So really how good/bad it is?

So now that the blade 14 has been out for a while, what do you guys think about it? Like it? hate it? would u buy something else? how does it compare with its 17" brother? how does it compare with the 15" macbook pro retina

 

It's thin, lightweight, power. But the screen isn't very good...

 

pros:

very solidly built and designed gaming laptop
handles games very well at very good or maximum fps at high settings for most games
solid 6 hour battery life for browsing the internet and watching streaming movies
very responsive mouse track pad
non ghosting keyboard
very portable take it anywhere, carry it anywhere type of laptop that can handle the most demanding games out there

cons:

gets VERY hot as in cpu cores go up to 86C to 88C when on gaming load so the top strip of the keyboard gets very hot to touch
screen viewing angles are very bad, however it is acceptable for me since I don't want ppl staring at what I am doing, I bought this laptop for myself not for others to look at what I am doing
battery life has become sub par after upgrading to windows 8.1 and NVidia drivers 331.58 now I only get a little over 4 hours browsing the web and watching online videos
wifi not very good will drop you occasionally when you least expect it

 

any idea if those bad things got fixed on the 17" model?

 

The temperature of the RBP is warm but all of the heat is near the hinge area of the laptop it is not at all uncomfortable to use.
The screen viewing angles are more than sufficent on the RBP with a better quality screen and higher resolution.
I can not coment on the battery issue with 8.1 but so far i have noticed no change on mine with 8.1
My wifi has yet to fail me.

Edit** I did some testing and I do seem to be getting reduced battery life with 8.1 I will monitor more closely and try to post back.

 

Best laptop i have ever owned... period..

Had M15x, M17x, M14x, M18x from Alienware and other lower profile ones from HP/Dell

 

Everything but the screen is basically perfect. Too hot to game on your lap but you should expect that with this much power in such a small chassis. Didn't notice any wifi issues.

But the screen is so bad makes the whole thing practically worthless - price is far too high for a screen like this. Not acceptable for any kind of graphics work, laptop is a poor choice for multimedia use. Colors are noticeably bad and this will affect everything you do using the built-in screen. For me it diminished the experience watching movies, playing classic emulated games, playing new games. Very poor vertical stability leads to serious image quality issues whenever you can't angle display properly (when on airplane for example).

Which is too bad, because the laptop is literally perfect otherwise. Gorgeous to look at, great build quality, great keyboard, better than usual trackpad, nice port selection, and an incredible amount of power in such a svelte form factor. 900p resolution was a great call from Razer since you can game w/decent settings at native resolution instead of having to scale. But good lord.. the screen itself... yikes.

Unless you really don't care about image quality I would recommend waiting for a refresh. 15" MBPr screen is a revelation but I would take Razer over it in all other respects

 

People keep criticizing its screen, but I disagree with it. There are better screens out there? certainly, but not with the Razer blade's size/portability/performance. I calibrated it with SpyderExpress and I looks quite nice now. In regards of the heat I simply got a Cooler Master NotePal U2 Plus, and never see CPU or GPU temps go higher than 78/80C under heavy load and with GPU overlclock (+100 core +400 memory). This coolpad fits perfectly the blade's size, and allows to place its fans right under the notebook's intake vents.

Other pros: Very light. Aluminum chassis. Very comfortable to use keyboard/touch-pad. Very powerful with its overclockable 765m. Very fast and snappy.

I wouldn't advise going for its bigger brother, because it has the same GPU and a 1080 native screen, and that at that resolution one GPU struggles if playing with high/very high graphics settings. For that I'd advice going for a SLI solution.

 

Would you be king enough to give us the new color calibration file you created after using SpyderExpress, therefore sharing your nice calibration ? Thanks in advance !!

Otherwize, best Windows laptop ever owned and ever seen. Period. Indeed, the screen panel is not fantastic, but for web browsing and gaming it's fine. It only really sucks for movies. That's without Rafix's fix

 

ya that would be cool =) maybe get second opinion on the screen =)

 

Hey guys, attached is SpyderExpress profile for the razer blade's screen. I'm not sure how it will work on your machines, since the calibration is specific to each monitor response. In my case, gone is that bluish veil that washed up the whites. As well, blacks are deeper, red, green, blue, and yellow aren't as dull as before. Give it a spin and see how it goes.