And it is announced - Razer Blade 2016

Last bit of info I heard was that all pre-orders have been pushed back until April 25 to accommodate an Intel update. Other than that nothing.

 

Posts on razer's forums from customers said it's been delayed again due to a warehousing issue or some ****. This is really annoying- it must be killer for people who preordered

 

Yes indeed the waiting game sucks. Would be nice if Razer was at least a bit more communicative about the delay/specific dates.

 

Yeah I cancelled my order and got an xps15 today. Hoping egpus work with it at some point

 

Please post your opinions here when you get it. I'd love to hear your feedback.

 

My wife is really liking hers now. I'm a little jealous of the screen and the footprint. She says she's used better keyboard but it'll do. It's funny because she keeps saying the screen is smaller than her last laptop but it's actually the same size. It's just there are no bezels and it's not a full keyboard, so it really does seem smaller. If I don't like the new blade, I'm strongly considering picking up another one of these for myself.

 

So the XP15 is actually very nice

I got the 4k display, 16gb ram, 512 SSD, 960M i7 for $2,5k cad (the Blade 2016 would cost me $3k CAD).

Build quality is very solid, battery life is no where near what they claim. I have no issue with the keyboard, but then again I use a logitech g910 which most people seem to hate but I found it fine.

The infinity display looks absolutely amazing and color reproduction is REALLY good. My normal monitor is a Benq 27inch 1080p 1ms gtg TN display though, so if you've using a better display the difference might not be that huge.


A big gripe i have is that I still want to dock with a TB15 dock but it costs $300, makes the core seem not so absurdly priced.


gaming wise, its a 960M, I mostly only play dota 2 and csgo so no issues for me. More demanding games might have issues. Also I would like displayport, but neither the razer or xps has that...

 

I get 7 hours now after tweaking and watching my C7% core time with throttlestop with the task manager open. I am in 95% C7 on all 4 cores now, which means it's using nearly no power on idle. Razer synapse, google drive, and the dell audio drivers (used realtek generic) were giant pieces of **** that I had to uninstall. With a stock install you're looking at 75% C7, which is terrible. It's worth putting the time in.

 

Hmm, interesting. I've been kinda busy but I'll look into it. 7 hours seems more than enough tbh.

 

So disappointed they didn't make the back logo also RGB

 

If they just did their logo in black aluminum like it is on the core it would look 10x better.

 

It's probably possible to create an aluminum sticker that would block a decent amount of light in the shape of the logo. Personally I don't find it offensive, it's one of the most understated gaming notebooks around.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

My only hope is they made the lighting more subtle like on the stealth and give you the ability to turn it brighter if you want to. I didn't find the stealth to be near as bad as the previous razer blade. At least it's flush so you can cover it though

 

Sorry guys I don't mean to turn this into a Dell XPS 15 vs 2016 Razer Blade match but both offer very intriguing specs and reason to buy.
Still have my 2014 Blade and everything works great but I'm looking for a future eGPU laptop , I wish Razer also made a Blade with 960M and lower res screen to offer a cheaper alternative than spending 2k+ on a laptop.I'm not sure how much of a performance gain you get a with the 970m vs Core with let's say for fun a GTX 980ti using TB3 with bandwidth limitations.
That's where the XPS comes in its cheaper ( I can get a i7-6700HQ CPU around $1300-$1400 range) has a great screen too and most importantly TB3 but no one knows for sure if the Core is going to work with the XPS
The other alternative is the ACER Nitro but it's a distant 3rd ( build quality not as good but decent specs)but I think it has a better chance working with the Core only because ACER is going to have there own eGPU Dock but with much lower specs (960M in dock) .
So my question is what are the chances of other laptops with TB3 getting the core to play nice together? And will we see a significant enough performance gain adding the Core(GTX 980ti or whatever) over the stock 970m in the Blade knowing there will be bandwidth limitations using TB3?
Thanks and sorry for the rambling post....

 

I think Min-Liang was saying it would be possible for the core to work with other laptops, but there's ZERO way to answer this until it's released and we see people trying it.

I would imagine a 980ti in a Core would walk all over a 970M.


Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

I believe every communication from Razer thus far is that they would not limit the Core's usage on other TB3 laptops, but that it would be up to the other manufacturers like Dell to allow for external graphics support on their products.

I have been using the XPS 15 for a little bit now and it really is an almost dream device. The only real complaints I have are that the 960M is a bit underpowered for the most recent games, no RGB lighting to play with, and that it really seems like they could have put a larger keyboard on this device. Once you see the edge to edge display it becomes difficult to go back to anything else with even a normal bezel.

 

I believe the XPS 15 would require a BIOS update which would depend on Dell.

 

Got another e-mail today saying that the shipping date has been pushed back yet again to May 18th...

 

Wow. That's frustrating. They should give you guys a free core if it delays again.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

People can always just cancel..

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

But their mental anguish still lingers. Nothing worst than expecting such a toy only to keep having it pushed back, and back, and back.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Mental anguish?



Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Mental Anguish.

 

Mental, freaking, anguish...

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

lol, this thread is becoming like a kickstarter story with the constant delay

 

Has anyone actually been charged already? If not then no, it's nothing like that.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Well, the money was taken from my account, but it hasn't been claimed by Razer... so it's deducted from my available funds but if I ask the bank the funds are just on hold... so they're like, in Limbo...

<shrugs />

 

Yeah that's just a typical auth hold

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

Did Razer confirm that they are using the exact same QHD+ panel in the 2016 Blade as they did in the 2015 version?

 

If the screenshots from China were accurate, it's the exact same screen. They showed a window that listed the same model.

Link: http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4467015039

 

Hope it's got more longevity than before. Had a lot of backlight bleed/light spots appear after a few months.

 

I've still got my 2014 Blade and have to admit the screen is still stunning and really have no backlight bleed at all .

 

White pressure spots appeared on my 14' Razer Blade as well. It goes horizontally across the panel about 1.5-2 inches from the bottom edge. It is only noticeable when a light background is on, such as if you're on the Google page. It is definitely a design flaw and makes me reluctant to consider a 2016 RB as the panel and design is identical.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Doing a one-week swap with a buddy who is testing my XPS 15 while I use his 2015 Razer Blade. I have to say that I'm pretty underwhelmed by the display on this thing as the colors seem to wash out as soon as I am not looking at it straight on...

 

I was never impressed with the display on the RB. Viewing angles are awful.

I'm leaning more and more about getting the Dell. I have been fine with the 2014 in terms of graphics, so I won't be missing much in that department by going away from the 2016 RB.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Yup, that's the crappiest part about the machine alright. It certainly could be worse but I was always conscious of it. I remember being able to improve it somewhat by lowering the brightness in Intel's graphics settings. You lose a little contrast though...

 

That would explain why they appeared later. I didn't notice them until I was doing a lot of writing on a white background, and I thought it was just a smudge on my screen protector. In addition to some faint lighter spots in the middle, there was also bleeding at the bottom and top. I definitely babied the laptop as well. When I saw that the 2016 uses the same screen I decided I wouldn't buy it. The viewing angles and backlight issues cap it.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this and not the only one who shares the same opinion on this panel and their decision to invest on them again. I wouldn't mind going with the matte 1080P version had there been one, but seems as if they decided to skip it.

Now I need to do more research on the benchmarks between the 960M and my video card to see if it's worthy of an upgrade.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Yikes, between all these shipping delays and them using the same panel again I think that may have sealed my decision to cancel my preorder. The screen on this Blade 2015 really does not hold a candle to the UHD screen on the XPS. I guess I'll just wait and hope for Razer Core support on the XPS then.

 

The razer looks pretty nice. Kinda like macbook but in black lol. Quite expensive too.

 

Hey I've do a lot of video editing in the field and have been eyeing up the Blade with the 970m for awhile now and eventually a Core to step it up when needed. Was wondering if the RAM can be upgraded or if it's already maxed out and if its easy to swap the PCIe SSD to something bigger then 512? Thanks...

 

The RAM I believe is soldered in the motherboard so 16GB is all you get. The storage capacity itself if it's the same as previous blades it should be upgradable without voiding the warranty to 512GB. I've been eyeing this also and I'd personally be getting the 256GB edition and upgrading that to a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB. I want to wait until I see a couple of reviews from people until then. Seems like the moved the shipping ETA to May 18 instead of end of April. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.

I really wish they extended their warranty to 3 years or maybe even 2. 1 year just shows me that they aren't really confident with their product

 

Fixed that for you. RAM = Random Access Memory

 

No, he had it right in his original post. It's only a hard drive when you're talking about storage devices that use spinning magnetic platters. It's correct to use storage, storage drive, or storage device when just talking generically about something that holds data without referring to the underlying technology on how that data is stored.

Yes, RAM is soldered (and therefore not upgradeable).

Yes, storage capacity is self-upgradrable. Any M.2 SSD will work. If you specifically go with NVMe drives (faster), like the Samsung 950 Pro or SM951, then you currently max out at 512GB capacity. If you go with M.2 SATA / AHCI drives (slower), like the Samsung 850 EVO, then you max out at 1TB capacity.

However, it is worth noting that the speed difference between "faster" and "slower" NVMe / AHCI drives is irrelevant. You will only notice the speed difference in storage benchmarks or file copy operations of large sequential files. There is no practical difference in day-to-day operations like booting Windows, loading apps, loading games, multitasking, etc. So unless you intend to run benchmarks, copy files all day, or do professional photo / video editing, then the extra speed on "faster" NVMe drives isn't going to matter.

So if you are looking for the best practical way to spend your money, stick with Samsung 850 EVO drives (and not NVMe drives).

 

always funny when a correction is wrong.

 

I think we all knew he meant the SSD when he was talking storage.

Sent from a 128th Legion Stormtrooper 6P

 

I just got my shipping notification email.

Oddly enough, with the delays and all, I am not excited, hah!

I should have it on Thursday, and will install Heroes of the Storm ASAP

 

When did you order and what model?

 

Order date is March 17, and it is the 256GB model. The Core should be coming soon... May 23 or so.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Cool, I'm not far behind then. Glad to see they finally shipped a 256gb model. All I've been seeing are 512