Is the Razer Blade's screen really that horrible?

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Thanks to both of you. So basically what I'm getting from the responses so far is the display isn't good enough of a reason to not purchase the Razer Blade...which is good, because I'm really looking forward to eventually getting one of these.

 

The only positive about the screen is its brightness. Viewing angles, black levels and color accuracy are horrible.

 

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

 

Thanks for that answer, that's exactly what I was looking for. I had also previously looked at the P34G, but I think in the end I really do like the Razer Blade. As I'm going away to college next fall, I feel as if it would fit my needs more when I'm out and about since it's got the extra SSD space. Not to mention the larger battery is always a plus when I won't always have the ability to charge it. Plus, I think most of my main issues with the Blade--the storage and the display--can be easily fixed with an external hard drive and my monitor I'm currently using with my desktop, which I'm satisfied with.

 

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.

 

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.

 

What's your thought about the fan noise on the Razer 14 vs similar light gaming notebooks? (max 4.5lb, which removes the yellow gigabyte)

 

Since I'll be at college I will be doing numerous assignments, but I don't necessarily think sub-par colors, etc. will really impede my progress on working on Word documents, PowerPoints, and spreadsheets. Those three things would probably be the most productive things I'd be working on. And if I really need a 'nicer' display I can always use my current monitor to put in a dorm. Aside from this, I'd typically be doing stuff on Chrome on my spare time when I'm bored. I'm not entirely sure what exact games I'll be playing, but my three games I'll definitely play are Minecraft, CS:GO, and occasionally WoW, which I'm sure the Razer Blade will do just fine with.

 

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.

 

Again, people are complaining about the Razer 14 screen not because of the resolution. 1600x900 or HD+ or 900p is perfectly adequate and fine paired with a gtx 765m.

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.

 

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.

 

I've had one since June and am speaking from first hand experience. In my opinion the screen sucks. Simple as that. Had Razer have put a good 900p screen in the Blade 14 I'd consider it the perfect laptop

 

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!

 

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.

 

There are 15" laptops like the gigabyte P25 that actually weigh less and have better GPU (770)

 

Not sure what does 15" P25K have to do with anything. However just out of curiosity, you say that there is a laptop with GTX 770M that weighs less than 5.7lbs? Show me! That would be great.

 

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.

 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but may I ask why not sell the laptop and get something "better" than? The few Razerblades I have seen sell quite quickly. I was even able to sell my Razer Blade R2 this year quite easily, for a reasonable price given that the new generation was out.

 

You mentioned the AW14 (6.1lb).. So I countered with a 15.6" that weighs less than it does (5.7lb)with a better GPU.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834233019 you could even cut that down more removing the useless optical drive.

Neither are in the same class as the Razer 14. This is true... But the P25 is closer by weight..

 

Panel aside, I love everything about this laptop. It's extremely powerful and a real piece of eye candy. Regarding your suggestion, what I would lose selling the machine and purchasing something else would end up being more than replacing the panel, so that is why i'm going this direction instead.

 

Oh, you were talking about P25W, haven't seen that one before. Looks pretty interesting; that is an astounding engineering achievement by Gigabyte, thanks for the link.

 

Fair Enough, than my only point would be is that your previous post was a bit misleading. I think everyone has stated quite clearly that the screen is far from perfect. Yet to be so bold to recommend people to not purchase this laptop does not make sense. You yourself admit, that you would not sell it as all of it's other features overshadow it's flaws.

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.....

 

This is exactly why I'm in a pickle with this machine. It's a love-hate relationship. (= There simply isn't another laptop on the market that matches the power and form-factor. But still, I'm one of those unfortunate personalities whose fixation on a single flaw ruins the experience. The screen is the one part of the computer where you SHOULD NEVER sacrifice. I'm actually a casual gamer and didn't really buy the machine for gaming. I just wanted a powerful computer in an elegant enclosure. Maybe next year with Broadwell and the next-gen Nvidia graphics, Razer will use an IPS panel and possibly release the holy-grail of laptops. (=

 

agreed. why couldn't Razer use a similar display that Apple uses for the 13" MacBook Air? that also has a similar x900 display, and IMO.. it is one of, if not the best TN panel out there. i believe the whole excuse the CEO made was to just cover up cost cutting.. i mean.. they had to do it for parts of this notebook.. too bad they did it on one of the most important part, considering the screen is what you are looking at 90% of the time..

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.

 

Very well said! IMO Razer chose this crappy screen simply to pad their profit margin. Min claiming it was due to response time is indeed BS. As a gamer, the quality of the image is even more important

 

Not always... but often Mac hardware is locked down behind patents and trade agreements that do not make it easy or in many case even possible for others to use in any application let alone an application that directly competes with them. Keep in mind also that while Razer is a sizable company it is tiny in comparison to Apple. Reality is I'm not sure anyone out there is using a laptop display that can compete with Apples latest lines which in turn makes one believe that they are locked behind some form of red tape. While this is a premium laptop by a company making the first real strides into the premium Windows based gaming laptop community it can not at this point be expected to go toe to toe with a giant in every area. Sometimes it really is best to compare Apples to Apples and leave the oranges to fend for themselves.

Remember the Coleco? ATARI? NES? GameBoy? SNES? APPLEII? TANDY? Comadore? etc.... Guess you were never immersed in anything that fell short of virtual reality.

Yup we like to justify our purchases here and mislead other people down the wrong path so they can join our cult, you know the one....

Agreed expressing customer reviews in a concise productive manner while addressing the pro's and con's is very important feedback tool for the company as well as other potential buyers.

??? /sigh

PS I call BS Too!
PSS Sorry I felt let out of all the fertilizer

 

There are quite a few displays out there that are better than Retina.

 

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.

 

I have not personally had the pleasure of looking at or stumbling across any of those then. Could you point me to a specific laptop with a better than Apple display so that I might further educate myself?

 

QHD displays, just to throw one out there Dell M3800 or XPS 15.

 

That's just not the correct panel for a gaming notebook. 900p fits this GPU. I'm one of those that would not want to move from native resolution.

 

Idk about the M3800 and XPS 15, but the QHD panels in the Yoga 2 Pro and friends had plenty of issues, such as the whole yellow thing. I know it got fixed, but still.

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.

 

Y410p with SLI 755M using modded cards from the Y5 series. 5.5 pounds and a lot smaller than the P25K.

Cons: Not sure if the laptop's cooling can handle such power.

 

I'm not suggesting Razer should have used a QHD display, you can check the context of the conversation first.

 

We should just bring this back to the Razer display. I'm guilty of bringing this off topic as well.

 

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 crap

 

1) i was referring to TN display quality of the Air.. NOT the retina in the Pro
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.

except that those systems were developed specifically with CRT display quality in mind due to the limitations (color bleed, etc). and there were plenty of good quality CRT TV's back in the day.. hell, my old Toshiba from the early 90's had much better viewing angles and black levels than Razer's display. and like you said.. compare apples to apples.. not TV or monitors to laptop display

just look around at some of the posts within this forum.. plenty of defensive posts and rehash of what Razer CEO said.. if anything.. some of you are the ones who drank the kool-aid.. really believing that this was the only display they could use.. when i've seen plenty of better TN displays out there.

 

Another review and another instance of reviewers saying how bad this panel is:

Review Razer Blade 14 Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

From the review:

Not that you appear to care, Razer CEO, but this is costing you sales.

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.

 

Dell Precision M6700, M6800, HP Elitebook 8740W, 8760W, 8770W, 8560W, 8570W are ones I own that come to mind. 10 bit per primary color ( 1.1billion colors ) full aRGB gamut ( retina display does 99% sRGB = about 70% aRGB ) which is color wise much more accurate than even the Apple Cinema display. hardware/software on the fly REC-709, sRGB, aRGB, NTSC calibration.

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.

only their operating system and EFI. they have used standard LCD's in the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air for years. I think the retina may be the first screen that is non standard they have used in the last 12 years. and was available from almost anywhere. ( I have swapped enough of them over time ). Word over at CreativeCow.com is most manufacturers skipped the retina resolution ( 2880x1800 acting as 1440x900 ) in favor of the 16x9 3200x1800 resolution found in machines like the Precision m3800 and a tested GPU to push the pixels.

not really modern IPS screens ( good ones ) are down in the 4-6ms response now. plus response variation tends to be less on a good quality IPS. you can have a TN advertised at 2ms for a low, but can swing to 300 for a slow response. aand an IPS advertised at 3-5ms but a slow response of 215ms .... which becomes better. ( this is a direct comparison of two of my desktop screens )

 

this picture says it all...

 

All this picture tells me is that when used at angles that... no one would ever use, the RB14 screen is crap.

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..

 

if that's good enough for you guys.. then good for you. but having used the razer blade in person (had it for a week before returning it), and having older laptops with similar viewing angles.. i hated having to constantly adjust the display just because i moved my head a bit, as the color will shift also, and i hated seeing that gradient.. the blacks were horrid as well, as it was pretty much grey. i tried ignoring these while gaming, but i couldn't.. it was always there, so i couldn't really get immersed into my games. and if you can't tell from just that photo.. then again.. good for you. but having owned a macbook air.. which also has a TN panel, but the quality being much higher.. i believe that razer could've used a much higher quality TN panel as well. this, to me, just screams cost cutting. and for the money we're paying.. it is not justifiable. i will wait for the next revision, and i hope the razer ceo does see the complaints of people like me and will finally put in a display that reflects the price.

 

Maybe I should rephrase. The picture above uses pointless angles. Only the middle set is really useful, and yeah, the color-shift is pretty horrible. It would actually be much better to see what the color shift is ~5-10 degrees from center, rather than 45 degrees. No one really moves 45 degrees from center, but if the shift is very noticeable with a small change of angle, then yes, the screen is bad. Judging from what you and other's have said though daily use of the RB14 (that viewing has to be perfectly centered), I can completely understand your decision. To be honest, it's also the reason that I've held off on the RB14 (though I am VERY willing to pick one up used at a discount). But yes, at $2k, I expect the screen to be just as good as the rest of the components.

 

Respectfully, I have to disagree.. When I was playing Diablo 3, sitting at a "normal" distance from the screen, parts of the game UI were not even visible unless I sat in a position where I was looking down at the screen. And from that angle, the back-light bleeds through so bad that blacks appear gray. The only solution I could come up with was to turn up the gamma slider to almost the max. That helped somewhat, but also caused many colors, especially reds, to over saturate.

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.