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I really need help on making that decision.
I have been looking for a new gaming laptop now for over 2 months and still haven't decided. Mostly of course i love the Blade because of how it looks, that aluminum body with matte black finish is just beautiful. But the inside!?!?? Is it really that bad? Are the fans really that noisy that i shouldnt buy it because of that? Of course there are way better cooled laptops, but most of them look bad in my opinion. If im going to buy a 3000AUD laptop then i want it to look like a 3000$ laptop with premium materials.
Other options are:
Aero15 which is plastic...
Alienware 13,15 which are premium quality but are heavy and look abit too alien...
Aorus x5v6 or x3v7 wich is one of the best looking from in and outside..
Personally speaking. Go for the Aorus X5v7. Its worlds better in terms of performance especially since your budget allows it. More storage options and RAM slots too if you need it. Plus it actually cools its components. You might as well let the Blade melt everything inside it and anything that touches it when its runnijg full tilt
I didn't even need to read the rest of your post. If you're willing to spend the money and want premium materials and build quality, get the Razer Blade. No question.
Every other thin-and-light gaming laptop in that size category uses way too much plastic and paneling; and looks way too much like tacky 1337 g4M3rZ bling. The Razer Blade can actually pass as a plain "boring" work laptop if you need to use it in that setting (buy a black decal to cover the Razer logo on the laptop lid if desired). Any other laptop you mention will scream of gamerz-bling, either by it's color choice it is of aggressive design (e.g. fan grills in the rear of laptop).
As for cooling... Yes, fans get loud. But fans will get loud on any laptop in this category, just by simple physics of cramming high powered components in a small chassis. Every laptop on that list suffers from the same problem. When you game on those laptops, you need headphones.
Not really...the GS63 runs at about 46-47 dBa. The BLade 14 goes anywhere from 50 to 60 dBa - that's twice as loud without moving much more air. Not to mention the heatsink design is extremely poor since you have direct-contact pipes meaning you have no copper plate and thus worse heat transfer since the surface area is substantially smaller. The cooling on the Blade 14 is really just bad, especially when compared to the Aero, Aorus or GS series.
I'd rather spend my money on a laptop that can actually perform well. The GS series had gimped 1060s so thats not worth anything. The Blade will throttle to hell so your 1060 might as well be perfoming like a 1050. At least the Aero and Aorus line actually performs to the sum of its parts. Plus the Aorus can overclock quite well if youre in to that while maintaining pretty good temps. Check my sig or around the forums for MiSJAHs post
46-47dBa is still too loud to use naked, because the fan noise is audible if you try to use the laptop's built-in speakers. You are correct that it isn't as loud as a Razer Blade. But it's still loud enough that you'll want to use headphones. It also uses cheap plastic + metal paneling in its construction. If I had $2000-$3000 to spend on a laptop, the GS63 wouldn't be anywhere near my top-picks. Like many Taiwanese-designed laptops, it makes too many compromises to try and reduce price. That's a side-effect of designing laptops that are Asia-first (focuses on Asian market as top priority), since countries in those regions are more price-sensitive and tend to use paper specifications as primary buying criteria.
Actually, the GS63 uses primarily magnesium-based alloys and aluminium. As for rigidity, they're pretty comparable. Razer's devices are in NO way similar to the MacBook chassis that they try to imitate. Loius Rossmann has more than one video detailing various issues with Razer's designs. You see, as much as Min Tang likes to lie to everyone, Razer's devices are NOT years ahead of anything. Actually, they're several years behind the competition as they've just now figured out that putting the vBIOS under the heatsink causes it to die.
It would be a miracle if razer was "years ahead" of any other manufacturer. It took them god knows how long for them to figure out that putting stuff directly on the opposite of your heat generating components can kill it. Post about it in the razer forums and min will just lie about how their themal engineering is the "golden standard in the industry". Direct contact heatpipes my fking ass
The Areo 15 is CNCed Aluminium chassis according the the website. Many reviewers say it feels premium (it certainly looks it). I think the textured triangle on the lid is only plastic.
The AW 13 doesn't look too Alien like the bigger 15 and 17 because it doesn't have the LEDs on the sides. Also you can cover logo with sticker or something. I really cant recomend the AW 13 OLED enough. The OLED screen is simply amazing
In general the Razer Blade is going to get a lot of hate based off Razer's customer service, which to be completely frank, is mostly earned.
But I do agree that as far as performance goes, the GTX1060 Blade 14 is right in line with just about any sub-1-inch-thick GTX1060 notebook. In a pinch, looking at the Aero 14/15, and the Aorus X3, benchmark numbers are perfectly comparable (on the Kaby Lake version. It did take a couple of updates for the Skylake version of the Blade 14 to match typical thin+light 1060 laptops).
A lot of negativity about the Blade 14 also comes from the Skylake version, which suffered from terrible always-on fans for a really long time, which made it far less appealing than any comparable notebook unless you don't mind the constant whirring of a fan, which to be fair, some people don't.
The Blade's have also seemed to have had a disproportionate number of negative reviews to other laptops on various online communities. This is of course subjective, and could be reflective of simply a greater volume of sales (I don't know), but the track record is far from spotless.
In general I tend to err on the side of caution, but I can completely understand why somebody might want a Blade, and if that Blade performs perfectly well, why they have every right to be happy with it.
Agree. Owned the Skylake 1060 Blade and now own the Kabylake 1060 Blade. World of difference between the two. The Kabylake Blade is what all prior Blades should've been. For work, i.e., office tasks, internet, the fans remain totally off and the laptop is dead silent. I get easily 7+ hours of battery life doing just office work. When plugged in the performance is on par with other similar laptops quoted above. My Firestrike overall score at stock is always north of 9600, graphics score 11,260. I undervolt my CPU -.100V. Even during Prime95 (for only 30 mins, I'm not insane) my CPU stays at 3.4ghz turbo clock on all 4 cores. During Forza Horizon 3 gameplay my GPU remains steady at 1848 mhz with the very occasional dip down a bin to 1835- typical Pascal behavior and still above the rated boost clock. During my normal use I don't see any of the throttling that people mention about the Blade. Sure it may happen with other programs / uses, but not for me so far with everything I've thrown at it.
I previously tried the Skylake 15.6" MSI GT62VR, which has the best cooling I've ever seen on a laptop, and the 6700HQ could not stay at the rated turbo clock on all 4 cores due to an uneven heatsink most likely. My point is every company makes duds. I 100% agree that you have a better chance of getting a faulty Blade than a good one, which is pathetic. I went through 6 Kabylake Blades myself due to screen defects and faulty heatsinks. Razer support is atrocious, and that's an understatement.
OP, if you get the Blade test the heck out of it when you get it. A faulty heatsink is very obvious on day 1. I automatically return any laptop that has 10 degree or greater variance among CPU core temp under load. Sue me. This is the root of most CPU related / throttling problems. An even heatsink and nice undervolt make the Blade shine. Not sure how good Razer AU support is. If at all possible you should buy it from somewhere other than Razer direct.
Hello,
I am buying the Razer Blade whilst in Australia then taking it overseas with me. So I want to "test the heck out of it" before I leave, as you say. I'm a bit of a newb though - how DO I test it? What software should I run? You say a faulty heatsink is very obvious - what should I look out for?
Thank you.
Aida64 stability test on CPU, FPU and GPU is a good option. Or Witcher 3 if you have that - it's a fairly stressful game.
Look for ANY defect - broken port, broken keyboard backlight, broken trackpad buttons, dead zones on the trackpad, not working keys, audio hiccups, connectivity issues, LCD (dead pixels, does it get affected in any way when moving the hinge) and battery life (does the battery heat up or underperform).
Also - you absolutely MUST buy through an intermediary such as the Microsoft store or HIDevolution. Otherwise, you will NEVER get your money back in case of problems.
only buy a blade if you want it to die within a year. Just a heads up and a warning, I hate seeing people lose their money. they havent come out with a single iteration yet in which some type of failure is not common.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
