Aluminum really is the best choice.
I could be completely wrong but I think I remember seeing a documentary on the building of the triple 7 and 787 (Boeing) and their carbon fiber testing, the results and a line I thought was interesting from one of the folks speaking was his comparison with the aluminum and titanium alloys we'd been using and perfecting... was something to the effect of 'carbon fiber while 'stronger' in some situations and better dealing with fatigue over time... it's not as 'tough' as the metals - in that tests of the fuselage and, I believe, a 'drop test' actually 'broke' the CF fuselage while denting the aluminum fuselage...a test simulated as a hard landing The findings were escaping from an aluminum fuselage was more survivable than the CF/composite airframe in the case of a post breakup fire (aluminum dented will keep the fire out while the carbon fiber breaking was an immediate entry for fire to the cabin and more fuel) Not that this has any relevance lol...but the cases you mentioned were also low weight situations (race and space) where 'break ups' are built to absorb energy or for atmospheres with no... atmosphere. Or 'pressures', winds, etc. Good stuff but metal laptops are just great!
With NVidia calling the current gen of laptop GPUs as being equal to the Desktop versions, I think you should include the desktop cards in the GPU result tables.
The reviewer keeps harping on the CPU performance, but never acknowledges that a faster CPU would change the power and heat envelope, requiring a bigger power supply, more cooling and a bigger case.
The TDP of i7-6700HQ and i7-6920HQ are equivalent. I have it on good authority that 6920HQ would have worked perfectly well with no changes to the design of the laptop.
It would have impacted Razer's margins, nothing more. This is a cool laptop and all, but it's maybe $1500 worth of parts (for the $3800 version) with a massive markup.
Ok maybe $2,000. I just did a quick rundown of the BOM in my head, and even without Razer getting a sweetheart deal on any of the components (which of course they do) and the BOM is $2000-$2200. Either way there are margins there that Razer is I'm sure very pleased with. Even at this stratosphere It's probably harder to sell a $5k laptop than it is a $3k laptop, so they cut corners here and there. The reviewer aptly pointed out that the CPU and screen appear to be the two corners that were cut (and the stupid killer NIC).
The screen is actually quite good, as evidenced by the calibrated results. In face, it's exceptional. The problem is that Razer went on the cheap and didn't calibrate it at the factory. That's not hard to do in a large production plant. If a $650 iPhone can have a very accurate screen and make a handsome profit margin, a $3000 laptop can easily, too.
The difference is that Razer is not the OEM for any of the components in their laptops, whereas Apple is vertically integrated to the point where they are making their own SOCs (even if they are fabbed elsewhere). What Apple does is vastly different than what Razer does. End users (at least 99.9% of them) would not calibrate their screen. Sure, professionals who need color accuracy would, but most people won't. That's why it's so important for these companies to do the calibrations ahead of time, so the end user can just buy the thing, plug it in, and be wowed.
chassis size is set by the needed component and cooling volumes on this class of laptop. That means the only way for smaller bezels would be to use a bigger panel. Unfortunately the next bigger size, 18.4" is far more niche than even 17.3" (in conventional gaming laptop form factors it's almost exclusively used for SLI models); which means that Razer might not have been able to source a good high DPI panel. Assuming not, 1080p TN would be even worse.
Hey guys - we're at six months post-launch for the 2016 MBPs. I saw a comment a couple/few months ago about Ryan finishing up the review back then and am surprised it's taken so long to publish. Other outlets have obviously long since put up their reviews but have sadly (and as usual) fallen short of the detail I enjoy from AT reviews. Will we see it anytime soon? Are/were there issues with review samples, etc., or ?
"As time has gone on, Razer has iterated on the original Razer Blade, and introduced both a smaller model in the form of the Razer Blade Stealth, a 14-inch model to carry on the name of the original 17-inch Razer Blade..."
Nope, the 12.5" model is called the Stealth (Intel HD Graphics), the 14" model is called the Razer Blade (which has a GTX 1060), and this one is the Pro.
One issue I have with this review is the SUPER light touch when it came to the cooling performance. Razer laptops are super suave for sure and look great but for the last few years their cooling performance has been just about garbage. As you noted with the marketing driven design, cooling also suffers due to the need for "thinness" - I am speaking from painful experience here. I have a 2015 Razer Blade that I really liked except for when I had to use it.... Opening chrome would cause the fans to max and the CPU to throttle. It couldn't play Diablo 3 without my tuning the crap out of the CPU and game settings or else throttling and very unstable FPS would occur, never mind the nearly full speed fans at all times. I had to underclock and undervolt the CPU just to stop the throttling, fans were never great.
When you review a gaming laptop, saying the palm rest wasn't too hot is NOT at all acceptable for a "thermals" section. You should be running stress tests and showing us temperature readings from both software as well as your thermal camera. Then also include sound readings for the fan noise - thought this site used to provide audio recordings as well. And lately in my experience, the CPU throttling has been much more of an issue than the GPU - you mentioned this 0 times well commenting multiple times that the GPU didn't seem to be throttling.
Razer makes an undeniably pretty laptop but for me the thermals came across as an afterthought and that was not acceptable. They are simply trying to do too much in too little space with every laptop model except the Blade Stealth and they need to hear from the market that this is not going to cut it.
Agreed. I hunted all over for detailed thermal/noise info, and then actually re-checked the article title to make sure this wasn't one of their little previews. Odd that these mandatory metrics are glossed over. Especially important on gaming laptops, since these components produce far greater TDP than anything in non-gaming ones.
I have a Razer Pro 2016. It is VERY loud. Wear headphones. It does not have throttling problems. It does have to drop the boost clocks but never below the CPU's speed rating.
Thanks for the info. Would you say the thinner case is worth the noise or no? I would rather have a thicker case, but it does seem like some people need that thin factor.
3.54 kg / 7.8 lbs :( That weight alone makes all the improvements irrelevant for users that want a sleeker, more portable premium 17-incher. Both the 17" MacBook and the old 17" Razers were ~6.6 lbs. Such a shame they chose to sacrifice weight the new model after a 2-year wait.
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Eden-K121D - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Who'll buy this?Ninhalem - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
From the article: "The 2016 Razer Blade Pro is a great gaming laptop. I certainly wish I could afford one for myself. My life right now is characterized by frequent moving due to work and university, and something like the Blade Pro would allow me to bring an incredibly powerful machine with me wherever I go. While the Blade Pro fulfills its role as a high performance gaming machine, it did let me down as a mobile workstation."The last sentence feels like an unintended scenario for this laptop. Mobile workstation to me says you need to do activities like CAD and/or purely business work, and requires a CAD card instead of the mainstream variant. This laptop's intended audience clearly isn't the business world.
fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
No $4,000 laptop should be usable ONLY for gaming, any other laptop in this price range is a jack of all trades sans military laptops.Brandon Chester - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Yeah that was my point. I'm actually willing to shell out $3700 on a laptop if it can replace every other computer in my life. If it can only replace a gaming machine then it's going to be limited to the niche of users who can afford paying that much just to bring their games around with them.akdj - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link
I'm with ya Brandon - always have been, as my laptop pays my mortgage, son's tuition, and wife's car payment;)As an OS X/macOS user over the last decade, their last half year 'computationally, has excited me as much as a three hundred mile road trip to grandpa and grandma's in the station wagon as a kid. And I can't be totally sure, but I think I might not be their 'audience' any longer...kinda feel unwanted after a pair of 17" 2008/2011 & two 15s in the Intel era, 2012 and 2015. Plenty between my '83 IIe and current 2015 15"
... I was very excited for your review
Needless to say, I'm shocked at the results (even in comparison w/their small 14" model you reviewed, as the objective 'scores and analysis' are in the charts with both machines represented!)
Oh well, always a compromise
DanNeely - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
From a few sentences later in the article it's clear that he's talking about a image/video editing workstation not a CAD box; for the former only the screen is really holding it back.QuinRiva - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Mid level technical professionals... The business is buying it, so the price is pretty insignificant compared to salary and overheads. Sure, most of my workload is offloaded to a DB or compute node somewhere, but loads of prototyping and presentation workload is done on the laptop/client side.Quadcore is essential just to run things like Excel/Tableau, and a decent graphics card is useful for Illustrator, or running neural nets; or spending a bit of time relaxing playing a game on an international business trip.
And if they want "pro" buy-in, it has to look like a professional tool - I can't turn up to a client meeting with a flashing garish "gaming laptop". The XPS 15 is a pretty good compromise on this front, it's just a pity it was limited to GTX 960M.
milkod2001 - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link
Rich kidz who play games and content creators who think that their web sized images will somehow load on this machine faster...Price is ridiculous, screen, GPU & CPU should not cost more than 1000, the rest 500 leaving 500 margin for Razor if sold at realistic $2000 but no this costs $3699. What a joke.
fanofanand - Monday, March 13, 2017 - link
That GPU alone was $700 in the desktop form up until a couple weeks ago, and the "recommended" price on that CPU is $378. I know Razer isn't paying retail on these things but if you believe $1,000 for the screen, CPU and CPU "should not cost more than 1000" then I think you are unaware of component prices. Yes this thing has huge margins, yes it's ridiculously overpriced, but I think your numbers are pure fantasy.digiguy - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
One negative aspect seems to be unanimously mentioned by all reviewers: the keyboard is crap. Which, for a laptop, is a big negative.fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I just wanted to agree with the author on one point, I also have the deathadder and it is the greatest mouse I have ever used for any purpose. It has been beaten on relentlessly and still operates flawlessly. The rest of Razer's products are overpriced garbage (I say that from experience) but their mice are top notch.BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I hope the current model deathadder chroma lives up to all the hype. I'm buying one as a gift for a certain mmo addict living in my home that's used a cheap Dell mouse to the point where the left mouse button isn't working anymore. I'm genuinely surprised the Dell lasted for so long (5 years) considering how much rage-clicking, grunting, and anger it endured. Even my son wasn't as hard on his mice back in the day when he was young and prone to gamer outbursts.colonelclaw - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Plus one for the Deathadder. I've been using them for, I think, over 7 years. In my office I let anyone choose any mouse they like, and over half the staff have gone for a Deathadder. Conversely, for keyboards, no two people have chosen the same (I went for a Corsair K70)BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Ah thanks for the insight! It's kind of funny this even came up here since I was planning to order one today. It's great to have a few thumbs up on it since it's a present...kind of makes it matter more that it works really well.Don't bury the keyboard yet. :) It's also an OEM Dell board and it's holding up pretty well so far with no complaints. Unlike the mouse, I've not yet heard a complaint about it. I suppose if I ask, I might be opening the door for the next gift though. Haha, it's got to be timed well so it can fall relatively in line with a birthday, Christmas, or Baby Daddy Day yet not close enough to any of those so it can stay a surprise.
SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
I have a death adder and love it as well. I do hate the branding though.Barilla - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I'd love to see a review of the Koenigsegg One:1 and the journalist making a comment "but the bulk of the chassis is carbon fiber reinforced polymer, which is still plastic no matter how you put it." ;)I mean, come on. This plastic bashing needs to stop. There are some products made of cheapo plastic that are absolutely terrible, and completely deserve to be called out, but it's not like every plastic product is bad and especially if the plastic we're talking about is carbon fiber.
We use carbon fiber to replace aluminium in hypercars, planes, and spaceships, but suddenly it's not premium enough for a laptop?
Sorry if this reads like an angry rant, but I'm really tired of this notion that everything needs to be made of metal and glass or is otherwise inferior.
Brandon Chester - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Let me know when the sensibilities of cars apply to laptops. It's not a coincidence that Razer is the only OEM who can pull off these thermal designs and are also basically the only one making gaming laptops out of aluminum. The material used for the chassis has a significant impact on the thermal profile.BedfordTim - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
You are right that aluminium is great from a thermal point of view but Barilla has a point that, as long as the thermal are OK, plastic is not inherently a bad design choice. Glass is a terrible material for everything except displays and yet reviewers never criticise it.Murloc - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
plastic always cracks at some point.BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Plastic laptops usually survive long enough to provide an adequate service life to the owner. Cracks from fatigue and abuse that do happen sooner often don't adversely impact functionality enough to make a laptop unusable. Its not an ideal material for longevity, but computers have historically been produced with a limited useful lifespan in mind anyway. Although I'd also prefer some metal, in lower priced machines (certainly not the Razer Blade Pro in this review) plastics are a good enough solution.fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I bought my wife a cheap $350 Acer (because she doesn't know the difference) and despite her repeated attempts, she has been unable to destroy it. Plastic is not premium, but is great when you are building things to a price point. Most consumer electronics sold are not the top-end gear.BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I think the part I don't like about plastic laptops are those metal-in-plastic screw fittings where there's a little threaded cylinder for the screw that has that knotty outside and get stuffed into a hollow plastic tube. (No idea what the technical name for those things are.) The plastic sometimes will crack around them and the screws along with the threaded cylinder thingies will break free.Barilla - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Ok, just to clarify - I have no issue with this laptop being made of aluminium, I even agree it's a good choice, although if I wanted to be picky, there are carbon fibre materials with thermal conductivity equal to or higher than aluminium.I meant it on a more general level as your comment about carbon fibre mentioned Dell XPS, which in it's 13" version houses a 15W CPU and no dGPU, which means it needs to dissipate at most 1/10th the heat this laptop does.
Really, nothing against aluminium. Or magnesium either, as I'm typing this comment from a Surface. All I'm saying is that plastic, and especially carbon fibre, is a perfectly fine material in many - not all - applications, including some laptop and smartphone chassis.
Peace.
Azurael - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I wonder whether people will ever get beyond that 'it looks more premium' mindset with CFRP (or even polycarb) vs. metals. Personally, I'd prefer to be able to buy 'plastic' versions of any portable electronics for impact resistance, metal devices are far too easy to dent and break. It's all very well having a metal phone or laptop, but if you have to keep it in a plastic/rubber case all the time to keep it safe, I don't see the point.simonm - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Carbon fibre is strong but to the best of my knowledge not usually a good conductor of heat except for certain specialised versions.So unless Razer went with some kind of super carbon fibre the case won't be able to facilitate cooling (like an extended heat sink) as well as if it were aluminium. I doubt Razer did use a high conductivity fibre or they'd be marketing the hell out of that.
Instead they chose it probably for its high strength/rigidity to weight ratio, lower cost than aluminium and marketing because it sounds cool and high end.
If money (and weight) wasn't an option you could use lots of metal alloys that are more conductive than aluminium. Copper... gold ;)
simonm - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Correction: change option to issue!PS: So I think most people are looking down on the CF for its thermal properties when compared with aluminium. Aluminium offers good weight and thermal properties but with high expense and lower hardness/rigidity than carbon fibre.
With a 1080 packed in there and a 180 W power adapter I reckon you'd want as much help dissipating heat as you can get. So carbon fibre seems like something of a compromise.
colonelclaw - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Surely carbon fibre is much more expensive than aluminium? That's the impression I always got from products that use it, or is that just marketing?fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Carbon Fiber (the high-tech variety) is far more expensive than aluminum.Bullwinkle J Moose - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
if money (and weight) wasn't an option.....Diamond plated Silver would be a far better thermal conductor than Copper or Gold
Diamond has 3X the thermal conductivity of even silver
But a diamond frost coat on copper would look better
A Rose Gold that costs as much as real Gold
Sound like an Apple Product!
SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
In order to plate the silver to make it strong enough I think it would interfere with the thermal transfer. I think nickel-plated copper would be the better choice, although it would still be soft. Aluminum really is the best choice.sorten - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
I prefer plastic laptops to aluminum because I don't want to rest my wrists on a cold laptop in the morning. To each their own.akdj - Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - link
I could be completely wrong but I think I remember seeing a documentary on the building of the triple 7 and 787 (Boeing) and their carbon fiber testing, the results and a line I thought was interesting from one of the folks speaking was his comparison with the aluminum and titanium alloys we'd been using and perfecting... was something to the effect of 'carbon fiber while 'stronger' in some situations and better dealing with fatigue over time... it's not as 'tough' as the metals - in that tests of the fuselage and, I believe, a 'drop test' actually 'broke' the CF fuselage while denting the aluminum fuselage...a test simulated as a hard landingThe findings were escaping from an aluminum fuselage was more survivable than the CF/composite airframe in the case of a post breakup fire (aluminum dented will keep the fire out while the carbon fiber breaking was an immediate entry for fire to the cabin and more fuel)
Not that this has any relevance lol...but the cases you mentioned were also low weight situations (race and space) where 'break ups' are built to absorb energy or for atmospheres with no... atmosphere. Or 'pressures', winds, etc.
Good stuff but metal laptops are just great!
DanNeely - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
With NVidia calling the current gen of laptop GPUs as being equal to the Desktop versions, I think you should include the desktop cards in the GPU result tables.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
You still have clock speed differenceszeeBomb - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
A laptop that I'll (probably) never getzeeBomb - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
“Using two SSDs in RAID0 is not beneficial, but it does have many drawbacks.” ???Faulty paralleslm here?
Brandon Chester - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Good catch. That sentence is a bit awkward. "Not beneficial" was meant to mean, not advantageous. I've reworded it.zeeBomb - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
OK great. I guess my quick proof reading helped in class hahaZan Lynx - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
The reviewer keeps harping on the CPU performance, but never acknowledges that a faster CPU would change the power and heat envelope, requiring a bigger power supply, more cooling and a bigger case.Brandon Chester - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
The TDP of i7-6700HQ and i7-6920HQ are equivalent. I have it on good authority that 6920HQ would have worked perfectly well with no changes to the design of the laptop.digiguy - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
yes, it would have only impacted cost (and maybe to a limited extent noise)fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
It would have impacted Razer's margins, nothing more. This is a cool laptop and all, but it's maybe $1500 worth of parts (for the $3800 version) with a massive markup.fanofanand - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Ok maybe $2,000. I just did a quick rundown of the BOM in my head, and even without Razer getting a sweetheart deal on any of the components (which of course they do) and the BOM is $2000-$2200. Either way there are margins there that Razer is I'm sure very pleased with. Even at this stratosphere It's probably harder to sell a $5k laptop than it is a $3k laptop, so they cut corners here and there. The reviewer aptly pointed out that the CPU and screen appear to be the two corners that were cut (and the stupid killer NIC).erple2 - Wednesday, March 8, 2017 - link
The screen is actually quite good, as evidenced by the calibrated results. In face, it's exceptional. The problem is that Razer went on the cheap and didn't calibrate it at the factory. That's not hard to do in a large production plant. If a $650 iPhone can have a very accurate screen and make a handsome profit margin, a $3000 laptop can easily, too.fanofanand - Monday, March 13, 2017 - link
The difference is that Razer is not the OEM for any of the components in their laptops, whereas Apple is vertically integrated to the point where they are making their own SOCs (even if they are fabbed elsewhere). What Apple does is vastly different than what Razer does. End users (at least 99.9% of them) would not calibrate their screen. Sure, professionals who need color accuracy would, but most people won't. That's why it's so important for these companies to do the calibrations ahead of time, so the end user can just buy the thing, plug it in, and be wowed.mobutu - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
It's unacceptable for a modern machine to have those kind of bezels.DanNeely - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
chassis size is set by the needed component and cooling volumes on this class of laptop. That means the only way for smaller bezels would be to use a bigger panel. Unfortunately the next bigger size, 18.4" is far more niche than even 17.3" (in conventional gaming laptop form factors it's almost exclusively used for SLI models); which means that Razer might not have been able to source a good high DPI panel. Assuming not, 1080p TN would be even worse.prophet001 - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Too much thermal throttling.You can't dissipate enough heat out of that laptop for a 1080.
jsntech - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
Hey guys - we're at six months post-launch for the 2016 MBPs. I saw a comment a couple/few months ago about Ryan finishing up the review back then and am surprised it's taken so long to publish. Other outlets have obviously long since put up their reviews but have sadly (and as usual) fallen short of the detail I enjoy from AT reviews. Will we see it anytime soon? Are/were there issues with review samples, etc., or ?Aman5ingh - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link
"As time has gone on, Razer has iterated on the original Razer Blade, and introduced both a smaller model in the form of the Razer Blade Stealth, a 14-inch model to carry on the name of the original 17-inch Razer Blade..."Nope, the 12.5" model is called the Stealth (Intel HD Graphics), the 14" model is called the Razer Blade (which has a GTX 1060), and this one is the Pro.
Notmyusualid - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link
Lovely machine.They should hire you for product development!
I'd add only this, the screen: 4k too high, 60Hz too low.
I think I could live with that CPU, but not the screen.
I'm on my 6th DTR, and I'm now longing for something like this...
Peace.
scook9 - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link
One issue I have with this review is the SUPER light touch when it came to the cooling performance. Razer laptops are super suave for sure and look great but for the last few years their cooling performance has been just about garbage. As you noted with the marketing driven design, cooling also suffers due to the need for "thinness" - I am speaking from painful experience here. I have a 2015 Razer Blade that I really liked except for when I had to use it.... Opening chrome would cause the fans to max and the CPU to throttle. It couldn't play Diablo 3 without my tuning the crap out of the CPU and game settings or else throttling and very unstable FPS would occur, never mind the nearly full speed fans at all times. I had to underclock and undervolt the CPU just to stop the throttling, fans were never great.When you review a gaming laptop, saying the palm rest wasn't too hot is NOT at all acceptable for a "thermals" section. You should be running stress tests and showing us temperature readings from both software as well as your thermal camera. Then also include sound readings for the fan noise - thought this site used to provide audio recordings as well. And lately in my experience, the CPU throttling has been much more of an issue than the GPU - you mentioned this 0 times well commenting multiple times that the GPU didn't seem to be throttling.
Razer makes an undeniably pretty laptop but for me the thermals came across as an afterthought and that was not acceptable. They are simply trying to do too much in too little space with every laptop model except the Blade Stealth and they need to hear from the market that this is not going to cut it.
jsntech - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link
Agreed. I hunted all over for detailed thermal/noise info, and then actually re-checked the article title to make sure this wasn't one of their little previews. Odd that these mandatory metrics are glossed over. Especially important on gaming laptops, since these components produce far greater TDP than anything in non-gaming ones.Zan Lynx - Wednesday, March 8, 2017 - link
I have a Razer Pro 2016. It is VERY loud. Wear headphones. It does not have throttling problems. It does have to drop the boost clocks but never below the CPU's speed rating.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
Thanks for the info. Would you say the thinner case is worth the noise or no? I would rather have a thicker case, but it does seem like some people need that thin factor.yhselp - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
3.54 kg / 7.8 lbs :( That weight alone makes all the improvements irrelevant for users that want a sleeker, more portable premium 17-incher. Both the 17" MacBook and the old 17" Razers were ~6.6 lbs. Such a shame they chose to sacrifice weight the new model after a 2-year wait.SkipPerk - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link
Isn't that all the GPU and cooling? How can you get that much GPU in a light weight notebook?