Razer Blade Build Quality?

I'm looking to purchase a new laptop, and I'm trying to choose between a 2015 Macbook Pro 15" w/ dedicated GPU or a 215 New Razer Blade. One thing I appreciate about this website is that people aren't blindly loyal to a brand, so I thought this would be an excellent place to ask a couple questions.

I definitely think the Blade looks better, and obviously has more power than a Macbook Pro, but on the forums that I visit it seems that Razer may be struggling with build quality and product longevity. Macs obviously have their own issues, but the number of people discouraged over their "2nd or 3rd" replacement Blade seems high, and Macbooks have a reputation of being fairly bulletproof.

1) Can you please speak to build quality from your personal experience, especially if you have previously used a Macbook Pro?

2) Does the Razer scratch very easily on the exterior or interior?

3) Would you recommend a MBpro (with Bootcamp) or Razer based upon my following habits for usage:

-Movie and music streaming, movie playback via HDMI to my plasma TV (40%)
-Interent, HD Youtube (35%)
-Games (20%- mostly RPGs and strategy titles. I have a dedicated Gamer desktop)
-Productivity in MS Office (5%)

Thank you!

 

I have owned quite a few Macbook Pros and I would easily say that the Blade is on par with one. It has great fit and finish. The track-pad is big and responsive, and mine (1080P version) gets about 6hrs of battery. My Last MBP did get 7hrs though, but also had slower hardware. You can't really compare the people that return their device 2-3 times as I have see that just as common over on MacRumors of some people returning even 3-5 times to get a device that in their eye is somehow "more perfect" than the others.

If you have a dedicated desktop and you prefer OS X and know the games you want will play fine on it then i would say the MacBook is for you.
If on the other hand you really want that 20% gaming you do to have better FPS then the Blade.

It comes down to how serious that 20% gaming is to you.

 

How's the 1080p screen? And does the system run cooler and quieter vs the QHD version?

 

I currently own both a 2014 Macbook pro and a 2014 Razer Blade pro. i also [for about 24 hours] had a 2014 Blade 14". To start in order:

1) Build quality.

I'd say they're approximately on par. My 2014 Blade pro seems like the lid is just a HAIR off from the base when closed. Maybe it's just a hair smaller, it's just enough that it doesn't feel smooth and flush like the macbook pro does. That's my only nitpick, and it's a very minor one.

2) Scratching

This is a very subjective thing, and will vary greatly based on your own personal habits. *I* have rarely had issues with scratching machines myself, but my blade pro spent about 6 months in the hands of my wife. There are a few dings on the palm rest and some light scratches around the ports. Helpful hint: a sharpie goes a long way to covering those up. The nice thing about Apple's silver is. . even when it gets a ding, it's approximately the same color, so it already blends.

3) Purchase recommendation based on criteria:

This one isn't as cut and dried as it seems. The macbook pro w/ 750m [the model I have] will run Diablo 3 . . OKAY. . at 1920 x 1200. You can push it up a little, about a notch or two before you're hitting sub 30 FPS [with occasional dips lower down]. I don't deal with bootcamp, so i can't say how huge an increase you may or may not see with windows drivers.

By comparison, the 14" blade with that shiny 3800 x 1800 looks good on paper, but is nowhere near as shiny in person. MOST of this is not the fault of the machine. . Windows scaling is horrible and there were additional scaling issues with WoW that either forced you to run @ 3800 x 1800 or have black bars around the screen. My other complaint is the rather awful anti-glare coating Razer uses. Whites just look horribly fuzzy and make an otherwise gorgeous display look like a mid-line TN panel. I don't know how well the 970m will push the display, but the 870m just wasn't up to the task given the scaling issues, which is what prompted me to return the thing next day. Naturally if you can get around the scaling issues [and it's hit and miss based on the program] the 870m is a massive upgrade over the 750m in the macbook pro, so if the games you're running NEED that extra power, you'll want to lean in that direction. I'd go look up "game title performance on 750m" if you're not sure.

Ultimately these are two different machines for two VERY different purposes. the macbook pro is a productivity machine that can handle light/medium gaming. . maybe more if you're willing to live with lower video settings. The blade line is built around cramming as much tech into as small a form factor as possible without turning the whole thing into molten aluminum. I wasn't comfortable with 94c on the 14" blade, TECHNICALLY TjMax is 105c, so it's well within spec.

Extra credit observations:

Let's face it: no matter how good a PC trackpad is, the apple trackpad wins hands down for versatility and comfort. There are a few people who may dispute this, but I'm firmly convinced they only use mice ; ) I may, of course, be biased.

Heat and battery life: Macbook wins both hands down. my macbook pro rarely goes over 67c [via SMC Fan control] and I can manually adjust the fans up a little bit to keep it around 62c. The blade pro runs around 84c flat out [79c GPU] and the 14" blade commonly tops out in the upper 80s low 90s.

Keyboard feel is very similar. The Blade is just a tiny bit looser than the macbook. . this may just be that my blade pro is 10 months old where the macbook is only 3.

I have had a lot of issues with wifi on the blade pro. I eventually ended up installing intel's auto driver update tool, which FINALLY fixed the AC7260. I manually downloaded the drivers previously, have no idea why they didn't install. Now instead of a force limited 144 Mbps 8 inches from my router I get 866.7 Mbps.

The TL/DR on this post is that the macbook pro is an extremely comfortable computer to work on and is beautiful to look at: but you're paying a premium at this point for a 3 year old GPU. The Blade is a phenominal machine in it's own right, but it's somewhat hobbled by a screen a little over-progressive for the hardware and not-yet-fully-resolved scaling issues.

Also, and this is just me. . . 14" was just a bit too small a display area to work with. 15" is pushing it when I have to have multiple spreadsheets open to copy data. having an external display hooked up resolves the issue. . if you want to take it to that level.

 

I have not had the QHD so I am not sure. I knew I would neve use the touch feature and that I would be scaling down to play games anyway so I saw no need to get it. I do with it had 16GB of RAM sometimes just to help a bit for future poofing, but in reality I have not even come close to using 7GB of it yet, so I know I'm good for a while as Windows 10 work just fine on less RAM than 8.1.

I expect to get 3-5 years about of it and at this point I see no reason why I wont be able to unless games have some HUGE evolution that make the hardware outdated faster than I expected. I typically plan to have a machine for 3yrs though so if in 4 or 5 I feel its to slow, then I'll upgrade and consider the Blade a success.

 

Most replies here echo what I would've recommended. But I'll also add that if you're worried about Razer's quality control, then buy it from Microsoft - which I believe has a more lenient return policy and the extended accidental coverage is fairly cheap ($150) compared to the unit price. I've always believed their peripherals have terrible QC, but this blade doesn't seem as bad - sure there are some people who return their product 2-3 times but i'm sure there's also plenty of people who've only had to buy it once and be happy.

I've never owned a Mac, nor will ever recommend gaming on it over the Razer, but I think in this case if you're not planning to push the limits of the laptop and you're comfortable as to what you're going to use it for in the future then why not just go for the safe bet in the other categories and get a MBP?

 

If you have a dedicated gamer desktop, I'd prioritize pricing over anything else. This laptop is a premium device in cost and power and is complete overkill for your listed activities (taking out the gaming component). Get an ultrabook for a fraction of the cost and be happy.

 

If I'm honest, I'll say that I have always believed that the rMBP 15" was the worst deal in the Apple lineup because there is so little value. However, for your uses, I doubt you will use the power of the Blade. As for the QHD and FHD Razer Blades, they're exactly the same except for screen and RAM. The QHD screen is very power efficient so there is no battery life loss. If you think the rMBP is bulletproof, then so is the Blade. They're so similar that I wonder why Apple hasn't sued yet. But I'd back what Poneh said and tell you to get a rMBP 13", you still get decent Iris Graphics that will allow you to game.

 

It's the only macbook pro that utilizes an actual hyper threaded QUAD core vs everything else in their mobile line-up. CPU wise it's absolutely amazing from a performance standpoint. Add the extra ram and larger SSD, and it makes for a very nice machine [one which I'm currently typing this on]

However, if I amend "there is so little value" to say "there is notably less value per dollar vs Apple's other offerings" I'd agree 1000% [not a type-o]. If you can find a 2014 refurb on Apple's website, however, it becomes much more price/performance comparable.

 

I'm not comparing it to the other MacBooks, Apple only offers one Quad Core machine for a reason. It purposely has no competition on OS X. Where else will you find a machine with integrated graphics for $2000? Or one with a low end graphics card for $2500? It's horrible value. Unless you're hell bent on using OS X, there's no reason to buy it. Refurbished doesn't really count though, you can find refurbished for most high end computers.

 

You mean besides obvious contenders like the 512GB SP3 [factoring in the keyboard]? I could make a similar comparison between the Razer Blade and the MSI GS60 Ghost series in terms of value per dollar. Ultimately NONE of these machines are a a "great value" when you can buy something like a G75 or MSI GT series and get higher performance out of an admittedly larger chassis. When you get to the "ultra portable performance" niche, the selection is rather limited and the price is a premium. in 99% of tasks, they will all perform roughly the same because they're using approximately the same CPUs.

The other 1%, gaming, is the proverbial "niche within a niche". What the 750m lacks in power it makes up for in consistency, battery life, and optimal scaling. The 2015 Blade is hampered by excessive heat, windows scaling, and that huge QHD display. If you get the base 1080 screen, you sacrifice 8 gig of non-upgradable ram, a [presumably less attractive] screen, and a GPU that's pretty much overkill for 90% of the games on the market. Sometimes that's a deciding factor. From the OP's criteria, this isn't the case here.

And Apple refurb = essentially brand new machine, vs an "inspected and repackaged" standard refurb. Razer may do the same thing, I dunno. . all I know is that Apple's refurb center is one of the best in the industry.

Don't get me wrong here: Even with all that, and as much as I love this notebook. . I wouldn't have paid $2500 for it. I actually managed to snag a new one for just over $2k. Does that mean I think it's a horrible value at $2500? Well. . yea. . kinda. . but I think the 2015 Blade is a horrible value at it's price point as well.

Which would I pick if I could only have one?

Not a realistic question. I need a socket set in my toolbox just as much as I need screwdrivers.

 

I own both, and use both regularly for different reasons. The 13" rMBP is what I do work on, hardly ever game on it. The Razer is what I play and hobby on, and only do work on it rarely. The build quality is pretty much identical. I like the Razer better for some reasons, and the MBP better for others. They're about as equal as it can possibly get comparing a Windows notebook to an Apple notebook.

The question you should ask yourself is, what OS would you rather use on a regular basis. I can tell you right now that if you're just going to use Bootcamp all the time, don't get the MacBook. It's not worth it, and battery life on MacBooks suffer in bootcamp. If you're just going to bootcamp it when you're on AC and playing a windows only game, then that's not such an issue. Do realize though that the GPU on the blade is far faster. I run all my games at 1600x900 (they do look great at that res on the QHD+). But there are a sizable amount of games that run on OSX these days, but Windows is still where it's at for heavy gaming.

If you don't care at all about OSX, get the Razer, it's better hardware for the same price and build quality. If you adore OSX, get the macbook and forget bootcamp exists unless you need to play a game that's windows only.

 

First I don't know why you brought the SP3 into this as it has a dual core i7 CPU. You're forgetting however that the SP3 starts at $800 and is in a tablet form factor. I'm sure that the i7 is far from being the bestseller. It's more comparable to the rMBP 13" that gets into the same price range with a similar config. A MSI GS60 ghost Pro with a 128 GB SSD is 2200 with a 128 SSD + 1 TB HDD. However it has a lot of plastic in its chassis/worse build quality and much worse battery life than the blade. I'd hardly call that a steal as the 128 Blade is also 2200. The G75 is not even comparable to the Blade. One is a massive 17incher chasing ultimate performance while the other is a high end gaming rig in an ultrabook chassis. Not to mention that it has a 1080p panel and a non existent battery life. You can't compare the two. I won't even talk about the GT series as they're cheaply built machines and have nowhere near the quality of Alienware/Razer. Why is a 750M more consistent than a 970M? And you should also know that when it comes to battery life, your GPU is irrelevant due to Optimus. Do you have a Blade? It certainly gets hot but it's certainly not excessive. I can guarantee you that the rMBP would get hotter doing less intensive tasks while throttling like nobody's business. Hell even iMACs throttle. Scaling is certainly not perfect but 90% of apps scale well, it's an argument quickly becoming redundant. High Res screens have never been a con. Are you telling me that Apple refurbished computers are brand new? Yeah right. They may be in great condition but they're just as "inspected and repackaged" as the other computers from other companies. Dell/ Lenovo do the same thing. Compare the rMBP 15" with the Blade. For $200 more with the blade, you get a faster processor, a graphics card that absolutely crushes the 750M, an arguably better higher res screen and better thermals. The only possible reason why you'd choose the rMBP 15" is I need OS X or if you don't have $200. Also the fact, that someone may not need the GPU doesn't affect the value all that much. Even the Dell M3800 that's supposed to be the closest competitor to the rMBP 15" comes with Workstation graphics card and a 4K screen at a similar price point. It also offers a lot more flexibility with configuration. It's great that you like your rMBP 15" but compared to its competitors, it comes short.

OP, I'm sorry for derailing your thread. Also keep in mind that in Bootcamp, the drivers are not very good and battery life takes a huge hit.

 

The idea that someone dropping $2k+ on a notebook couldn't either save up 200$ dollars more or spend 200$ more is insane.
For what it's worth (as I can only go on my own experience, I don't have hard data across the industry) Apple's refurbish program is less lenient with what they will allow to go back out. If it's damaged, or in a disgusting state, it'll be cleaned or replaced, or just thrown out. I don't know exactly what they do, but I've seen some really nasty stuff come from Asus refurb and Acer refurb. I've never seen anything but 'like new' from Apple. (Unless you buy something open box in a Best Buy of course...)
On topic, Gaming power, get a blade. If you want cooler with more battery run time, get a rMBP. It really comes down to what that dGPU is going to be doing, and how often. The blade will always be hotter, even in extreme scenarios. It's just the territory of the hardware.

 

If you manually update the drivers from the makers the battery life gets better.

 

i have both the 2015 FHD RB and a late 2013 MBP.. they are about the same build quality. it really is just like a black MBP. i've wiped mine w damp paper towels a few times already and the aluminum holds just the same as my MBP. if you already have a gaming desktop.. go with OSX if that is what you're more comfortable with. maybe wait to see if Apple puts a decent GPU in the next 15.

 

This is a good suggestion, I thought about it but forgot to mention. The rMBP 15 hasn't been upgraded in a while, they might do that soonish, who knows.

 

It's definitely due, providing they don't kill the 15" line completely.

Because you asked if anyone made a $2000 computer with integrated GPU only. You didn't specify that it had to be the lowest end model (in which case you could easily get an i7 quad with an 960/70m for $1200-$1500.

Someone didn't actually READ my original post. I clearly posted temps.

So am I OP. Hopefully you got some perspective from my follow up posts.

HFM pretty much nailed it with that comment ^^

 

I apologize for overlooking your post. As for your temps, 62 for a rMBP? This is a machine well known to get into the 90+ under high load. The base price thing was implied, you can also get a rMBP 13" for $2700. No? You could get i7, 970M for $1300 but you sacrifice build quality, battery life, screen resolution and the like.

 

That rMBP 15 goes nuclear under heavy gaming loads. I would go as far to say the Razer handles a far better GPU slightly better. They both get hot and loud under heavy gaming, but the blade wins that scenario.