What Users Want In The Next Razer Blade

I would buy a 13" 1080p+ razer with a 770m- price be damned ! Assuming the thermals were okay and you could actually use it...

 

Yeah... One can always hope Maybe I'll start my own line of "True Gaming Laptops" and steal all their profits xD

Yeah me too, are there actually any decent 13" Gaming laptops out here?

 

13-14":
Gigabyte U2442V or F 1600x900 14" that I just mentioned with 640m/650m
Sony S13 with 640m LE 1366x768 13"
Samsung Series 7 Radeon 6490m 1600x900 14"
Lenovo Y400 / Z400 640m 655m 1366x768 13" (has option to add second GPU!)

 

Hit the nail RIGHT on the head with your first observation. The PCB is WAAAY to big. I don't know why Razer decided to spend more money making a much smaller power supply (the video says something like 6x more expensive) instead of focusing on making a more efficient PCB.

The benefits of a smaller, more efficient PCB encompass the whole laptop. Smaller PCB means more battery space. More space for heatsinks and larger, quieter fans. Less power consumption (albeit very slightly).

Now that the R2 is out, I would hope that the R3 really becomes the "3rd time is a charm". I'm probably going to buy the R2 in a couple weeks, as I don't see any true competitor. The Asus UX51 comes close, but the GT650 is the DDR3 version, which seriously gimps it for gaming.

Anyway, here's what I would like to see Razer do for the next generation of Blade(s):

Display	15.6" LED Matte 16:10 1680x1050; upgradable to 1920x1200	17.3" LED matte 16:10 1920x1200
Processor	Haswell 35w quad core	Haswell 35w quad core
Memory	16GB DDR3	16GB DDR3; upgradable to 32GB DDR
Graphics	Nvidia GTX 660m 2GB with Optimus (or 700 series equivalent)	Nvidia GTX 680m 2GB with Optimus (or 700 series equivalent)
Hard Drive(s)	256GB mSATA with 1 empty HDD	256GB mSATA with 1 empty HDD
Optical Drive	None	None
Networking	802.11 a/b/g/n with Bluetooth 4.0	802.11 a/b/g/n with Bluetooth 4.0
Audio	HD Audio with stereo speakers and separate mic and headphone jacks	HD Audio with stereo speakers and separate mic and headphone jacks
Battery	9-Cell 74Wh	9-Cell 95Wh
Left Side	AC Adaptor port, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, Thunderbolt, Headphone, Mic	AC Adaptor port, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, Thunderbolt, Headphone, Mic
Right Side	Kensington Lock, 3x USB 3.0	Kensington Lock, 3x USB 3.0
Front Side	None	None
Back Side	None	None
Dimensions	14.2" x 9.8"x 1" (WxDxH)	16.8" x 10.9" x 1" (WxDxH)
Weight	5.5 lbs	6.2 lbs
Operating System	Windows 8	Windows 8
Extras	2.0MP Webcam, Ambient light sensor, Backlit keyboard, 5 dynamic LCD keys (for macros), 4.0" touchpad	2.0MP Webcam, Ambient light sensor, Backlit keyboard, 10 dynamic LCD keys, 4.0" touchpad, Switchblade UI
Chassis	All aluminum structure with fully removable bottom	Aluminum and carbon fiber structure with full removable bottom
Warranty	2-year limited; upgradable to 3-year	2-year limited; upgradable to 3-year
Pricing	Starting at $1800	Starting at $2500

So if you notice, I've spec'd out a 15" version of the Blade as a size alternative to the 17". The second biggest change is the increase in thickness from 0.88" to 1". I feel that this is a very small thing to give up, 0.12", when with this size change (as well as redesign of the PCB), the 17" could probably squeeze a 100w video card (GTX 680m equivalent). Also, I've made the underside full removable (which I think it currently is). Along with the PCB redesign, this should allow users to upgrade the RAM as well as use the empty 2.5" hard drive bay. Finally, I've relocated the USB ports to the right size and added a Thunderbolt port to the left. In all honesty, I feel that this is VERY achievable for Razer to do, as long as they get their priorities straight and stop focusing on gimmicks that don't work. Gimmick #1 was the Switchblade UI in it's current form. Why is it running Windows NT? Just have it run an upgrade version of their Synapse software that supports the current Switchblade UI stuff.

 

Wow... Thorough xD I think those are all great suggestions. The 700 series should be much lower power so I think the system could keep it's thickness and still pack in a 770-780 without any issues. I like the change to 16:10 screens too. and why empty 2.5" slot? I reckon they should have a 750Gb-1Tb HDD in there. You should send that to Razer

 

I kept it empty because most people would either find 256GB SSD enough, or they would buy their own hard drive and install it themselves. I suppose Razer could sell a hard drive for the 2.5" bay and charge 100% margin on it. haha

 

I highly doubt you'll be able to fit a 680m even with a die shrink in the Razer form factor. Still generates a lot of heat and requires massive cooling system compared to what's there right now. 700 series will still be Kepler and same manufacturing process, just improved quality which means slightly higher clocks.

680m not likely unless they beef up the thickness of the unit to accommodate cooling. It's nearly double the TDP of the 660m. Even though the 660m is listed as a 75W TDP, it's really more like 60W, 680m is 100W. nVidia Maxwell won't be here until some time in 2014. At that time you might see something with similar performance to the 680m within the same thermal envelope. My guess next revision will be something more along the lines of the 670MX which is no slouch by any means, but also much closer to 75W TDP if the Razer can truly handle it. Not to mention requiring a 180W power supply.

I see your overall weight has dropped from 6.6 lbs to 6.2 lbs. The added cooling and extra battery cells alone would add at least 0.5 lbs over current 6.6 lbs.

 

Personally, I can honestly believe that increase in the thickness to 1" and redesigning the PCB can yield a GTX680 fitting into the chassis. Just think about it this way, if they were to redesign the PCB and make it 25% smaller, that would leave enough room to enlarge the heatsink for the GPU and add another fan. You'll essentially be doubling the cooling power of the GPU.

Now, let's go by your number that the GTX660 (while listed as 75W) is closer to 60W. Now you have something that has a transfer heat capacity of 110 or 120W. There, done. In a 17" form factor, I don't see how this isn't possible.

Take a 13" ultrabook, stuff it into a 17" chassis. the remaining space you use for cooling. That's pretty much the formula.

Furthermore, Razer can ask Nvidia for highly binned chips, or even slightly reduce the clock speed of the 680, and still charge a premium for the upgrade (assuming they have 2 SKUs, one for the 660 and one for the 680).

EDIT: It's funny that you say that you're doubtful when, upon further research, I believe it was your post that shows best the cooling for the GTX 680m. In THIS post you have a picture of your Sager opened with the GTX 680m on the left. From what I'm seeing the 680 seems to be taking up about 30% of the chassis. Now I understand your Sager is thicker, and thus the heatpipe and heatsink assembly is thicker, but what I'm saying is to spread out the size of that heatsink across the back of the whole chassis. Pretty much doubling the size of the current cooling in the Blade. As I've said, I think with a PCB shrink, it's definitely possible.

 

Cooling doesn't expand linearly. Plus you have to consider the fan. You would need a massively wide fan to push the same airflow as a thicker one. No other laptop with a 100W TDP is thinner than 1.5", and it's not because they just make it thicker, it's because it's needed. It's all about surface area and CFM. I'm not saying what I'm saying because I don't want it to be true, I'm saying it based on reality.

By going up to 1" you're only adding 0.1 inch. That's small, and marginal room for cooling improvement.

 

Of course it doesn't expand linearly. And I do consider the fan. My suggestion was to make the current cooler double wide (or if you prefer, take the GTX 680m cooler, cut it in half, and lay it side-by-side) and throw two fans.

In the end, the area is going to be the same, if not larger. And CFM can be made up by doubling the fans. the extra 0.1 will make a difference, especially if they decide to get some custom made fans with specific blade design and angle.

Anyway, we agree to disagree.

 

I think the 660m /7770m or whatever will be the next generation Nvidia and AMD equivalents are perfect. The more extreme mobile GPUs like the 680m/7970m are overkill for 1920x1080 display IMO. As for increasing the thickness to 1.0", well that would be disappointing as the 0.88" thickness combined with the 660m is the single most appealing feature of this laptop. In any case, I don't think any 1" laptop chassis would work with any GPU along the lines of the 680m/7970m. Those are only going to be compatible with bulky desktop replacement laptops.

However, I really hope the next Blade model has optional upgrades for SSD raid (with no HDD), as well as an upgrade option for the more powerful Haswell mobile quad CPUs, such as whatever would be the Haswell version of the i7-3720QM / i7-3820QM (perhaps it will be called the i7-4820QM?

Anyone who already has a budget in the range of $2,500 -$3,000 for a laptop would be willing to spend a little more for faster CPU and SSD.

 

I don't think anyone honestly believes that razer can fit a 680/780 into the blade, but hopefully there will be a similar jump in the next gen like there was in this one. Next time maybe a 770 or a 775 (780 would probably produce to much heat and be to expensive). I don't think thats to much to ask. With that jump the blade should finally be able to play the newest games on high/ultra settings at good framerates for a long time.

 

Been thinking about the next gen a bit.
I would love it if there was customization, but since Razer's foray into the laptop world is still fairly young I don't expect them to allow for more than the uncustomizable models they sell now for at least a couple more generations. Especially since that would add cost.

Price: 2800 was way to much for what you got with the first gen, glad they learned their lesson. 2500 is still a bit of a pill to swallow, but its not as bad when you look at the improvements this gen had on the last. I say 2300-2500 is a good spot for them, especially since they are a sort of spiritual replacement of the 17 inch MBP.

Razer interface (touch panel and butons): I was a little iffy on this, and like many others I thought it was gimmicky and just added to price, and should be removed and be an optional accessory, it however, has grown on me, and since razer seems commited to making more apps for it, I have been sold on the idea. Keep it the same, except perhaps improve the touch response when using it as a browser.

Hard drive: First gen had a pure SSD, AWESOME! However that added significantly to the cost and since it was only 256 gigs, some people found it to small. The second gen fixed this with the hybrid drive. The only thing I can say would be even better is if they bumped up the caching ssd to 128 gigs from 64 gigs. Now that they are fairly grounded in the market they should be getting better prices on bulk orders for parts, and this shouldn't be to much of a production price increase for them. They can also advertise "Now with an even larger hard drive, and TWICE as much SSD space!"

Ram: 8 gigs is nice, but 12-16 would be better. A lot of people use their computers for more than gaming, and some programs can take up a lot of memory. Upping the Mhz from 1600 to 1866 would also be a nice bonus.

Video card: Hopefully there is another large jump in this next generation. A 780 would be to hot for anything but a desktop replacement, but perhaps a 770/775 would work... the 760 will probably be decent, but it would be nice to have a true powerhouse card under the hood.

CPU: Just up it to whatever haswell is comparable to what the current CPU range is as far as price.

Wireless card: This is a premium gaming laptop. Please for the love of god put a bigfoot/network killer wireless card in there.

Sound: Better speakers are always a worthy thing to chase after for laptop makers.

Ports: Please add a thunderbolt port.

Battery Life: Longer battery life is always a good goal for laptop makers to, but since the power supply is so small, have it plugged in really isn't an issue.

 

Many recent games are more and more reliant on the CPU.

There are plenty of laptops available around half the price of the 2nd gen Blade with i7-3720QM or i7-3820QM and Nvidia 650m or 660m, that are not too much larger form factor than the Blade. I'm willing to pay a premium for a case that is .88" thin, but I want a good CPU. I imagine many of us who would be willing to drop $3k on a laptop want at least some option to buy a model with better CPU than the 3632QM and SSD option with no HDD.

 

also, I think there should be a 15 inch version launched with the 17 inch. Asus's new zenbook packs a ton of stuff into a 15 inch chassis that is less than half an inch thick (fully specked its got a backlit keyboard, GTX650, can go up to 12 gigs of ram, dual 256 GB SSD's, and an i7), less than half as thick as the current 17 inch blade is. The 15 inch blade should be similar.

Here's what it should be.

2,000$

15 inch 1080p matte screen.

0.75 inch thick aluminum chassis.

6-8 gigs of 1600-1866 Mhz ram.

A GPU one step below the 17 inch one.

No razer switchblade UI, make it a USB connectable accessory though. This allows for a decently sized keyboard and cuts down the price. Put a normal touch pad below the keyboard like other manufacturers do.

back lit keyboard.

Same processor the 17 inch has, unless its to hot, then take a step down.

It needs a speed boost so a 256 GB SSD.

 

Here's what they should do. And I know it's been mentioned recently in either this thread or the Lounge thread. You know how they spent something like 6x as much on the power brick? Why not go down that route. Really research and put in a lot of effort to make a truly awesome main board for the next one. I know that the board in the one is a fairly generic gigabyte motherboard or something, Why not a special Razer motherboard. Keep all the features but size it down. If they could fit all the internals on a smaller PCB they could do what may be one of the biggest selling points of this laptop. Put in a bigger, battery. And if they're putting in all this research. Why not research a more efficient or more compact - higher cell battery, so we could get more than an hour off the battery on the go. I'd like at least 2 hours off this thing so I can play games on the train to and from school. It can manage one way, but not the other. If they spent the same amount of money and time as they did on the power brick on the battery and PCB they could turn this into something truly revolutionary and the king of portable gaming.

 

The motherboard is Razer's design. There are no "generic" motherboards, they are all proprietary to the specific laptop. You can't swap from one machine to the next in pretty much ANY OEM.

I would expect nothing less than an SSD in a machine like this. They hybrid drive is ok, but dual 256GB mSATA would be ideal. Not even in RAID, just two 256GB mSATA drives I think users could figure out how to manage their own data.

I don't think they could offer a 15 inch model because there would be no room for their Blade touchpad. It requires a 17 inch machine to implement it unless they move it down below the keyboard in the traditional location.

 

I was thinking for the 15 inch they would just have a traditional touchpad with a few customizable tactile keys along the side, and the switchblade UI would be an optional USB accessory.

 

In my case, I'm very interested in this laptop, but I certainly wouldn't be buying it for the proprietary switchblade touchpad. The touchpad with special buttons doesn't look interesting to me at all for gaming or otherwise. I use a USB Nostromo together with a wireless trackball mouse.

I'd be buying it because it's thin and portable with a decent graphics card. If it were available with higher end CPU and dual SSDs I'd buy this immediately. As it stands, I'll hold off to see if they offer any optional version in the future with better CPU. If the chassis gets too hot, I don't mind using it with a laptop cooler when running demanding applications - had to buy a Zalman to keep my hp envy cool.

 

*double post

 

I think I phrased that wrong. I more meant that it was generic in quality. There's nothing special about the PCB, where for a laptop like this, it should be special. They could do so much more than they did with it but instead it's quite limited with it's offerings.

 

It's funny to reflect on this, because when I read back, they basically did exactly what we wanted them to do with the 2013 revision. Now we're in 2014. The generation of Blade is inevitable so what do we think we're going to get? I think with all the flak the 14" Blade's screen got that'll be the first thing to upgrade. We might even see Razer implementing 3K screen to keep up with MSI... Although that's probably pushing it. Considering I'm using a late 2012 Blade I'm wondering what newer users found and have been complaining about and the kind of things Razer will take on board. All I know is I'm probably gonna get one of the new ones. What do we think will change?

 

it was surely an interesting read, they did ticked most of the boxes here.

What I want is faster storage, TB and a better screen. Specially given that I don't know when maxwell is going to come or even if its coming this year

 

Maybe keys with a tad more travel and a lightly hardier texture, more stable clickable buttons, add a subwoofer or better stereo speakers, same or improved batterylife, faster cpu fan without negating the impressively low noise emissions of the current blade, next gen parts of course and actually allow us to open the device without voiding the warranty!!!!!

 

I don't own a Razer Blade but from the way things are going so far in 2014 (and it's still early) that there is a good chance the next generation is have a 3K or 4K screen. So far and again its still very early in 2014 I haven't seen any 17 inch 4K screen notebooks. My guess is a manufacturer will have a 4K 17 inch screen at some point at least I hope so.

There will probably be SSD, Graphic cards and processor upgrades as well, I'm not sure if they will be any thinner than they are now.

 

havent read all 8 pages, but.....availability in uk...does that count?

 

i want that in brazil as well

 

Having Razer Blade Pro 17 for 8 months i can say i am very satisfied with the laptop. I love the keyboard it is so responsive that writing speed can be very high.
Nevertheless, the are some things i would like in next version:

-- Cheaper price without sacrificing quality. 200 Less sounds good for a default configuration.

-- Better screen. The one in the RBPro17 is very good but in 2014 there are higher standards for screen quality, far more than just response time.

-- I would like the power button to be just a small button without led, i.e., less shouting.

-- SBUI: i think there needs to be a Linux SDK for the SBUI. I cannot give it any use while i am working, and there is a good potential, much better than the applications offered by default. Now, if you ask me what about a Razer Blade without SBUI, i think it is also attractive, i would actually like it, and would probably make the blade a lot cheaper.

 

when they're fix the screen it'll be the best 14 inch gaming laptop. especially with very high quality build from razer. and maybe the memory is not soldered.

 

Maybe user-upgradable RAM and storage options, IPS screen with options as to screen resolutions, and better trackpad buttons.

A small LED on the power button on the 14 would be nice as I actually can't tell whether I've turned on my computer sometimes.

Also, an Ethernet port and a card reader would be nice.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

I'm a software developer that travels so I would be interested in the Razor as primarily a work machine that can also play games. I also use Linux as my only OS so with those two caveats I'd like to see the following:

- Support up to 16GB of RAM
- FHD IPS screen
- Ethernet port
- Full size arrow keys (i.e. not the half size up and down arrow keys)
- Discrete PageUp, PageDn, Home and End days without having you to use Fn
- A touchpad that is supported in Linux or make a Linux driver available

 

I'll second every one of these changes. But really all I actually need is the screen to be a 1080p/(+) IPS Panel.

 

im in as well

 

Inter changeable ssd/ram

 

touchscreen 1080 ips panel
SD card slot reader
... and I'm in ...