Razer Blade Stealth Review - My new daily driver

The Razer Blade Stealth is a significant departure from previous Razor notebooks and everyone else in the industry. One of the biggest changes is the attention to detail in terms of audio, camera, and microphone quality, which continues to embarrass competitors. The Razer speaker, camera, and microphone quality are all top-notch, providing an excellent experience for communication devices.

However, the keyboard is perhaps the biggest departure from previous Razer notebooks and everyone else. The layout has been completely redesigned with two function keys, six full rows of keys, a great size considering the screen size, and a sensible key cap font that is perfect in my opinion, except for the half-height up and down arrows. These still bother me, but they can be fully reconfigured with remapping and macros using Synapse, which now also includes RGB lighting. This means users can customize their keyboard to suit different applications, including games, with both first and third-party tools.

The new backlighting does not illuminate the whole key like the old type did, so while the function row lights up when it's activated, the actual functions themselves are not easy to see in the dark. Furthermore, the feel of the switches has been altered significantly, making them quieter but also less crisp feeling than I'm used to. This might be a concern for productivity-minded users who value a more traditional typing experience.

Despite these trade-offs, the Blade Stealth does not slow me down much, and it was still enjoyable to type on. However, as someone who values tactile feedback in their keyboard, this device may not be the best fit for them.

The Blade Stealth takes the ID and build quality of the Blade 14, which is a significant upgrade over previous Razer laptops. It strips out everything that gamers might need, including the video card and even the Bizarro land keycap font, in an effort to target the mainstream market and slash the price in half.

This bold move may raise some eyebrows, but it's clear that Razer has put a lot of thought into creating a device that appeals to a wider audience. By sacrificing features that gamers might care about, they've managed to create a very compelling UltraBook that even Apple doesn't have right now.

For those searching for an UltraBook, the Blade Stealth is definitely worth considering. It offers excellent performance, a beautiful display, and a design that's both stylish and functional. The price point is also very attractive, making it an excellent option for anyone who wants a premium laptop without breaking the bank.

If you're looking to customize your device, there's good news: dbrand now offers skins for Mac and PC laptops, including the Blade Stealth. This means users can get their hands on cool, unique designs that match their personality or style, from simple colors to intricate patterns and textures. The skins fit like a glove, and they're affordable, with prices starting at around $30.

dbrand's skins are also made in the USA, and they ship worldwide. They offer a configurator tool that allows users to try out different skin designs before committing to a purchase. This ensures that you can get your device looking exactly the way you want it, without having to compromise on style or quality.

Overall, if this video sucked, you know what to do – but if it was awesome, please consider subscribing, hitting that like button, or supporting us directly through affiliate links or a direct monthly contribution.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enfor three generations the Razer Blade 14 has ODed me with its astonishingly compact design fantastic aesthetic and superb build quality which puts the Razer Blade stealth 2016 the product I'm evaluating today in a somewhat unique position one of being on the inside looking in because I'll be deciding on a new daily driver notebook before this video is over and whether Razer wins or loses Razer is going to lose which will also cause Razer to win meaning that Razer will also lose which okay the joke's old now roll the intro Intel has brought ddr4 to the mainstream with their core i76700k processor check out the link in the video description to learn more I think the smart thing to do here would be to begin with a physical tour which is easy because Razer has taken just about a pure if it ain't broke don't fix it approach in this regard the top of the machine is black with only a razor logo the illumination of which can be disabled now if you want a nice touch and a couple of accent ridges to Adorn it just like it's bigger brother the bottom has two rubber feet the rear taller than the front to Incline the keyboard gently toward the user and a couple of air intakes just like its bigger brother and if I looked hard enough I could probably find a dozen such similarities but you didn't come here for similarities you came here for differences so let's focus in on those for a moment here the discret left and right click buttons under the touchpad have been replaced by a gesture aware click pad this is a change that would bother me if they hadn't implemented it so well no issues in two-handed operation and palm rejection was solid so good on the speakers are both narrower and closer to the edge to salvage as much room as possible for the surprisingly spacious keyboard which has been completely overhauled with RGB lighting more on that later the big change though is that the blade stealth is significantly thinner and lighter than the blade 14 shaving 7 in diagonally off the screen size and about 75 of a kilogram off the weight making it only 2.75 lbs so light enough then that I can pretty much not tell whether it's in my 4 and 12b backpack or not something that I can't say about my daily driver blade 14 and it manages to do all of this while maintaining a very respectable mix of IO Apple should take notes on the right is a USB 3.0 port and an HDMI 1.4 output then on the left is a 3 and 1 12 mm headphone microphone combo Jack another USB 3.0 port and a USB type-c connector that handles Thunderbolt USB 3.0 display port and charging duties through the compact included AC adapter this is the port that will be used to enable the theoretically hot swappable although I did manage to break it at the demo at CES external dedicated graphics card housing that they're calling the Razer core which I will be covering in an upcoming separate video today though I'm focused on the blade stealth as an Ultrabook because that's what it is while the slim exterior definitely hints at what makes the blad stealth so different from razer's previous mobile devices all of which adhered to that for gamers by Gamers slogan that they've got displayed so prominently on their website the inside of this machine reveals outright that it is not a gaming device so regardless of which model you buy then I've got the 1199 256 gig Quad HD skew but I spent most of my time with the 999 base model the one with the white vinyl skin from dbrand here you'll be getting a things an Intel Core i7 6500 U 2.5 GHz base 3.1 GHz boost hyperthreaded dual core processor with Intel HD graphics 520 yes my friends onboard graphics and 8 gigs of non-upgraded soldered dual Channel low power DDR 3 then depending on which trim level you opt for you can get anywhere from 128 gigs to 512 gigs of unspecified m.2 nvme storage on mine it was was a Samsung pm951 so about as basic as it gets for an nvme drive with sequential rights limited on the 128 gig version to the rated 150 megabytes or so thanks to its TLC nand do note however that I would take a basic native pcie drive over a SATA one any day of the week the other user configurable spec is the screen which I guess leads me to one of the things that frustrates me about Razer systems what if I don't mind the 2560x1440 touchscreen srgb color space display it's the one I've got here and frankly everything about it looks fantastic at 13.3 in contrast brightness and sharpness are great so what if I want that instead of the Adobe RGB 4k monitor whose advantages while tangible won't benefit me personally and whose higher resolution will drain my battery faster but I also want a 512 gig SSD I will need to upgrade it after the fact although all of this is irrelevant if the experience of using the blade stealth isn't a good one and you shouldn't buy one anyway so how is that well for a $1,000 machine the 6500 U processor with its 90% usage while installing applications and CPU bottleneck while testing the maximum usb3 transfer speed with screen recording running in the background might still not be the right solution for me personally but if your mobile Computing needs are a little lighter than mine they have nailed a lot of stuff here the 45w hour battery turned in a solid result at PC Mark's recommended brightness setting although it should be noted if you want to use it outside it goes a lot brighter than that and I didn't realize how much I missed my touchcreen until I did my XPS 15 review without one which you can check out here by the way a one-finger hinge is really hard to do on a device this light without having it feel flimsy but they nailed that and Razer speaker camera and microphone quality continues to embarrass their competitors attention industry notebooks or communication devices this stuff is important so good on Razer for at least maintaining their above average standard here which leads us back finally again to the keyboard Far and Away the biggest departure from previous razor notebooks and everyone else for that matter the layout with two function keys six full rows a great size considering the screen size and a sensible key cap font this time around is IMO perfect except for the half height up and down arrows those still bother me and it's still fully reconfigurable with remapping and macros using synapse but now it's RGB as well so you can actually change things like color you can add canned patterns and effects to it you can change the effects and patterns for different applications including games with both first and third party tools and just generally personalize the device in a way that hasn't been done on a laptop before freaking awesome there are however some trade-offs the new backlighting does not illuminate the whole key the way the old type did so while the function row lights up when it's activated the actual functions themselves are not easy to see in the dark and more importantly the feel of the switches has been altered very significantly they are quieter which some people will appreciate but they are also less crisp feeling than I'm used to something that I sincerely hope does not carry over to the new blade when I review it shortly to be clear it didn't slow me down much but it was not as pleasing to type on something that I would personally consider more important for a productivity-minded as opposed to a gaming device leading us then to the conclusion of today's video the blade stealth takes the ID and the build quality of the blade 14 which has gotten me uh wow that's a cool black MacBook more than a few times at airport security checkpoints strips out everything gamer about it including the video card and even the Bizarro land keycap font in a clear effort to Target the mainstream and slashes the price in half I mean who saw that one coming from Razer of all people but what does that mean then would I buy one not until Ultra books can have quadcore CPUs and 16 gigs of RAM but but would I recommend one to someone in search of an Ultra Book today you're damn right I would this is a very compelling answer to the MacBook Air something even Apple doesn't have right now since they seem to be on a we don't need ports kick so good work Razer this is a great machine especially for the price speaking of good work let's give a good work to our friends over at dbrand who no longer are limited to phones and game consoles yes my friends they now offer skins for mac and PC laptops including the blade stealth so if you're kind of going oh wow ginus that white one is really cool how do I get my hands on some of that or what if I wanted a different color head over to the link in the video description dbrand.com and you can use their configurator to try out all kinds of different combinations of different colors and textures of skins to get your device looking exactly the way you want it their skins fit like a freaking glove like seriously no one would know looking at this that you've put a vinyl skin on it as opposed to it shipping out of the factory like that and they're affordable and they ship worldwide so check it out at the link in the video description if you want to make your device more scratch resistant if you want to make it look cooler and you don't want to spend a ton of money doing it they're the guys to go to so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit H the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there by buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community Forum now that you're done doing that stuff you're probably wondering H gee what should I watch next and that's a great question so click on that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video on channel superf fun where uh we play 3D Pictionary it's like Pictionary but in 3D with like 3D pens much in uendo ensuesfor three generations the Razer Blade 14 has ODed me with its astonishingly compact design fantastic aesthetic and superb build quality which puts the Razer Blade stealth 2016 the product I'm evaluating today in a somewhat unique position one of being on the inside looking in because I'll be deciding on a new daily driver notebook before this video is over and whether Razer wins or loses Razer is going to lose which will also cause Razer to win meaning that Razer will also lose which okay the joke's old now roll the intro Intel has brought ddr4 to the mainstream with their core i76700k processor check out the link in the video description to learn more I think the smart thing to do here would be to begin with a physical tour which is easy because Razer has taken just about a pure if it ain't broke don't fix it approach in this regard the top of the machine is black with only a razor logo the illumination of which can be disabled now if you want a nice touch and a couple of accent ridges to Adorn it just like it's bigger brother the bottom has two rubber feet the rear taller than the front to Incline the keyboard gently toward the user and a couple of air intakes just like its bigger brother and if I looked hard enough I could probably find a dozen such similarities but you didn't come here for similarities you came here for differences so let's focus in on those for a moment here the discret left and right click buttons under the touchpad have been replaced by a gesture aware click pad this is a change that would bother me if they hadn't implemented it so well no issues in two-handed operation and palm rejection was solid so good on the speakers are both narrower and closer to the edge to salvage as much room as possible for the surprisingly spacious keyboard which has been completely overhauled with RGB lighting more on that later the big change though is that the blade stealth is significantly thinner and lighter than the blade 14 shaving 7 in diagonally off the screen size and about 75 of a kilogram off the weight making it only 2.75 lbs so light enough then that I can pretty much not tell whether it's in my 4 and 12b backpack or not something that I can't say about my daily driver blade 14 and it manages to do all of this while maintaining a very respectable mix of IO Apple should take notes on the right is a USB 3.0 port and an HDMI 1.4 output then on the left is a 3 and 1 12 mm headphone microphone combo Jack another USB 3.0 port and a USB type-c connector that handles Thunderbolt USB 3.0 display port and charging duties through the compact included AC adapter this is the port that will be used to enable the theoretically hot swappable although I did manage to break it at the demo at CES external dedicated graphics card housing that they're calling the Razer core which I will be covering in an upcoming separate video today though I'm focused on the blade stealth as an Ultrabook because that's what it is while the slim exterior definitely hints at what makes the blad stealth so different from razer's previous mobile devices all of which adhered to that for gamers by Gamers slogan that they've got displayed so prominently on their website the inside of this machine reveals outright that it is not a gaming device so regardless of which model you buy then I've got the 1199 256 gig Quad HD skew but I spent most of my time with the 999 base model the one with the white vinyl skin from dbrand here you'll be getting a things an Intel Core i7 6500 U 2.5 GHz base 3.1 GHz boost hyperthreaded dual core processor with Intel HD graphics 520 yes my friends onboard graphics and 8 gigs of non-upgraded soldered dual Channel low power DDR 3 then depending on which trim level you opt for you can get anywhere from 128 gigs to 512 gigs of unspecified m.2 nvme storage on mine it was was a Samsung pm951 so about as basic as it gets for an nvme drive with sequential rights limited on the 128 gig version to the rated 150 megabytes or so thanks to its TLC nand do note however that I would take a basic native pcie drive over a SATA one any day of the week the other user configurable spec is the screen which I guess leads me to one of the things that frustrates me about Razer systems what if I don't mind the 2560x1440 touchscreen srgb color space display it's the one I've got here and frankly everything about it looks fantastic at 13.3 in contrast brightness and sharpness are great so what if I want that instead of the Adobe RGB 4k monitor whose advantages while tangible won't benefit me personally and whose higher resolution will drain my battery faster but I also want a 512 gig SSD I will need to upgrade it after the fact although all of this is irrelevant if the experience of using the blade stealth isn't a good one and you shouldn't buy one anyway so how is that well for a $1,000 machine the 6500 U processor with its 90% usage while installing applications and CPU bottleneck while testing the maximum usb3 transfer speed with screen recording running in the background might still not be the right solution for me personally but if your mobile Computing needs are a little lighter than mine they have nailed a lot of stuff here the 45w hour battery turned in a solid result at PC Mark's recommended brightness setting although it should be noted if you want to use it outside it goes a lot brighter than that and I didn't realize how much I missed my touchcreen until I did my XPS 15 review without one which you can check out here by the way a one-finger hinge is really hard to do on a device this light without having it feel flimsy but they nailed that and Razer speaker camera and microphone quality continues to embarrass their competitors attention industry notebooks or communication devices this stuff is important so good on Razer for at least maintaining their above average standard here which leads us back finally again to the keyboard Far and Away the biggest departure from previous razor notebooks and everyone else for that matter the layout with two function keys six full rows a great size considering the screen size and a sensible key cap font this time around is IMO perfect except for the half height up and down arrows those still bother me and it's still fully reconfigurable with remapping and macros using synapse but now it's RGB as well so you can actually change things like color you can add canned patterns and effects to it you can change the effects and patterns for different applications including games with both first and third party tools and just generally personalize the device in a way that hasn't been done on a laptop before freaking awesome there are however some trade-offs the new backlighting does not illuminate the whole key the way the old type did so while the function row lights up when it's activated the actual functions themselves are not easy to see in the dark and more importantly the feel of the switches has been altered very significantly they are quieter which some people will appreciate but they are also less crisp feeling than I'm used to something that I sincerely hope does not carry over to the new blade when I review it shortly to be clear it didn't slow me down much but it was not as pleasing to type on something that I would personally consider more important for a productivity-minded as opposed to a gaming device leading us then to the conclusion of today's video the blade stealth takes the ID and the build quality of the blade 14 which has gotten me uh wow that's a cool black MacBook more than a few times at airport security checkpoints strips out everything gamer about it including the video card and even the Bizarro land keycap font in a clear effort to Target the mainstream and slashes the price in half I mean who saw that one coming from Razer of all people but what does that mean then would I buy one not until Ultra books can have quadcore CPUs and 16 gigs of RAM but but would I recommend one to someone in search of an Ultra Book today you're damn right I would this is a very compelling answer to the MacBook Air something even Apple doesn't have right now since they seem to be on a we don't need ports kick so good work Razer this is a great machine especially for the price speaking of good work let's give a good work to our friends over at dbrand who no longer are limited to phones and game consoles yes my friends they now offer skins for mac and PC laptops including the blade stealth so if you're kind of going oh wow ginus that white one is really cool how do I get my hands on some of that or what if I wanted a different color head over to the link in the video description dbrand.com and you can use their configurator to try out all kinds of different combinations of different colors and textures of skins to get your device looking exactly the way you want it their skins fit like a freaking glove like seriously no one would know looking at this that you've put a vinyl skin on it as opposed to it shipping out of the factory like that and they're affordable and they ship worldwide so check it out at the link in the video description if you want to make your device more scratch resistant if you want to make it look cooler and you don't want to spend a ton of money doing it they're the guys to go to so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit H the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there by buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community Forum now that you're done doing that stuff you're probably wondering H gee what should I watch next and that's a great question so click on that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video on channel superf fun where uh we play 3D Pictionary it's like Pictionary but in 3D with like 3D pens much in uendo ensues\n"