2014 Razer Blade Pro Review

Well, I've had it for about a week now, and by request I present you with. . my impressions of the 2014 Blade pro!

Build quality:

It's typical Razer. High end aluminum, feels really solid, highly recommend a left hand wrist rest glove if you tend to slouch. There's a very little bit of flex in the lid if you grab it from the corner, but it doesn't have that loose "plasticky" feel that some less expensive notebooks with thin screens exhibit. The only huge nitpick that I have is that they didn't upgrade this to a glass edge to edge panel. The bezel looks ok, but edge to edge would have made it look *SO* much cleaner and more elegant. Granted, it would also probably have added a little weight, but I'd expect Razer to be ok with improving form over utility (let's face it, Razer *DOES* = Flash, regardless of how competent the product)

Keyboard/SBUI trackpad:

Keyboard feels very tight, a little bit less travel than a macbook pro or steelseries notebook keyboard, but a little bit more travel than the cheaper shallow notebook keyboards. If you have any sweat or grease on your fingers, the keys get shiny fairly quickly, so make sure to carry a cleaning cloth and some eyeglass cleaner or equivilant with you. The keys are fairly well spaced out and they're comfortable for me, though I'll admit I don't have massively huge hands. SBUI works really well. . they seem to have sorted out most of the numberpad sensitivity issues I remember from my brief stint with the 2013 version last year, and I *REALLY* like the addition of the resource monitor, Twitch, and windows 8 shortcuts apps. On the downside, custom macros for the SBUI keys are not working properly, as the icons associated with my shortcuts vanish on startup. The shortcuts still work, but the keys aren't lighting up. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO CUSTOM SHORTCUTS. If you hit the razer button to bring the trackpad back to the default app selection, they work fine, so I'm guessing it's a Synapse issue. I also had some initial issues where the trackpad somehow didn't sync on startup, and had to close out and restart synapse to get it to "log in", but that hasn't happened in a few days, so it may have been an issue between synapse and comms [it's a long story, I'll get to it]

Temps:

Disclaimer: I have never attempted to do a video like this before. it is a first time, so don't go TOO hard on me

[extra note: test was done on stock "balanced" power settings] GPU was not overclocked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlhAeq-rLPI&feature=youtu.be

Room temp at time of test was: 70f. What you CAN'T see from the video is that the chassis of the notebook DOES act as a heat sync to draw heat away from the CPU/GPU./ Above the keyboard gets warm. not Ow I burned myself hot, but warm. ALMOST uncomfortably at times if the ambient temp is 75+f warm. The keyboard doesn't get to that point, though after an hour or two the whole chassis starts to slowly heat soak. Again, never anything uncomfortable, but it is noticable [well, unless you're wearing the aforementioned padded wrist glove]



WIFI:

I have read complaints about Intel's Wireless AC offerings, and this notebook does nothing to dispel them. The settings out of the box ARE NOT IDEAL. You've got to make sure you're on 40Mhz, that WMM is enabled, and preferably be on a 5Ghz band. My Asus AC66-R is probably about 8 or 9 ft away on the first floor, going through a floor and at least 2 walls. I get 3 bars and a speed of around 351Mbps My desktop, right next to it, with the broadcomm adapter on the Impact VI M-ITX gets about 545Mbps. Granted, there's a bit more wire, and it's not on any kind of power savings, but still. . that seems to be a huge difference for less than 2 ft .

Display:

It's the same TN panel as the 2013. It's crisp, it's bright, it's got an anti glare coating on it that from certain angles CAN make it look a little grainy, or like it's got a screen protector on it. 99% of the time you probably won't notice it, but i still think a nice class IPS 1080 edge to edge would've absolutely MADE this notebook. Your opinion may differ.

Sound:

Meh

Sound, expanded:

Meh, I've heard better. With the dolby software, it kinda sorta works, but don't expect high fidelity B&O sound out of this thing. I think my nexus 5 external speaker has better sound, actually. I bought a set of Razer Adaro Wireless headphones. I HIGHLY recommend them. No cash left? use your iPhone/Skull Candy/'borrowed" from the hotel exercise room headphones" It may not be much better, but it can't be much worse. Volume wise they're adequate. ultimately Razer left all that empty space above the keyboard, and couldn't think of a way to expand the speaker grille and add something a little bigger? Well, they spent all their R&D on the 14" I guess.

TL/DR: They're notebook speakers. They sound like notebook speakers. Don't expect miracles.

Battery life:

I haven't done any kind of full test battery or anything, after having it disconnected for 2 or 3 hours doing light browsing, youtube watching, it hasn't gone under 50%. That's with monitor around half brightness. It's entirely subjective, however, based on your preferences, power settings, and usage. You could probably get 6 hours out of it if you absolutely HAD to, and I'd be surprised if you got less than 4 with light browsing and monitor at 50%.

Extended usage and comfort:

Third time I'm gonna say this: it's made of aluminum, and the wrist wrest is hard and cool, or hard and slightly warm. a padded wrist rest glove is a VERY nice accesory to this notebook. With that lone accessory, I'm very comfortable with 3+ hour Diablo 3 sessions. I haven't really experienced much eye fatigue with the screen, though the anti glare coating occasionally has me shutting off lights around me or adjusting the tilt. The screen looks just as good through a pair of Gunnars. In addition, i do extended web surfing, spreadsheet editing, and document typing for work. Overall I'm very VERY comfortable with it, and prefer using it to my desktop most of the time. My wrist rest, my headset, and my Blade pro, and I'm good for the day.

Webcam:

it's 2MP. it's a standard notebook webcam. Razer could've done better for the price. They could've just ripped the optics off a nokia lumia 1520 and made a mockery of the competition in an area where nobody really cares. I suppose I wouldn't have done it either, but I can dream

And lastly, bringing this novel to a close:

ISSUES:

I've mentioned some. occasional issues where SBUI did not sync to the trackpad at launch is one. Restarting synapse fixes that one. User programmed macro buttons icons not activating after restart. I have an email in to razer about it. I sent it last week. I got no answer.

Diablo 3 specific issues:

Do not load the 337.50 beta drivers and/or the latest version of GeForce experience that accompanies it. This caused an issue that, apparently, has been around on and off for awhile, and causes you to be completely unable to activate D3 on discreet graphics. The option to run with the 860m is greyed out, and as of D3 update 2.04, the workaround where you create a shortcut and modify it to bypass battle.net no longer works [at least, it didn't for me] I had to roll back to the stock drivers off of razer's website to get it working again. On a side note, integrated graphics ran D3 at 1080 with medium settings in the low 30 FPS range. It's no 860m, but it ran.

D3 will not launch/restart issue

May be related to Razer Comms, this just started happening yesterday and I'm not 100% sure why. I'll hit play, the splash screen will come up, vanish, and that's all I ever hear. It's still running in task manager, and I can close it out, but I get NOTHING until I restart. Both times this has happened, I started Comms RIGHT before launching, so I have my suspicions, but nothing concrete. As I isolate it, I'll update.

Any questions, comments, things I haven't covered here PLEASE let me know, i'll be glad to answer. Wanna give me a little practice on my youtube skills or looking for other tests or temps with other software, let me know, and if I have it, I'll be glad to post it up.

 

Awesome! Thanks for doing that.

I can't really hear the fans until you get pretty close. Interesting.

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

After tweaking your wi-fi settings, how would you rate it performance-wise?

 

It works, and the latency isn't horrible. I'm sure the difference in signal strength is all in the available antenna area, but I don't like how sparse the fine tuning options are in control panel. I'm half tempted to swap the one from my desktop into the blade pro to do a comparison... eventually. once I start digging into a machine, it tends to get. . . excessive

 

Ah, thanks for letting me know! If you do give in to temptation and swap it out, I'd be interested in hearing how that goes.

 

Unfortunately, you won't. I've had this issue for months(on the 2013 that Razer RMA'd and now it still happens on the 2014), and it seems to be related to Synapse connecting to the internet IMMEDIATELY at start-up. Razer support suggests reinstalling Synapse with the newest from their site, and it'll work for a day or two, and then it'll go back to not loading.

You don't need to fully exit Synapse, however. You can do a "Change User" and re-login, and it'll load the switchblade UI just fine. I've pretty much given up on a fix for this issue, as Razer won't even acknowledge that it exists.

 

Can you run gpuz and post a screenshot of the 860M? I'm pretty sure I heard it was Maxwell but a core count would take all mystery out.

 

I've had the same issues, and Razer collected some logs to escalate to the engineers on this, seems to be under investigation.

Are you sure you hit the right support, email [email protected], seems to get the fastest response.

 

Hot from the camera lense to your eyes ^^

 

Thank you for posting this review, we would like to assist with the issue, please email us the case #, as we are unable to locate your case via our support system. Please provide an identifying detail.

[email protected]

 

Responded directly via Email.

 

Please provide an identifying detail, such as the case #, or a unique detail in the email. Thanks!

 

Hey mindinversion, How are you finding the 3200x1800 screen and Windows 8 that comes along with it. I've heard stuff about things not displaying properly in the native resolution, ie chrome and some other applications.

 

The screen on the 17" is the same 1920 x 1080 TN panel from last year's model. Only the 14" gets the shiny new UHD screen.

As far as Windows 8 is concerned, I PERSONALLY love it, even on non touch screens... but I've been using it since the original developer preview, so I've had time to get used to it. The best advice I can give anyone is to head over to your local retailer and just ask them for a guided tour of how the operating system works (I'm sure youtube has a ton of links for people unfamiliar as well)

I can't STAND 7 anymore. Annoyingly stupid start menu. . . open it up, drag up, select what you're looking for, mouse slips 15 times, takes 10 minutes to open anything. . .I always hated the start menu Win8 just so much less time consuming to me, but the #1 reason is a new shortcut they put into Win 8:

WIN key + x. Program files, search, run command line, command line admin, control panel....it's all in there.

 

Well if you use key shortcuts 7 and 8 are almost identical. Windows 8 does have increased performance (system and somewhat gaming) at the cost of having a disruptive start menu (flashes across whole screen = cognitively disruptive). Both work fine IMO.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

How do you like the screen? Are you happy with how the resolution appears?

Also how is fan noise? Is it loud? Thanks!

 

There is a video if you read the first few posts.

 

Well the wife's GS60 got here yesterday. I'll see about getting a comparative review up in the next few days and linking it here, but the short and skinny is: They perform about the same. Same basic temps, same basic FPS...I'm not sure how I feel about the chassis on the GS60, but the keyboard feels a little firmer than the Blade, and there's a little bit more travel.
Trackpad on the thing is absolutely terrible tho...

Also, submitted another support ticket for SBUI issues. I'll keep the post updated as that progresses.

 

Comparison review is up:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi...4-razer-blade-pro-comparison.html#post9635402