The New Blade 2016 Model: A Significant Upgrade Over its Predecessor

I recently had the opportunity to try out the new Blade 2016 model, and I must say that it's an impressive device. The one thing that stood out to me was the improved touchpad. It feels like it tracks more smoothly and consistently than the old model, which was a major selling point for me. I also noticed that the keyboard has been upgraded, but unfortunately, my favorite tactile experience remains the same as before. However, the Blade Stealth now boasts the same RGB upgrade, which is a nice touch.

The keyboard itself is still my go-to choice for typing, and it's amazing how much of a difference the new lighting can make. The ability to customize brightness levels up to 14 different adjustments is impressive, although I do miss one feature that was present on the old model: backlighting on the secondary functions of the F keys and number row. It's not a huge deal-breaker, but it would have been nice.

One thing that didn't change much between the two models was the gaming experience. While some games that push both CPU and GPU hard will still cause thermal limits, I found that the 970M just isn't beefy enough to handle more demanding titles at high resolutions. However, the Blade 2016 does offer better battery life than its predecessor, which is noticeable day-to-day.

This improvement in battery life is one of the key areas where the new model shines. As someone who doesn't game on the go very often, I was already happy with the original Blade's performance, but the added power efficiency is a welcome bonus. The Blade 2016 feels even lighter and well-constructed than its predecessor, which is no easy feat.

The biggest surprise for me, however, was how little the new model compromised in terms of spec or build quality compared to the original Blade. While the $8 gig RAM limitation on the old model was a major deterrent for some, I never really had any issues with it myself. That being said, I do appreciate that Ting has managed to lower the "razor tax" – a term I've used in the past to describe the premium pricing of Apple devices.

Ting is a mobile carrier that focuses on customer service and satisfaction above all else. They offer a range of plans, including one that allows you to only pay for exactly what you use each month. This feature alone makes them stand out from the competition. But what's even more impressive is their commitment to customer support. When you call Ting, there's no automated phone system – someone always picks up and helps you. And if something goes wrong with your service, they'll even cover up to 25% of your cancellation fee.

If you're interested in switching carriers or want to learn more about Ting's plans and pricing, I've included a link in the video description. Just enter your last few bills from your existing carrier into their website, and you'll get an easy-to-use tool that shows you whether Ting will be cheaper for you. And if you do end up joining Ting, be sure to use our affiliate code – it comes with a $25 credit towards your first month's service or a new device.

Now that we've covered the Blade 2016 model and Ting, what should you watch next? If you're in the mood for some fun, check out our Mexico series over on Channel Super Fun!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe latest iteration of one of the only two products to ever win an editor's Choice Award from me is finally here this is the new Razer Blade from well Razer Mast drop is currently hosting a drop for a set of csgo themed keycaps learn more about them and many other awesome drops set the link in the video description so let's get this out of the way right off the Hop Razer is actually calling this thing the new Razer Blade are youing kidding me for starters Razer you already had a product called the Razer Blade it had a 17in primary screen and this weird supplementary one with a trackpad built into it that was why you called the 14-in model the blade 14 when you launched it in 2013 do you even remember this but okay fine I'll forgive that if for no reason other than that you've already been doing it for a few years at this point and while we're at it I'll forgive the way you call each new iteration the same damn thing forcing retailers and reviewers to augment these with long ass part numbers Andor release years you didn't start that I blame Apple for that no no the reason I'm mad is that you keep compounding the problem you've actually removed it now but shortly after the launch of this one you actually had last last year's model on the site as the blade QHD plus something it was never called and something that's not helpful because the new blade that you had on the site at the same time also has a QHD plus screen I mean stop this who do you think you are Nvidia anyway with that out of my system let's get down to business the new blade features an 0.7 in thick 4.25 lb unibody aluminum chassis with decent stereo speakers and as I mentioned before a 14in 3200x 1800 EXO LCD just like last year and while the panel still Sports a larger than ideal bezel still doesn't handle off angle viewing as well as the best IPS displays out there and still lacks support for g-sync or higher refresh rates I understand that the bezel is Big to allow for more room for cooling and it still got the 10-point multi-touch screen something that most other gaming laptops lack which is a tradeoff that I personally will take I didn't realize quite how often I use it to zoom in or reposition something on the screen until I ordered an XPS 15 for review you can check that out here by the way that didn't have it also back for another round is nvidia's Maxwell architecture GTX 970m graphics processor it's unclear if anything about the Silicon or or binning process has been tuned to improve thermals or battery life both of which are improved but we do know that it's been upgraded to 6 gigs of vram this time around let's take this opportunity then to run through the rest of the specs the Haswell 4700hq quadcore has been booted out the door in favor of a shiny new Skylake core i7 6700 HQ which I left running the id64 stress test the entire time I wrote this review only to see it reach about 80 to 85° Max at room temperature an acceptable result though one that does come at an acoustical cost and it's one that won't hold true with a GPU load added to the mix so the thermal system improvements seem to be more focused on keeping heat away from the user's hands with actual CPU temperatures as a secondary objective since it does still throttle here's a shot though with our thermal camera to show how well they achieved the primary objective very impressive my favorite notebook webcam and its excellent microphone return yay the old Intel Wireless gets replaced with a killer 1535 solution that I was skeptical about but that behaved very well and managed some of the fastest most consistent Wireless file transfers that I've seen 16 gigs of ddr4 RAM is now standard on every model and storage across the board has been upgraded to nvme instead of SATA based solid state drives they are using the value PM 951 model instead of the 950 Pro from Samsung but this is still a big Improvement so there's nothing to complain about here but nothing really Earth shattering either the big stuff actually happened on the outside at first glance it looks the same but IO has gotten much much better on the left you'll find power in magnetic next time please a couple USB 3 5 gbit ports and a headphone microphone Jack then on the right you will find an HDMI 1.4b port another USB 3 and okay so this is the only actual Improvement nothing else changed a USB typ C connector that can handle an additional USB device or Thunderbolt 3 with display port sick right type c is just so cool in so many ways little things like charging your typc phone faster all the way up to big things like plugging in high-speed external storage devices or even an external GPU with products like the Razer core set to be available very very shortly the one thing really missing here for me is an SD card reader and then it would be dare I say it perfect there's more too I can't quantify this but the touchpad definitely feels like it tracks more smoothly and more consistently and the keyboard has also been upgraded it is still my same favorite laptop keyboard from a tactile standpoint and now that that Luke has one his words were something along the lines of I never really understood why you're always raving about this thing but wow I get it now except that it now has the same RGB upgrade as the blade stealth so gone then is the gamery font you've got all the usual controls that you would expect out of an RGB keyboard you wave this breathe that change color there and I think it's something stupid like 14 different brightness level adjustments with the only downgrade and this is a huge bummer for me actually being that backlighting on the secondary functions of the F keys and the number row razor tells me this is due to the position of the switch but frankly I'd have preferred a smaller font and just kind of cramming it over there is no longer back lit which sucks because these are the things that I'm most likely to have trouble remembering in the dark let's move on to the gaming experience that frankly hasn't changed much some games that push both CPU and GPU very very hard will cause you to encounter your thermal limits and the 970m is still not beefy enough to really game it higher than 1080p in most titles if you want to turn details up so there's not much to report here but one key difference is that whether it's gaming or whether it's productivity the new blad's battery life is better enough that I actually noticed the difference day to day I didn't turn the keyboard lights completely off per the reviewer guide but I did Dim them to about the same level that I normally use about 30% which leads us into the conclusion I think the blade 14 2015 was already good enough that it was my first choice with the blade stealth given how little I game on the go and how freaking light yet well constructed it is being the first device that I've encountered that looked even capable of dethroning it only to never even enter the ring due to its 8 gig ram limitation so then shouldn't be a shocker that the new blade 2016 model is going to hold its Throne almost everything about the old blade I cannot emphasize enough how butt hurt I am about the half key illumination is undeniably superior and that's impressive but what's really impressive is that they've done all of this while significantly lowering the razor tax as I call it in the past friends would ask me they'd see this laptop they'd be like that looks sick should I get one and I say wow I really like mine but that's easy for me to say I didn't pay for it it's very very expensive well that changes here and I am really liking the path raisers on bringing down the cost of their machines but without the compromises to spec or build quality that have made PCS a second class citizen compared to MacBooks for anyone who wants a beautiful well- constructed mobile device good job guys keep it up and good job to Ting keep up what you guys are doing they're the mobile carrier that is focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first I mean yeah sure there's all the little details like only paying for exactly what you use with the average bill being only 24 bucks a month there's the whole thing where you can go on their site that's Linus doing.com we've got that Linked In the video description enter your last few bills from your existing carrier and find out easily in just a few minutes if Ting will be cheaper for you but the most important thing is that when you call Ting if there's some kind of a problem let's say something goes wrong someone picks up and says hello can I help you there is no automated phone system not because they couldn't figure out how to do that but because they don't think it's a good idea they're very customer Centric and if you want to become a customer they've got an offer for you they will cover up to 25% of your cancellation fee so that's up to 75 bucks and if you use our link again that's lin.com you'll also get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so go check it out so thanks for watching everyone if this video sucked you know what to do if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community form Linked In the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button up there the top right corner to check out our Mexico series over on channel super funthe latest iteration of one of the only two products to ever win an editor's Choice Award from me is finally here this is the new Razer Blade from well Razer Mast drop is currently hosting a drop for a set of csgo themed keycaps learn more about them and many other awesome drops set the link in the video description so let's get this out of the way right off the Hop Razer is actually calling this thing the new Razer Blade are youing kidding me for starters Razer you already had a product called the Razer Blade it had a 17in primary screen and this weird supplementary one with a trackpad built into it that was why you called the 14-in model the blade 14 when you launched it in 2013 do you even remember this but okay fine I'll forgive that if for no reason other than that you've already been doing it for a few years at this point and while we're at it I'll forgive the way you call each new iteration the same damn thing forcing retailers and reviewers to augment these with long ass part numbers Andor release years you didn't start that I blame Apple for that no no the reason I'm mad is that you keep compounding the problem you've actually removed it now but shortly after the launch of this one you actually had last last year's model on the site as the blade QHD plus something it was never called and something that's not helpful because the new blade that you had on the site at the same time also has a QHD plus screen I mean stop this who do you think you are Nvidia anyway with that out of my system let's get down to business the new blade features an 0.7 in thick 4.25 lb unibody aluminum chassis with decent stereo speakers and as I mentioned before a 14in 3200x 1800 EXO LCD just like last year and while the panel still Sports a larger than ideal bezel still doesn't handle off angle viewing as well as the best IPS displays out there and still lacks support for g-sync or higher refresh rates I understand that the bezel is Big to allow for more room for cooling and it still got the 10-point multi-touch screen something that most other gaming laptops lack which is a tradeoff that I personally will take I didn't realize quite how often I use it to zoom in or reposition something on the screen until I ordered an XPS 15 for review you can check that out here by the way that didn't have it also back for another round is nvidia's Maxwell architecture GTX 970m graphics processor it's unclear if anything about the Silicon or or binning process has been tuned to improve thermals or battery life both of which are improved but we do know that it's been upgraded to 6 gigs of vram this time around let's take this opportunity then to run through the rest of the specs the Haswell 4700hq quadcore has been booted out the door in favor of a shiny new Skylake core i7 6700 HQ which I left running the id64 stress test the entire time I wrote this review only to see it reach about 80 to 85° Max at room temperature an acceptable result though one that does come at an acoustical cost and it's one that won't hold true with a GPU load added to the mix so the thermal system improvements seem to be more focused on keeping heat away from the user's hands with actual CPU temperatures as a secondary objective since it does still throttle here's a shot though with our thermal camera to show how well they achieved the primary objective very impressive my favorite notebook webcam and its excellent microphone return yay the old Intel Wireless gets replaced with a killer 1535 solution that I was skeptical about but that behaved very well and managed some of the fastest most consistent Wireless file transfers that I've seen 16 gigs of ddr4 RAM is now standard on every model and storage across the board has been upgraded to nvme instead of SATA based solid state drives they are using the value PM 951 model instead of the 950 Pro from Samsung but this is still a big Improvement so there's nothing to complain about here but nothing really Earth shattering either the big stuff actually happened on the outside at first glance it looks the same but IO has gotten much much better on the left you'll find power in magnetic next time please a couple USB 3 5 gbit ports and a headphone microphone Jack then on the right you will find an HDMI 1.4b port another USB 3 and okay so this is the only actual Improvement nothing else changed a USB typ C connector that can handle an additional USB device or Thunderbolt 3 with display port sick right type c is just so cool in so many ways little things like charging your typc phone faster all the way up to big things like plugging in high-speed external storage devices or even an external GPU with products like the Razer core set to be available very very shortly the one thing really missing here for me is an SD card reader and then it would be dare I say it perfect there's more too I can't quantify this but the touchpad definitely feels like it tracks more smoothly and more consistently and the keyboard has also been upgraded it is still my same favorite laptop keyboard from a tactile standpoint and now that that Luke has one his words were something along the lines of I never really understood why you're always raving about this thing but wow I get it now except that it now has the same RGB upgrade as the blade stealth so gone then is the gamery font you've got all the usual controls that you would expect out of an RGB keyboard you wave this breathe that change color there and I think it's something stupid like 14 different brightness level adjustments with the only downgrade and this is a huge bummer for me actually being that backlighting on the secondary functions of the F keys and the number row razor tells me this is due to the position of the switch but frankly I'd have preferred a smaller font and just kind of cramming it over there is no longer back lit which sucks because these are the things that I'm most likely to have trouble remembering in the dark let's move on to the gaming experience that frankly hasn't changed much some games that push both CPU and GPU very very hard will cause you to encounter your thermal limits and the 970m is still not beefy enough to really game it higher than 1080p in most titles if you want to turn details up so there's not much to report here but one key difference is that whether it's gaming or whether it's productivity the new blad's battery life is better enough that I actually noticed the difference day to day I didn't turn the keyboard lights completely off per the reviewer guide but I did Dim them to about the same level that I normally use about 30% which leads us into the conclusion I think the blade 14 2015 was already good enough that it was my first choice with the blade stealth given how little I game on the go and how freaking light yet well constructed it is being the first device that I've encountered that looked even capable of dethroning it only to never even enter the ring due to its 8 gig ram limitation so then shouldn't be a shocker that the new blade 2016 model is going to hold its Throne almost everything about the old blade I cannot emphasize enough how butt hurt I am about the half key illumination is undeniably superior and that's impressive but what's really impressive is that they've done all of this while significantly lowering the razor tax as I call it in the past friends would ask me they'd see this laptop they'd be like that looks sick should I get one and I say wow I really like mine but that's easy for me to say I didn't pay for it it's very very expensive well that changes here and I am really liking the path raisers on bringing down the cost of their machines but without the compromises to spec or build quality that have made PCS a second class citizen compared to MacBooks for anyone who wants a beautiful well- constructed mobile device good job guys keep it up and good job to Ting keep up what you guys are doing they're the mobile carrier that is focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first I mean yeah sure there's all the little details like only paying for exactly what you use with the average bill being only 24 bucks a month there's the whole thing where you can go on their site that's Linus doing.com we've got that Linked In the video description enter your last few bills from your existing carrier and find out easily in just a few minutes if Ting will be cheaper for you but the most important thing is that when you call Ting if there's some kind of a problem let's say something goes wrong someone picks up and says hello can I help you there is no automated phone system not because they couldn't figure out how to do that but because they don't think it's a good idea they're very customer Centric and if you want to become a customer they've got an offer for you they will cover up to 25% of your cancellation fee so that's up to 75 bucks and if you use our link again that's lin.com you'll also get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so go check it out so thanks for watching everyone if this video sucked you know what to do if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon instructions up there buying a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community form Linked In the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button up there the top right corner to check out our Mexico series over on channel super fun\n"