Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

Everyone can have opinion but saying that 4k screen makes your desktop tiny is not longer true with windows 8.1.
Windows 7, windows vista, xp, sure but we are in 2014.
So ok to say you don t like ips, igzo, but don t say incorrect info.
I have the dell 24inch screen 4k and the mbp retina display.
A full quality 1080p will never match the new gen display. U know any 1366 screen better than a full hd tn?
If you are happy with less quality screen i am happy for you. But most of the comments are about people who never tried. Let s be honnest.
My m18x r2 had a nice tn panel with plenty of power. Way more than my current mbpr. But games looks prettier on mbpr at full hd.
And for blizzard games, it will always be prettier with greatvperformance.

U always forget that 4k keep higher pixels density at 1600x900 and scale perfectly.
And u can rediscover old games with 4k glory. Sorry but half life 2 is nothing short of amazing on 4k.
1080p is old tech, no new investment on this res. soon enough it will be the new 1366 res. trust me soon enough you ll be on my side. Once you finally spend time with it. Plenty of amazing rpg, adventure games are coming : dreamfall, pillars of eternity, new torment etc. yes the artwork will look way way way superior on the 4k screen.
Sorry for the rant, someone needs to defend 4k and Razer blade on its lounge lol.
I get the point: no battlefield at 60fps on native res with max quality.
But full hd screen ips will never be as amazing as igzo ips 4k panel for many games too.
Also plenty of 860m maxwell with full hd clevo, msi, asus... So they made your dreamy notebook. Razer made something special and it is the only one like this.

 

Agreed. Likewise I have used 4K screens and love them. The majority if complaints leveled at the Yoga Pro, etc. are a product of the fact that people use them primarily as touch devices. The Razer Blade is first and foremost a laptop. I will be using trackpad and mouse for 99% of my interaction, and having done so on 4K screens, I can safely say its great. There will be plenty of alternatives with 1080p screens and Maxwell 860Ms. If that is so important to you please go visit those relevant threads rather than filling the Razer Blade (2014) Owners Lounge with wish listing and bashing. Honestly we will probably need to start a new one when people get it on their hands as id argue 80% of these 30 pages are garbage...

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the rant. Frankly, I too am an M18x owner (R1) and last night ordered the blade 2014 (512). QHD and touchscreen along with a gaming video card were exactly the combo I was had been waiting for. Alienware design seems to be dead in the water. We simply don't need an 18 lb beast anymore.. There isn't an excuse for it. I am looking forward to the 75% decline in weight along with a frkn 2 prong power adapter.. AMEN.

 

When do you guys reckon the first "full" reviews of the Razer Blade will be released?

 

Probably around the time first units start shipping (4/16). Maybe even later. Most consumer electronics outside of Apple/Samsung tend not to be reviewed until the device is available. That's just because Apple, Samsung, etc. have long standing NDAs with reviewers and sometimes have pre-release batches in reviewers hands before even the announcements.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Agreed on AW designs. They're really a relic at this point of a time when any enthusiast GPU whatsoever required a huge chassis and cooling apparatus. While the designs are still good for the ultra-high-end, there designs are lacking in the mid-range. Who on earth would want a 1"-thick Alienware 14 now that the Blade and Ghost pro (and other newer 15.6 designs) are out there?

I'm sure Dell-ienware is working on replacements as we speak, but they're such a juggernaut now it will take them months, if not years to release anything new (especially since their latest design didn't come out too long ago). In the meantime, more adaptable companies like MSI, Razer, Clevo will be reaping the rewards.

Edit: I do see that Alienware 14s are all on "clearance" sale right now so I assume something else is coming. I'm guessing it's the same chassis with an 870m.

 

Is 4/16 the date they will begin shipping for sure?

Razer has done the impossible and made me decide to switch back to windows from my MBPr (which I love ... but ... games).



Also, I have heard that Razer has insanely good customer service. If I were to swap SSDs would this still be true?

 

I found this review its not much but its somthing
Hands-on review: New Razer Blade

 

" The whir of the fans was also noticeable, something we didn’t identify as a problem in our 2013 review. To be fair, the laptop we checked out had been running for at least 30 minutes, performing various game demos and being subjected to my hands on, so it may have reached a boiling point of sorts. TechRadar will have to perform more long-term testing to see how the new Blade holds up during regular use."

Doesn't bode well...

The 860M is 50% faster than my current GPU.. I'm keeping my eye on that FHD GS60... Same weight..

And 30 minutes is nothing for a gaming session..

 

I started a separate shipping thread so hopefully someone will report in when theirs does ship.

I can't speak for customer service but I am sure as long as you don't cause any damage you are free to swap SSD's. That's what I am doing and why I ordered a 128. If you are not 100% confident in upgrading, or don't want to take the risk of you messing it up and then voiding your warranty, then don't do it.

 

Razer is the like the dwarves in the mines of Moria. They dug too deep and awakened the beast. Razer dug out too many pixels for their new laptop and awakened you folks who poopoo a quality display. smh

 

Just saw this on the Razer subreddit.

 

This was also posted by the same person:

 

I'm not here to stir up any trouble, there were just a few things I wanted to tie off with:

It's really hard to say. 1920 x 1080 on the Surface Pro 2 is either tiny [lowest scaling resolution] or blurry [anything higher] There are ways around SOME OF IT [messing with scaling resolutions in Chrome, for example] but it remains to be seen how the Blade 14" will cope. Until someone has a production unit for comparison, it's all guesswork. I use the SP2 for comparison because, at 10.1", 1920 x 1080 in a full windows environment is pretty tight, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to do something like browser navigation with your finger on the touchscreen.

For whomever was wracking their brain about "In Chicago, In the 80's" It was a reference to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. You'd have to watch it through from the beginning of the Intro Ferarri until the ultimate. . . conclusion. I wouldn't want to spoil it for ya.

And just to give y'all a heads up: If the 2014 Blade pro is using the same redesigned fans and fan profiles as the 2014 blade. .. . Yea. . they're loud, and they WHINE. I'm not trying to start anything by this, and I'm not saying the 14" is going to be as loud, I'm just sayin' better to be prepared for the worst and find out it's not that bad.

Also, If you're a Diablo 3 player, beware the Nvidia 337.50 beta drivers. I'm not sure if it was the driver or the updated GEforce experience center, but the "stuck with integrated graphics with optimus" bug is back. I had grab the stock drivers from Razer's website to resolve. Again, your results may vary, just thought I'd throw it out there.

 

On windows 8.1 you can increase the text and icons the way you want. It is really up to you. I don t know the problem with your tablet but there is no more issue with 14inch notebook. My mac was fine.
I didnt know the issue of new geforce driver, thank you i ll keep this in mind.
For now all the reviewers invited by razer said that the screen was amazing.

 

Yes, this is the display scaling. It may well work better on a 14" screen than on a 10.1, and the scaling may be different from UHD to "Standard HD" OS X handles scaling differently, so I'm not surprised you don't see it on that.

I never said it wasn't. I have every confidence in Razer's quality and in their taste in hardware. the ONLY reason I mention the scaling is because the screen has 0% to do with that. That's a 100% function of software rendering in windows.

 

I used my mbpr with windows 8.1. It looks awful first then you manually increase scalling and it looks like osx.
The thing is, if i choose between the 3 windows choice : small, medium, large. It s still not perfect. But manually it s great.
I am sure many people miss this. In tokyo stores i saw many 4k notebook which were poirly prepared. It gives people wrong idea. The sales people had no clue.
Now, where i agree with you is that using steam is super hard. It looks so tiny on my 24inch 4k. U have to create a shortcut and forget steam ui.
My comment on the screen was about the razer subreddit early reviewer.
Here in japan i saw a fujitsu 15inch igzo 4k panel. I really loved it. But 14inch i don t know..

 

If you read the back and forth, it seems like his issues were likely caused by the color palate of POE. When he went out of the game, colors were fine, as was the screen. Not sure why they'd use a game like that TBH.

 

Possibly because it wasn't too taxing on the system keeping temps/noise low. There's also just a good chance that there were certain titles that Nvidia had agreed to display and the one selected for this device just happened to be the Razor Blade 2014. I wonder if it was also running at native resolution. Even with an 870m, running modern games at native res might be challenging. I'm absolutely ok with that since my experience with such panels is that even reducing the resolution creates an incredibly sharp image thanks to the proximity of IGZO pixels and their size, while the native red is still gorgeous for less graphically taxing games and general use.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

I would wager it was native resolution. PoE runs at 1080p maximum settings on my surface pro 2 with the 4400 graphics that throttle in pretty much every game I play. The 870M has much more than 4x the graphics power and likely doesn't throttle. Although I agree, its not a very good game to demo since it has a limited color palette and it will run on anything. I would have rather seen Diablo 3, which may be significantly more difficult to run at 1800p

 

Sooo many people crying about that resolution...
Yeah, it will not all run on max @ native, but does that matter?
It will still look much better @ 1080p then the crappy 900p panel from 2013... Including resolution, colors, contrast and viewing angles (yes I know this without owning the 2014 model since the 2013 screen was insanely bad)

Older games WILL run natively on high (pe Source engine games) and you guys never watch a movie? Never work in windows? Never stream a vid on youtube?
This will be soooo much nicer on 1800p compared to 900p...
And yes scaling DOES work on windows 8.1

Realy, get over it!

 

Well, it'll look better at 3800 x 1800 than the crappy 1600 x 900 panel. 1920 x 1080 is kind of an odd resolution given the native 3800, isn't it? Either way, it'll look phenominal.

And quite possibly many new ones that aren't terribly programmed console Ported FPS games. Still right there with ya ^^

There is no doubt that they will all look fantastic on that screen.

Yep, it 100% does. Unfortunately, on a lot of portable machines with smaller screens, it works fairly BADLY, but it *DOES* work. How well or badly it works on the 14" blade we should know in about 5 or so days. If it works flawlessly, I promise I'll be VERY happy for everyone. If it works not quite so well, it's at most a minor inconvenience that most people will overlook.

Over. . what? The speculation? That's what people *DO* when they're passionately eager to see/receive the highly anticipated major shiny of the moment. Everyone wants to believe that their pre-ordered dream is going to be just like it is in their imagination. "get over it" is kinda harsh though, don't you think? I mean, compared to most macbook forum sites I've visited, this is positively civilized and urbane ; )

 

Yeah that's my guess. They wanted to show a game that runs at native smoothly, and that was it. I have no issue with reducing resolution to play games though. I'll still use that beautiful native for daily use, and can put out to 1080p whenever I want a bigger screen. I can't wait!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

Does anybody know if the oculus rift will work great with the new blade?
The Oculus personal edition will feature FullHD. will people be able to get good Fps and grapics?

 

It's going to be a problem and it's one of the main reasons I'm ambivalent about ordering the Blade. The Oculus DK2 coming out in July will run at 1920x1080/75Hz. That's marginal for the HDMI output on the Blade, based on current info on it. There's a good chance it won't work at over 60Hz. The first consumer model of the Oculus (CV1) will run at >1080p, likely 2560x1440, and at least 90hz. The Blade's HDMI definitely won't support that.

Never versions of HDMI can support these outputs, but implementation is rare. There would be no issue if they'd gone with DisplayPort, which is trivial to adapt to HDMI for those who require it.

 

I will receive my developper kit2 with my new blade, i ll let you know .

 

well should i cancel my blade order then? Or will the DK2 FullHD be enough to use ?I really want to play with the oculus rift

 

I think I'd love to get some clarification on this as well, as this is a little out of my knowledge base. Is there something with the HDMI port that restricts to 60Hz, or is it something in the way the Rift processes and splits the signal?

 

The Blade is said to have an HDMI 1.4a output, which theoretically has enough bandwidth. Oculus DK2 has an HDMI 1.4b input. The only difference between HDMI 1.4a and b that I'm aware of is official support for refresh rates > 60hz @ 1080p. I'm pretty sure 1.4a is already technically capable if the manufacturer followed the full spec. The potential problem is that often they just implement the minimum necessary for "normal" configurations, so in this case even though it may be capable of sending enough data for 1080p/75hz based on the spec, the particular manufacturer didn't include support. If you come across people with HDMI 1.4 ports wondering why they can't get 3D/120hz working, it's usually related to this.

I think DK2 should probably work with the Blade, but I'd like to see someone test 75hz first. Alternately, if Razer confirmed the HDMI port supports 1080p in 3D, that would also indicate that it works.

 

I will be doing some testing with my Razer and will he happy to report back here on my findings. BUT I need help picking out a display that I can test it out with. I prefer something similar to the Razer display resolution up to a 4k, but would settle for a 2560x1440 if I have to. Obviously it needs to accept these higher resolutions and vertical refresh freqs over HDMI input. I don't want to buy a display only to find out that the display itself can't do anything above 1080p@60 via HDMI.

I found the Dell P2815Q($629) that should be able to test 2560x1440@60 and 3840x2160@30 (yeah I know...) also found the Dell UltraSharp UP2414Q ($1067) that should be able to test 2560x1440@60+ and 3840x2160@60 but it does cost a lot more.

I don't want to spend thousands, roughly 1k is my max, and I'd like it to be 24"+ since I'm used to 27" displays now. I also use 120hz so even going back to 60 would be a step back (but livable) but going to 30 may be a bit rough on my eyes.

 

I had a chance to get hands-on with the 2014 Blade at Pax East. I'd recommend making good use of your return period in evaluating whether or not the laptop meets your needs and standards. It looks like an amazing device, but I believe that it will run quite hot (point for HT), and fan noise may be an issue.

The display was excellent, in my opinion. The NVidia area was nice and dim when I visited, and that display stood out as crisp and had decent viewing angles.

 

So you could hear the fan's over I'm assuming pretty loud background noise?
Last model got a little toasty as we'll but still kept the hardware inside relatively cooled, as long as the 14 model does too then it'll all be ok.
Still will wait for user reviews once they start shipping this week.Im hoping for good news but we will see what happens once people get there hands on them.

 

I stuck my ear close to the laptop, and the whir was audible (even in the loud atmosphere). Keep in mind that they had a game (some RPG or MMO - sorry, didn't identify it) running on it the entire day, so that would contribute to the heat output.

Also, it was very hot to the touch in the same place (above keyboard) that the 2013 model was. That's as designed, from what I've read (the least-touched part of the laptop).

 

I take it you're using a QNIX? I'm in the same boat since it's DVI-D only. I also have Monoprice's 27" which is a pretty nice 1440p @ 60Hz monitor. Colors are pretty vibrant and sharp. My only gripe is the backlight is super bright and the contrast ratio gets crushed when you start turning down the backlight too far(Pretty sure it's not a true backlight control). It's still a pretty nice monitor for the price though. I would avoid that Dell P2815Q. Many say the colors are washed out and it's not as nice as other Ultrasharp models. Also 30 Hz is a joke. Why would anyone want that? Watching my mouse pointer stutter would annoy me badly.

 

Good to know!
Now when you say hot to you mean :
A) Holy ship that's hot!
B) Ok it's hot but I can still touch it without burning my fingers off.

I would imagine running all day would make it run hot anyway.

 

I knew I'd be asked to qualify my statement.

It was uncomfortably hot; I couldn't keep my index finger there for much more than a couple of second. I want to emphasize that having it run on a show floor all day is an extreme case. And, the laptop was sitting flush on a table covered with cloth.

That display though... so tempting!

I also had my first look at offerings from Gigabyte (forgot the model number, but a 15" with a 670M) and MSI (GS60), and the build quality of those was noticeably cheaper than that of the Razer. Razer does it right with design and fit/finish.

 

No I'm currently using 3x Asus 27" LED/3D in surround for my desktop. I'm just struggling with finding an acceptable hi res external for the new Blade.

 

The 2013 model also got that hot in the same area as it is where the highest volume of hot of air is released, but as you already stated above, this is by design. Personally, I expect any gaming centric laptop to get pretty toasty, but for some the high temperatures makes them worrisome enough that it would not be acceptable. I am surprised to hear about the fan noise though. Even under long gaming sessions the 2013 model's fan noise is hardly noticeable. Glad to hear the new screen is much improved over the last generation's model. Only 2 more days, im pretty stoked.

 

Thanks for the info! How would you say the screen on the Razer was compared to the MSI? Were they similar, as in all fairly nice?

 

I know there is a lot of concern going around about the possible high temps / fan noise, which we all won't really know about for a few more days, but I have a general question for someone who might have experience in area.

HIDevolution New Razer Blade 14 QHD+ GTX 870M

I see they are offering custom options for the new razer, one of which includes an upgraded IC Diamond thermal paste. Does anyone have any experience with the stuff? And how well would it compare to the "stock" thermal compound that comes installed by Razer? Thanks!

 

First of all, cant wait for the blade!
I've preordered from Amazon (26 mar.) with delivery estimate 26-14 may, any thoughts?
Also I'm also wondering about the Oculus dev kit 2 support. Could it really not work, with this premium gaming laptop? It should work great, right?

 

2 things that want me cancel my preorder. No HDMI 2.0 or Display port for new oculus rift, and the Kepler Based GPU !! why do they put the kepler in there.
What are your thoughts, cancel and wait for the kepler release or let it ship

 

If you have the option to "upgrade" the thermal paste to an aftermarket one such as the mentioned IC Diamond paste, go for it. I've had my Blade Pro (2013) repasted with some aftermarket paste and they helped so much with the temps. It took nearly 10c off on maximum load. I've used Arctic Cooling MX4. Any reputable aftermarket paste is going to help with the temps but your mileage may vary. Having said that, i've notice it cost a whooping $45 to have them "upgrade" this for you. A tube of IC Diamond is about a quarter of that price. So unless you don't know how to repaste yourself or don't want to risk voiding any warrenty coverage, then i highly suggest you take that service.

What i would do if i were you would be to keep the stock paste and use it for however long it is going to last, you will notice a temp rise with time due to dust but if you clear those vents up time to time and yet the temps are still hotter compared to when it was new, it be time for you to repaste it.

 

I preordered 3 days ago and got a date of May 13-28. Don't get your hopes up but my experience is Amazon is usually very conservative and ships early. I've had a couple surprises where I wanted to cancel a preorder and they shipped a couple weeks early.

 

From my understanding, Nvidia isn't releasing an 870M Maxwell(assuming that's what you meant you wanted to wait for). If they were going to make one, I think they would have announced it. So you're probably going to be waiting for the 900M series. I'm not sure why it matters though. It's still faster than almost every other mobile card and it's not like you can easily replace it in the future like in a Sager/Clevo build.

 

I dont know how it compares to Razer's normal thermal paste, as I have no idea what paste they use, but IC diamond thermal paste is excellent stuff. Probably better than AS5, which is another great, tried and true thermal paste solution. Given the option, I would definitely go for it.

 

And yes. There is a second M2 SSD port

 

Pics or it didn't happen

Those HID guys probably are taking a guess and taking pre-orders

 

Razer support (
As final specifications have not been made for the Rift, it may not work.

So long as it is HDMI compatible there should be no issues. )

 

Have to say I'm both shocked and impressed by oculus support here, though it is a gaming system so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I guess I would be more concerned if I didn't have a massive rig to begin with. I just don't see myself using oculus in public, not because I'm ashamed, but just because that likely means I'll be doing something or going somewhere. And while it would be cool to bring it over and show friends, I wouldn't want to be at a LAN party where everyone was plugged in... I could have just stayed home.

Now if this is going to be your only system I could definitely understand.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk