How Good/Bad is the Razer Blade reliability truly?

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!

 

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.

 

The ones I've dealt with have mostly been RMA'd. My buddies 870m Blade had the fan hitting the chassis, and my own Stealth had a keyboard hardware issue.

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.

 

It's actually a 2017 Blade I happened to win, but i'm being told I should just sell it and get something else.

 

Probably the safest bet in my opinion. You can easily sell it and get a GS63 or something of the sorts and end up with 200-400$ in winnings.

 

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!

 

True, the Kool-aid is most pure at the source

Haven't seen you around for a while, hope you are doing well

 

You mean the forum where Razer ban you for even mentioning something slightly negative about their device? Yeah, that's like willfully chopping your fingers off.

 

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 Tapatalk

 

There are in fact a lot of diehard fans there yes .. 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 Tapatalk

 

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.

 

I've heard lots of reports from owners that have just tried to state their problem so they can get help, and having their post deleted - no unhappy news is welcome, it's like they are trying to keep it clean without any nasty support issues to cloud their positive sales PR

 

I have seen things like that happen but again people here make it sound way worse. In the rules on their forum it specifically says it's not for support... So yea support questions will get shut down alot. Honestly I've found how you approach the question is what matters most.

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.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

If real problems, "support questions" can't be asked at the official Razer Forum's, then they need to go elsewhere, like here.

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.

 

I think I'm going to lean toward really bad luck over reality lmao...or at the very least you only hear the horror stories here. Like I said I have owned 3 Blades. My brother has one, his friend has one, and my co-worker has one. Aside from having one of my Blades with some lcd screen bleed which was replaced.. There has been zero issues. So I'm sure people will call me out as a fan boy but im sorry I don't see this being the best place for information.

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!

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

Whatever pays the bills brings unrelenting love and understanding

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

 

It really does come down to this, yes. I honestly think as the years go by the thin and powerful market is getting much better. It's not an easy task but companies are getting there. I will say I do not miss my giant beast I had before, if you remember.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

@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.

 

Well, I can tell you it is true, as my account (and then second account, which worked initially) got shadowbanned. Then, after messaging the mods, they claimed I wasn't banned at all (while still banning me). I'm not bothered, but don't say it isn't true. A shadowban is as good as a ban.

 

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.

 

We recently had another post on the subject - read here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/razer-14-2016-1060-service-issues.806037/#post-10547497

 

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 ?

 

I thought Yelp got into trouble for doing that? Taking the company's side is exactly what we don't want Yelp to do.

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.

 

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 !

 

Precisely why I find them so ethically gross.

 

I mean @Mobius 1 can chime into this topic

 

The mosfet itself isn't overheating, what kills the Razer blade is one intentionally placed mosfet on the back of the motherboard with no cooling. Is insulated by a plastic sticker, and next to it is the GPU PWM controller.

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.

I'm just going to put this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/5tr8wt/razer_ceo_covering_up_cheappoor_design_of_razer/

 

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.

 

not cheap mosfet, poorly placed ones (or intentional)

 

Most likely poorly Engineering.

 

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.

 

sabotage I say

the blade is a great ultrabook

but the value proposition vs competing laptops in class is really bad

 

It always comes down to price. I mean, look at Xiaomi. Their 500$ 12" ultrabook is basically a MacBook Air at less than half the price. And has a real keyboard. If the RB14 was 1000$ or so, I would be a lot more lenient with it. But at 2000-2500$ - **** that, it can burn in hell.

 

well said

 

I will not deny that at all, an amazing ultrabook, just for the price and performance of it and what you are getting vs other options it's just not worth it, and from my time with it, I did not have faith that it would be a machine that could last me 4-5+ years as my laptop.

 

Build quality wise it probably would.

Hardware inside, probably fine if you don't game on it.

But as a gaming machine I'd give it 2-3 years top.

 

There's a reason it comes with a maximum of 1 year warranty with no options for Insurance from Razer.

 

Microsoft store

EU has 2 yr minimum I think?

 

I meant from Razer themselves. Also, not all EU countries have such laws. And in quite a few of the ones who do, Razer simply don't sell the laptops at all (I wonder why).

 

razer isn't sold in EU?

 

In some countries they do sell the Blades. But I believe they have never sold them on the Balkans (where I live).

 

well if it's the balkans then I can understand (no offense)

 

None taken, MSI are also blacklisted here for some reason.

 

why is blacklisted?

 

No idea. But we have only had a single MSI laptop available every since the GX660R was a thing. Since then, the only MSI machine that has ever been sold here is their GS-based "workstation" with a 960M.

 

But asus rog is sold in balkans? Even high end?

 

Yes. Asus is actually the most dominant OEM here. They've been the go-to gaming laptop manufacturer for about 10 years now. Only recently did Lenovo and Acer start bringing out more models. 4-5 years ago, you had the Y500/Y510 at the low end and Alienware at the overpriced high-end. Everything else was Asus G-series and N-series. In the past 2 years, there has been a surge of gaming laptops from those 3 OEMs.

 

Almost whole EU have 2 years warranty. Here home 5 years.

Razerbook's is now sold here home(from middle 2016). And we have 5 years free warranty. I wonder how much money Razer will lose here home 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!!

 

damn 5 years

does that apply for all laptop manufacturer?

 

This apply for almost all electronics. Here is a few examples... Computers, tv, radio, wifi ruters, pc monitors, water cooling osv. Manufacturers name doesn't matter. As well furnitures and electronics for household like Kitchen machines and washing machines. In short the most yoo can buy.