Price of the Blade 14" in Europe announced

Hey guys,

so I imagine that some of you, as have I, have been waiting impatiently for Razer to finally announce the price of this baby in Europe. But my enthusiasm went away the moment I saw the price. Don't get me wrong. I know this is Razer we are talking about, but this time I believe they overstepped. They offer two models for Europe:

THE NEW RAZER BLADE - FULL HD (256GB)
Price: 2499€
US Price: 1999$=1 848€
Difference: 2499-1848= 651€
THE NEW RAZER BLADE - QHD+ US (256GB)
Price: 2999€
US Price: 2199$=2 033€
Difference: 2999-2033= 966€.

I get that they need to add some expenses for import and stuff, but this price...just seems too high. What do you think ?

source: http://www.razerzone.com/eu-en/store/razer-blade-fullhd

 

This is retarded.

I wanted to send back my US Blade, bought one day before announcement, to get EU one but I guess they can stick it up where sun doesn't shine, rotfl.

They could import off China directly and assembly it in EU or something to drop down prices.

This price while MSI GS40 (14", 970M, i7 6700HQ, DDR4 up to 32gb, PCI-e SSD, second HD and so on) goes for 1.800 Euros is asbolutely dumb, chassis is worth a lot to me as well, as well as trackpad and such, but this is ridicoulous.

 

In Europe prices include taxes, while online price in the US are tax-free, but hey, doesn't justify that difference indeed... It would maybe justify a 150 or 200 difference but no less (Apple's price difference is about +200 euros comparing similar price products...). Here it's FIVE HUNDRED...

I remember when I bought my 14 inch Blade back in 2013, 2000$ was about 1600 euros ... I would had NEVER paid 2500 euros back then ... even if this computer is awesome. Not even talking about the 3000 euros model... with 256 Gb of storage (not even PCie...)

I hope someone from Razer is reading this, they're shooting themself in the foot with such prices. EU review sites will definitely notice this... and hate it.

 

Ridiculous pricing, The price isnt justified compared to the quality of the laptop. First they release the laptop really late, and then they even dare to ask such an abysmal price for it.

 

I would really like to know the reasoning behind this. I was thinking of buying it if the price was more or less the same as in US, but the price difference is the value of my old laptop alone ^^.

 

The price difference compared to the US seems absurd, sure they need to factor in sales taxes, like VAT, in Europe (this is 20% in the UK), but this seems excessive, they're just being lazy/exploitative and rounding up to the nearest 2,499/2,999 - 2,299 euro/2,499 euro would have been more reasonable and would have comfortably covered VAT costs and more.

I was looking at buying a Razer Blade back in February, until I realized you could only get it at the time as a grey import in Europe, so bought the XMG laptop in my sig instead - not regretting that now, those prices are a big f*** you to European consumers, shame on you Razer!

My XMG has a better spec than the Razer Blade (albeit a larger form factor and not such a nice case) and only cost £1,440.98 (inc. VAT) when I bought in Feb this year i.e. about 1,999 Euros

 

BTW the cost of the 512Gb SSD QHD+ version is even more excessive - £2,449.99 i.e. at least 3,387.99 Euros!!

 

Yea, indeed! With so much money you could get a MSI GS40 with 512 GB PCI-E, 32 GB DDR4 2400 MHz, 1 TB standard SSD and still have like 5-800 euros left for whicever peripherical / monitor or whatever you wish for, rotfl.

They are probably trying to empty the pockets of people who've been waiting 4 years to get their hands on one.. I really wish I could know how many they are going to sell within the end of the month to get an idea of how mind-f****d people are nowdays.

 

Another much cheaper alternative in a similar form-factor to the Blade would be the new 14" Clevo P640RE, will probably have better cooling than either the GS40 or Blade...

 

Chassis might be weird tho, as well as thickness and, maybe, cooling which is awesome on the MSI, good on the Blade and well, weird onm any other competitor such as Aorus x3 and Gigabyte.

Blade still is the best laptop for this size since it grants great portability with a strong top quality Al chassis, touchscreen, great touchpad and battery life to be honest, but with MSI being almost the same size and being made mostly in Al, costing like 2/3 of Blade and X3 and having better cooling and close battery life it might just be close to it.

I wouldn't put too much hope in this Clevo regarding quality and cooling; cheap chassis (Clevo isn't really famouse for top quality cases) could just KILL overall quality of the notebook (yea p34w, I'm watching you!), while it's probably going to be great price wise.

 

The chassis on the P640RE won't be as nice as the Razer Blade for sure, that's the Blades main selling point, but I have recent 15" (rebadged) Clevo, and it's not bad, apart from the plastic screen surround, at least the lid, palm rest and base plate are aluminium and it's relatively thin. The images I've see of the P640RE look like quite a nice design by Clevo standards: http://www.affordablelaptops.com.au/contents/en-us/p3052_metabox-p640re_clevo.html

The touchscreen I don't care about at all, and cooling is usually very good on Clevos. I've always been a bit concerned about the way the heatpipes connect (or not) with the CPU and GPU on the Blade to be honest, doesn't seem a very sensible design.

Obviously, though, the P640RE will be massively cheaper than the Blade, especially in Europe, given the above eye-watering prices...

 

Well, this one looks thick, even more than GS40 does but well, it might not be THAT important in most cases so it's okay, 1k euros less for half cm more is a decent deal.

Regarding the touchscreen, it feels so good while at university or while you need to be quick in my opinion, that's one of the few reasons which made me order my Blade last week.

As an aerospace engineer (and a thermodynamics lover) I can say that I was kinda confused about the heatpipes contacts too, at first. I even asked a collegue his opinion regarding it since I was really wondering if that was some poor and cheap design or something which could be considered as a solid way to drain heat and, in the end, we both agreed that it's not that stupid if coupled with a processor with a homogeneous heat distribution since you basically add some almost free surface to drain the heat. All of that obviously stands if the thermal paste is somehow not much dependant on the thickness -read: rough/big grain paste- or just good at filling gaps.
That's how I explained myself why most high level compounds (read: fine grain) made heat transmission worse while mid level or HDT made pastes worked just fine.

Anyway, affordability is a HUGE factor, so if you have no need for touchscreen and strong chassis or you want to keep conservative with budget Blade isn't an option for you anymore, they've just lost a HUGE slice of market this way and I hope they'll pay for this, to be honest.

 

I think it would be, if one would really want the Blade, cheaper to just order it from US through some company that re-sends it for you. I was doing the math before they announced the EU availability and it was about 300 € cheaper including taxes and shipping than buying from EU Razerstore. Of course, there would probably be a problem with the warranty.

 

Indeed, which just goes to show how crazy Razer's EU pricing is.