Hello all, I've recently discovered the Razer Blade and I find it to be one of the most compelling, if not the most compelling, gaming and every day use notebooks on the market that still has a sleek and professional design, all while being portable. After hours of research on this notebook, I have one major concern: is the display really THAT terrible? I don't really know what I would consider a bad screen, as I don't do a lot of editing(by this I mean any editing I've done has been in paint and has merely meant to be a joke), and I mainly have gamed on a 1920 x 1080 monitor and that's really all I know.
But to put things into perspective, I'm currently writing this on a Dell Inspiron 15, and I find the screen acceptable and I could definitely deal with it every day. Is the Blade's screen better/worse than this? My step father owns an MSI notebook (not sure of the name) and I can tell you the display is hideous. Things are blurry and even on max brightness the colors all seem washed out. Is the display more like the Dell, or it it more like the MSI? I try to look at reviews from various people on YouTube, and most of them say the display isn't great, but it's acceptable and it gets the job done...to paraphrase.
So, to anyone out there that has a Blade, are the people claiming the display is horrific blowing everything way out of proportion?
Thanks!
EDIT: Well, now I was talking to a friend who brought up the Alienware 14" laptop. I would most likely be getting the high end model with the GTX 765M, but that still comes out to about the same price as the Razer Blade. What's really compelling about the AW14 is the display. I'm somewhat torn. On the Alienware side, I get a much better screen, while on the Razer side I get a much better case design (in my opinion), SSD, and the wonderful portability with its size/shape.
If I were to be purchasing one of these notebooks for minimal travel, I would almost without a doubt buy the AW, or I'd just get an AW x51. But as I'm going to college, specifically one with a rather large campus, I will be taking it everywhere, and I would much rather carry a MacBook Pro-esque notebook than a bulky one that's just obnoxious and looks like it would be a burden to carry around.
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To be blunt, yes, it's a pretty terrible screen for the price. Colors are, in my opinion, lackluster. However, it is bearable and the pros of the laptop outweigh the con of the laptop's screen.
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The screen is decent, better than any average laptop but pales in comparison to modern ultrabooks, horizontal viewing angles are good, vertical are terrible but you can tilt the lid, colours are ok but contrast is lacking, increasing the brightness doesn`t wash out the screen but the blacks definitely increase in brightness proportionally to the whites which is bad for stealth games but hey, thats what your 1080p monitor is for, with a 500-600mhz oc on the gpu memory 1080p is a breeze. All other specs are great especially size, cooling and battery life.
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The only positive about the screen is its brightness. Viewing angles, black levels and color accuracy are horrible.
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The screen lacks contrast but has good brightness. The blacks look more like a dark grey. The viewing angles are not great, but adequate for a single user with nobody looking over your shoulder. That being said, the screen is about the same quality as my Dell XPS M1330 and my Alienware M11x R2, but not as good as my Dell 710m, Dell 700m, and iPad. If you are OK with your Dell Inspiron screen, then Razer screen will be about the same.
Razer picked this TN screen because it has a much lower response time (2-3 ms green-to-green) and perfect for gaming, which is the target market of this machine. An IPS screen is said to have lower response time (8-11ms g-t-g) and poor for gaming due to ghosting, but personally I have not found this to be true and I use a 30" IPS monitor regularly for gaming.
Another laptop to consider is the Gigabyte P34G. The Gigabyte has an IPS 1080p screen, has more ports/sockets, upgradable RAM (up to 16GB), more storage space (1TB + 128G SSD), and costs $500 less. The Razer has a nicer and slightly thinner aluminum body, 10% faster GPU, larger SSD (256 SSD), and larger battery. Both weigh about the same and both have upgradable storage. The build quality of the Razer is very high. I don't know enough about the Gigabyte build quality to comment, but my Gigabyte motherboards have all been exceptional over the past 10 years. I was all set to buy the Gigabyte P34G but it was out of stock for so long that I went with the Razer Blade 14. Even in retrospect I'm not sure which laptop I would like better.
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE P34G-CF1 Intel Core i7 4700HQ(2.40GHz) 8GB Memory 1TB HDD 128GB SSD 14.0" Notebook Windows 8 -
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Stay away from the Gigabyte, I was also looking at it and trialed it for about a week, the fan is louder than W230ST and still bursts, build quality is ok but questionable when compared to the Razer and battery is literally half that of the Razer, not to mention the IPS display used on it is not high end and has really poor brightness and slightly underwhelming contrast for an IPS. Its good for the price however not really comparable to the Razer overall, remember, reviewers look at specs, users look at everything else.
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The panel on the Blade 14 is perfectly paired for the GPU. 1080p would be too much for a 765M. 1600x900 fits nicely.
There's widely varying opinions on the quality. The only way I can rationalize it is:
If your primary use case is thin and light gaming, it's great.
If your primary use case is productivity but you want to game on the side, there's better options that will perform worse at native res, or force you to muddy up your gaming image quality by going lower than native. -
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Fan noise is extremely quiet, even in intensive gaming, such as playing metro last light for 3 hours, the fans remain at their medium setting which is barely audible, only briefly stepping up to their max, which is definitely audible but the frequency of the sound is not piercing or uncomfortable, for about 5 seconds every about 45mins, not to mention the fans ramping up and down is incredibly smooth, the fan gradually speeds up to max for about 3 seconds and gradually slows down, even with both fans its actually quieter than any laptop i`ve ever owned, fan noise is quieter than the m11x which had a ulv processor and hp dv3, its even quieter than my hp atom netbook. Razer definitely nailed this part of the laptop.
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Now that is out of the way, the problem with the display on the razer 14 is the quality, it has such low color gamut, grainy/smudgy look to it, ridiculously high level black cdm ( much worse cdm level than the sony vaio s13p) where the blacks looks greyish and the overall panel looks cloudy like a foggy/mist look to it. -
I don`t think half the people commenting on the screen actually own the device, they are just going off what they hear from dissatisfied users, its an endless cycle. I for one am very satisfied and coming from a W230ST and many Asus devices, i know a good screen and although I wouldn`t call the Razer`s screen good, it definitely isn`t bad and is easily outweighed by the superb batterylife, performance and portability of the laptop, a more profound issue is probably build defects and quality control.
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I'm an owner coming from a hp dv7, and I agree with everyone, its . The colors, more specifically the dark ones, absolutely suck. If the screen were better, it be the best damn laptop on the market.
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Agree in the sense that yes if it had a better screen this would be the undisputed best laptop on the market.... and when Razer comes out with the next gen in May I will probably trade up for that reason... as I have no doubt they will listen to their consumers and make the necessary upgrades
However the issues with the screen are REALLY over-stated.... I honestly don't even think about it anymore, and really think all the posts about the screen are really overstating the issue. -
Well everyone I think with the research I've done over the past few days the Razer Blade is out of the running. At least it's out for the top computers I'm looking at to purchase. As fantastic as the notebook looks, I think I'm going to wait out even purchasing a computer. After all, I don't need one until the Fall of next year, so chances are I could get modern specs for the same price if I wait. And maybe Razer will get the small amount of issues sorted out so I can without hesitation consider purchasing a Blade. Thank you all for the insightful replies!
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Personally I find Razer Blade the best laptop in the category apart from the screen, lack of storage options, and asking price. Hopefully Razer will refresh the model by the time you will buy a new laptop or other companies will be able to match up better.
I've researched all of my options quite a bit before settling on W230ST. I couldn't really justify getting P34G and MSI GE40 over it considering every pro and con for each model. Every laptop has its downsides unfortunately. The screen on W230ST is absolutely gorgeous. W230ST did have a fan issue on stock BIOS, however thanks to the custom BIOS+EC mod made by a guy named Prema, that issue was eliminated on normal use. Nevertheless the laptop is still relatively loud while gaming on all 4 cores when the fans ramp up.
I think that Alienware 14 doesn't belong in this conversation because of the weight and the thickness. It's pretty close to 15" gaming laptops only severely lacks in performance power in comparison. -
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I have owned my Razer Blade since August of this year. I can't stand the display. I don't care what the CEO of Razer or anyone else says, the panel is garbage.
What specifically are the issues:
1) The screen suffers from "no good viewing angle." -- This means no matter what angle the screen is tilted, you will never see all the colors correctly. I have tried sitting far enough away that the viewing angle from the top edge to the bottom edge is basically 0 and at that position, its not bad. But its a 14" screen, you can't realistically sit that far back. And for a $2000.00 laptop, I shouldn't even be having this conversation.
2) I don't care about the accuracy of the colors as much as the visibility of colors. I didn't buy this machine to edit photos, but so many colors (especially the dark ones) are washed out. What do I mean? The default desktop background is a dark gray mesh pattern with the Razer logo in the center. When looking straight at the screen, except the center, you can't even see the mesh unless you move your head around the screen. This is part of the issue in point 1.
3) If you try to do any type of text editing, except for a white background behind dark letters, the color of the background changes based on your viewing angle. When I was doing some programming on an airplane, I was in a cramped position using the tray attached to the seat in front me to hold the laptop. No matter what angle or how I sat, I could not comfortably see all the text on the screen.
All this really is a byproduct of the poor viewing angles of the panel.
I could go on and on. The point is Razer seriously dropped the ball and I refuse to believe that this was the best 1600x900 panel they could find. I'm OK with the resolution. On a 14" screen, I personally think 1080p would be too small for anything but gaming and of course your FPS would suffer at that resolution.
Bottom line, I would advise against buying this laptop. Razer really seriously made a bad decision with the display.
As a side note, I have begun actively looking for a replacement panel for this machine. It began when I stumbled across this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/razer/731249-razer-blade-14-screen-mod-3.html. If I find a better screen, I will post a video of how to perform the screen replacement and which screen I purchased. I'm expecting to complete this project within a couple weeks. -
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Neither are in the same class as the Razer 14. This is true... But the P25 is closer by weight.. -
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I am a dork, and have a large amount of discretionary income. If there was a better laptop for what I need on the market, no matter it's price I would purchase it.
I just got back from a trip to the carribbean, I had this laptop outside watching videos off Youtube with my friends... Had a 11 hour lay-over in an airport, and was playing Assassins Creed IV on Ultra settings... Now I am home catching up on work "MS Proj, Excel, Word, PPT, Etc." with great speeds and multi-tasking.
If there is a better laptop in existence, for the professional gamer whom likes to travel please point me in that direction.....hfm likes this. -
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and i call B.S. on the refresh rate.. they could've used a higher quality TN panel. and to me.. and as most people have mentioned.. that they would sacrifice a bit of refresh rate for higher quality image. i mean.. how can you truly be immersed in a game if you're staring at a crap display? i think a lot of people here are using a bunch of excuses to justify their purchase. why accept subpar quality? voicing how bad this display is will only help future revisions. Razer should know their cost cutting has disappointed customers and especially people who were considering buying this.. so they lost sales due to it.
also.. i give you credit for trying the screen mod.. it's such a shame though that you even have to go through that. -
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PS I call BS Too!
PSS Sorry I felt let out of all the fertilizer -
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Also Apple doesn't use a 14" panel, only 13.3" ones. None of those are suitable for the Blade unless you want a ridiculous amount of bezel and a smaller display. Can't downsize the chassis, it needs to keep an i7 and a 765M cool.
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Nothing compares to gaming at native resolution.
Ironically, the most bright (not color accurate, not viewing angles) panels i've seen were all 1366x768.
Also FHD IPS screens consume more power. -
Cons: Not sure if the laptop's cooling can handle such power. -
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I just got my Razer 14 and its going back..this screen is HORRID...Been on a Asus Zenbook for the last year...going back to this screen is like stepping back in time...
The sad thing, the laptop is perfect is so many ways...but what was Razer thinking??
It looks washed out...dull...viewing angles are laughable...if the laptop is lid is off the viewing cone by a few degrees, the colors actually change...
Sorry but Im going to wait till the next gen..this is crapephaitch likes this. -
2) highly doubt it, since Apple is not even using a 14" panel.. and they source their displays from Samsung and LG. Razer could've gone to Samsung, etc.. for a better quality 14" 900p TN panel. no way Apple can put a limit on this within an agreement, since it's not even the same size panel.
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Another review and another instance of reviewers saying how bad this panel is:
Review Razer Blade 14 Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
From the review:
Suggestion:
If you really care about response times for gaming give the purchaser the option of two panels; a TN equivalent for gaming and an IPS for everyone else who has to do work for a living too. -
shy of a top end Dell, HP, or EIZO ColorEdge external screen you can not find a better panel for pro work. now there are drawbacks such as Intel IGP's cant run them so no graphics switching and they eat more power and are a price premium.
The Precision m3800 has both a higher resolution AND gamut than the retina 15" ( 3200x1800 @ 80% aRGB @ 16.7million colors )
for less money the 95% sRGB Gamut panels found in some Lenovo's and are optional upgrades in many Clevo/Sager and rebrands are actually more accurate in color gamut and depth than the rMBP's as well. we have a few lists here on NBR and have many good discussions on it.
Apples screens tend to just be really good consumer screens and prior to the retinas even had pretty lousy gamut ( classic 15", 17" and Airs tended to be about 60-65% sRGB calibrated ) the retina was just a catch up to consumer screens after photographers and such got so upset over the last 4 years of being left behind.
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this picture says it all...
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To be honest, the backlight bleed from the bottom of the screen is the most glaring issue that I see. -
The only issue I see is that they are spending time figuring out how good it is at angles I'll never use instead of playing games..
Nick11 likes this. -
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Not trying to start a fight, but I don't think this thread is at all a stretch from the reality of the stock panel in the RB14.
Is the Razer Blade's screen really that horrible?
Discussion in 'Razer' started by daquf, Nov 24, 2013.