Razer Blade VS Blade Pro

-Hi all,
I'm looking to get a gaming / general use laptop and I'm debating between the Blade and Blade Pro. I have a few questions:

1. Which one has better battery life? What is the battery life of both models?

2. How are temperatures on both models? Will the 14" temps hurt components or reduce laptop life?

3. How useful is the Switchblade UI?

I will be using these laptops for general use (so I don't want crappy battery life) as well as light gaming. So how much will the 860m reduce gaming performance over the 870m (I would be running both at 1080p)?

Thanks in advance,
Arcturus314

 

One other question: Is it possible to change out the SSD on the Blade 2014 14"?

 

I got my blade 14" (2014) 4 days ago, so this reply may be somewhat inexperienced as to what other people might say. I am a casual gamer (like to play SC2 and DotA 2 mainly) and so far I have not seen any throttling and runs those 2 games smoothly. I am gonna try my best to answer your questions so bear with me.

1. As an owner of Blade 14" 256GB, I'd say the battery life with mild youtube browsing, downloading applications, and surfing the internet comes around to 3-5 hours of usage. I am satisfied with this performance as the power brick itself is very light and slim. I don't know about the Blade Pro, but I can assume it'd be less since the 17" footprint is not really meant for on-go portability.

2. The temperature of this laptop is as not bad as what it says to be. When gaming it goes up to max 90-95 degrees, but the temperature does not maintain. The fan kicks at max rpm around that temperature and cools the machine down immediately to 70 to 80 degree Celsius, which is common for laptops when driving intense applications. I think Razer has managed to successfully play around with the thermal to make the machine as quiet as possible; however, I just wish the fans would kick a bit sooner, so it keeps its temp at 60-70 degrees. The palm rest and the left side of the keyboard does not get hot (surprisingly) and this feature truly made me to have a different perspective on Razer; really innovative.

3. This I cannot answer; however, I've seen some reviews where people have been saying it is buggy despite the fact that the Blade (pro) has been around for 3 - 4 years now. I don't think Razer updated its features in the new 2014 edition either.

I also heard and saw the 17" to have some design issue where the top of the chassis (the screen) is not flushed with the bottom part of the chassis (like a weird laptop-under bite) If I were to make a choice, I'd go for the 14" simply due to superior cooling, better screen (IPS vs TN), performance, and portability.

SSD is exchangeable, but I wouldn't dare touch myself because I am inexperienced with M.2 drives and laptops in small form factor. (I was a Macbook Pro 2011 and MSI GT780 user)

If you have any questions feel free to message me or reply, I'd be glad to give you answers to what I know.

 

Oh and performance between 870m and 860m. It would've been perfect if there was a Maxwell (the new architecture of mobile GTX series, which is told to be around 30% efficient than its predecessor, Kepler architecture?) version of 870m, but as of now nVidia is not looking forward to launching it. I don't mind the 870m. It runs modern games (Wolfenstein, DotA 2 ) at 60 fps on ultra or high-ultra settings at 1080p. I don't dare to game on its native resolution because it taxes the GPU too much and I don't get the performance that I want. The benchmarks for these two cards from the internet also states 870m gives you an edge despite its old architecture.

 

I have been using the 2014 blade pro for a while now so I can give u a look at that side
1. I have averaged around 4 hours if battery usage running it at max brightness and set to performance doing mild youtube and online games like armory games
2. The temps are amazing they stay perfectly cool and stays in the 80 on CPU and 60 on gpu on the high end
3. The switch blade is amazingly useful the windows 8 key charm is awesome and makes windows 8 better than 7 plus adding custom launch icons like chrome or premier pro is great plus i have not had a single issue that anyone else has stated in the 2014 model they put In a completely new switchblade module is completely new from last years and actually makes a huge differnce and the under bite issue seams to have been kinda fixed cuz it's very minimal ud really need to nit pick to complain about it cuz it hangs out so little and only on the corners
4. 860m runs great and with overclocking it runs better than 870m and can be over clocked because it hasa thermal head room unlike the normal blade
So that is my side I personally would go with the blade pro and trust me the screen is the best 1080 panel iv seen