I keep hearing drastically different reports on this from Overheating Mofsets to bad screens etc.... Those of you who have owned a blade for awhile (Which year do you have, and how has it been to you?)
Cheers!
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
The 2013-2015 models all had the Mosfets which were pushed beyond spec and would randomly die. They also had the vBIOS chip under the heatsink making it overheat and crap out. These models are all just asking for trouble. The newer have moved the vBIOS chip and the TDP-crippled 1060 doesn't overload the fets as bad but it's still nowhere near an actually good design. I would strongly suggest avoiding these if possible, especially considering Razer's customer support is practically the worst in the industry - nobody can deny or dispute that, especially former or current owners.
Aivxtla, ThePerfectStorm, SimplyJ3sse and 1 other person like this. -
If you really want a Blade buy it from the MS Store who most of the time if something is wrong will just give you a knew one.Last edited: Jun 12, 2017hmscott likes this. -
It's actually a 2017 Blade I happened to win, but i'm being told I should just sell it and get something else.
hmscott likes this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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Check out the Razer Insider forums for better information and comparisons on the Blade VS other models. It's really not too biased. These forums get way too toxic and half the time can be misleading. Good luck with your choice!
Vistar Shook, bradleyjb and hmscott like this. -
Haven't seen you around for a while, hope you are doing wellThePerfectStorm, Papusan, Vistar Shook and 2 others like this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
Rideass, ThePerfectStorm, Papusan and 3 others like this. -
I can tell you first hand thats not true. Especially because I'm one of the mods on their forum. Other than it not being a "support" forum there is a lot of great information and comparisons. The community is pretty tight nit.
Sent from my SM-G955U using TapatalkVistar Shook, bradleyjb and hmscott like this. -
.. But great information and benchmarking. Great hearing from you! Aside from being busy things have been pretty good. I'll hit you up later to catch up.
Sent from my SM-G955U using TapatalkVistar Shook and hmscott like this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
A person got banned for posting a better TIM solution IIRC - don't even try to make that forum seem open to criticism - it is virtually impossible to say anything negative there without it being taken down. Many have tried to point out the glaring flaws in these machines but it's virtually impossible on that forum.
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Papusan, Eason and don_svetlio like this.
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I have helped a ton of people figure things out that didn't require going through support. Mostly because I'm pretty good with maintenance etc. I have also owned 3 different Blade models. Anyway those threads never got closed like people tend to claim. It's not nearly as bad as.. Again.. This forum tends to stress. You hear 80% negative and 20% positive. That's why I stopped in to balance out where I saw this topic going.
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If no "support questions" or any negative feedback - as patiently and respectfully given as possible isn't allowed in the Razer forums then potential and future customers aren't going to see a real view of what it's like to own a Razer.
In comparison a "real" support site with 80% real customer negative posts are more indicative of the real world consequences of living with a Razer as a customer.
So, hate to burst your bubble, but that bubble around the Razer forum isn't representative of real life owning a Razer laptop... this is, and it ain't pretty.Last edited: Jun 12, 2017ThePerfectStorm, Papusan, SimplyJ3sse and 3 others like this. -
At the very least I wanted to make sure people look elsewhere and don't just go off these forums. So you can make a more educated decision than ending up in a flame war. The grass isn't always greener on the other side. Not trying to pull eyelids over people's eyes or anything.
Look at Linus from Linus Tech... If these machines are so horrible I don't think he'd buy an entire lot for his staff as their primary portable solutions. He didn't get to 4 million subs for nothing!
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It's as always, if you have good experiences then you want to share them, and if you have bad experiences you also want to share them.
It's Razers push to sell performance in a thin profile, that's patently impossible, yet they still PR it into innocent minds, even after they get burned time after time after time, they swear they aren't going to get suckered in again, but they do.
I've had guys that have had 2 generations and 6 swaps come back when the new Razer releases and ask if we think it's gonna be good this time...
Hope Springs Eternal.
Unfortunately Hope doesn't Cool the CPU / GPU, or provide enough power to run at full performance out of a 250w PSU when a 330w PSU is required -
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@LiquidEvilGaming - everything you've read is valid. I own the 2017 Blade, also owned Skylake 1060 Blade. Here is a list:
-Support: worst in the industry. I requested a refund for one of my defective Blades and Razer shipped me a new one instead. Then it took over a month to get a refund from them. I had to file a dispute with my credit card company to get them to act.
-QC: also very suspect. I went through 6 Kabylake Blades before getting my current perfect one. Bottom screen bezel was loose on multiple units, leading to very bad backlight bleed. AUO screens prone to backlight bleed, dead + stuck pixels, dust under screen, yellow tint. LG screens are on paper not as good as AUO based on pure specs but tend to have far fewer defects. I got uneven heatsinks in some units causing 10+ degree variance among core temps. On one unit the LCD hinge was incredibly loose causing bad wobble.
-The Good: The 2017 iteration, arguably, is the best one yet. When you get a good one it will serve you well. My CPU+GPU load temps have been great (current CPU core variance of 3 degrees max). Battery life during office use / internet / 2D tasks will last 7+ hours. The fans turn completely off as well during 2D work. Build quality is fantastic, feels so solid all around. If you're sensitive to gamer bling, this can pass just fine as a business laptop. LG screen is perfect for me, very sharp and uniform, zero backlight bleed. Also the touchpad (not the keyboard) is very good, probably the best Windows touchpad I've used other than ThinkPads and Surface Pro type cover. It is Synaptics. All other competing brands' 14 inchers are Elan (MSI, Gigabyte). Not sure what Alienware 13 uses. Keyboard is so-so but I have no complaints. I've used far better.
The SSD in the 512gb and 1tb models are excellent Samsung PM961 NVM-e drives.
The Insider forum is generally a nice friendly place. I've posted more than a few negative comments at Razer and have not been banned or deleted. People like @Firebat246 have been great over there and really help everyone out.
-Where to buy: Microsoft Store or Amazon, DO NOT buy from Razer direct if at all possible. Absolutely add another year of warranty from MS if you can. Either that or utilize your credit card warranty. I called Razer support and they said "we plan to offer an extended warranty for the Blade but there is no timetable when that will become an option." Lol. What a joke of a company.
The Kabylake Blade is my favorite laptop I've owned. I chose to accept the risks. Will I buy Razer again? Probably not. Max Q, although I don't welcome back "M" GPUs, will give Razer a serious run for its money. If you can wait a few months there are a lot of options coming out. If you are buying now give a serious look toward the Gigabyte Aero 15. But allegedly that also has issues, I don't own it so I'm not sure, just looked at some forums. Everyone on this forum and most on Razer Insider who bought the Blade accept the risks and buy anyway, because it really is a fantastic machine. *At the moment* there is nothing on the market in a 14" form factor other than the Aero 15 that competes with it, in my opinion.Last edited: Jun 14, 2017Vistar Shook, Beemo, Eason and 1 other person like this. -
Papusan, Vistar Shook, Beemo and 2 others like this.
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This is only my experience but I beat the snot out of mine for almost 3 years (2014 w/ 870M) with thousands of hours of gaming and it's still going strong. The battery life is greatly diminished but that happens to most batteries over time. Honestly I ran on AC 99.9% of the time, so if they had a battery saver option in the BIOS that probably would have helped.
The only problem I had was one of the fans was a little noisy when the unit was lying flat. Happened soon after I bought it. Turned out the mounting screws were not tightened down, that fixed it and it never happened again. Did give me some pause about their QA/build process. But here we are over 3 years later and it's still kicking after a rough gaming life.
I don't use it anymore now that I have the EVO, but it served me well.Vistar Shook likes this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
We recently had another post on the subject - read here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/razer-14-2016-1060-service-issues.806037/#post-10547497
Papusan likes this. -
I can tell you that they have very poor customer support for a fact. As an example of their not liking to be critiqued - they contacted Yelp and had my negative review removed despite the fact I was 100% truthful. Which tells me just how much trouble their company must be in. To have negative reviews removed from yelp ?
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You should contact Yelp, if you haven't already, and tell them you can provide proof that your situation is real and needs to be out there for others to see, because if someone else's true negative review had been there when you looked before buying, you wouldn't have purchased.Vistar Shook and don_svetlio like this. -
Here was Yelp's logic to remove the review: because I had not DIRECTLY dealt with the San Francisco HQ for Razer but rather I spoke to Sales Support who is located God knows where, it was not a reflection of that particular Razer location.
What Yelp doesn't know is that I did speak to someone in middle management (damage control) who had no clue how to deal with my complaint. Except to say, we are examining and revising our support structure.
In my eyes Razer San Francisco HQ - IS IN FACT RAZER
Razer must be desperate to ask my review be removed. Sign of a sinking ship, especially after Max-Q hits the market !Eason, hmscott and don_svetlio like this. -
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Usually it won't die right away, but overtime the thermal runaway can cause catastrophic failure on the VRM bank, even fire hazard. Incidentally all the failure happens outside of the machine's 1 year warranty.
Your experience with the Blade 870M is the top 1% of the QC population I reckon, and thus cannot speak for the majority of owners. You really lucked out on your unit, but not so much with other people.
Papusan and don_svetlio like this. -
Here's some things to know about Razer:
Despite the CEO saying that the HQ is in San Francisco, it is not. Razer headquarters is in Singapore. The original Razer was founded in Carlsbad around 1998, but had basically gone out of business when the current CEO was able to gather some investments and re-founded it in 2005. However, the Carlsbad office was now only sales, marketing, and customer service for North America while the HQ including operations, design, and product development was located in Singapore.
The San Francisco office was started in 2009 when Razer decided to work on systems, and a small team of engineers hired from OQO worked on notebooks and delivered the 1st 17" in 2012. However, sometime last year, Razer moved the systems function to a whole new team in Taiwan. Most of the original team left the company, including the VP of the systems group, while the rest found positions elsewhere including working on a Razer phone after the acquisition of NextBit.
The CEO is a lawyer/gamer/rich kid. He appreciates industrial design and product branding and is very insightful about what gamers will respond to. But he does not like, nor understands engineering. He wants to push as much of the engineering on to the manufacturers as possible. This includes quality and reliability. Consequently, mundane things like PCB layout and component selection are left to the manufacturer, resulting in issues like the cheap MOSFETs mentioned elsewhere.
It will be interesting to see what the new team in Taiwan does with notebooks, but I am skeptical of improvements in quality, reliability, and customer service given the company culture.Vistar Shook, Darkhan, Papusan and 2 others like this. -
Vistar Shook likes this.
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I bought one originally for the size and specs of it and thinness and I thought I would love it and I did for a week maybe but it truly is a fingerprint magnet and if you're someone who can get clammy hands like me, this laptop will look like one of the most disgusting things you own just from taking it in and out of your bag or typing on it. The performance and temps did not quite perform how I may have hoped it would have and compared to my older laptop I was trying to replace, my alienware would score about the same in benchmarks which I was not expecting I thought it would have been quite a bit better. I ended up selling it, and spending an extra 400 bucks or so than what I spent on my blade (granted I lost money by selling the blade) and ended up getting my new laptop in my sig which scores double what my Blade did in benchmarks for barely any extra money (except what I lost) and has far better quality parts in it and far better cooling.
I can see where the apeal for Blades comes from and I would have loved one but I have to say I am much happier with my current purchase than that one.hmscott likes this. -
but the value proposition vs competing laptops in class is really baddon_svetlio and Papusan like this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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Hardware inside, probably fine if you don't game on it.
But as a gaming machine I'd give it 2-3 years top.Papusan and don_svetlio like this. -
don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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don_svetlio In the Pipe, Five by Five.
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It will be damn expensive for Razer!! Slightly higher prices here can't Save Razer from loosing all money they have earned on this Ultra thin Gamebook's. I think tech support has nice days in the end of this year and 3-4 years down the road(within the 5 years free warranty plan). Not many Razerbook's will survive 5 years. Probably all will be RMA for a new one. For zero cost for the owner!!
hmscott likes this. -
does that apply for all laptop manufacturer?Jarhead, Vistar Shook, Papusan and 2 others like this. -
Jarhead, Vistar Shook and hmscott like this.
How Good/Bad is the Razer Blade reliability truly?
Discussion in 'Razer' started by LiquidEvilGaming, Jun 11, 2017.