Gaming-PC
maker Razer wants you to ditch your stuffy work laptop for something a
little edgier: its new Razer Blade Stealth. The company’s first
mainstream laptop, the 12.5-inch Stealth packs the same kind of power
you’d expect of a high-end Apple MacBook Air or Dell XPS 13 in a body that absolutely oozes style.
Starting
at $1,000, the Stealth isn’t as cheap as some other Windows portables,
but what you get for that price (compared to the competition) is really
impressive. Sure, the Razer Blade Stealth has its shortcomings, but it
earns a place on the short list of best laptops you can buy right now.
Thin and light
To
say that the Blade Stealth is thin and light is an understatement:
Weighing just 2.8 pounds, the Stealth is a drop lighter than Apple’s
MacBook Air 13-inch and Dell’s XPS 13 Touch (which weigh 2.9 pounds
each); it weighs the same as Lenovo’s 13-inch Yoga 900 (which has the
added benefit of hinged screen that lets you use it as a tablet). You
wouldn’t notice any difference between any of these laptops if you threw
one in your bag.
Measuring
12.6 x 8.1 x 0.51 inches, the Stealth is just as thin as it is light.
That makes it smaller than the MacBook Air (12.8 x 8.9 x 0.68 inches)
and the Yoga 900 (12.8 x 8.9 x 0.60 inches), and just a smidge bigger
than the Dell XPS 13 (12.0 x 7.9 x 0.60). That said, the Razer has a
12.5-inch display, while those competitors come with more spacious
13.3-inch screens.
Stealthy looks
Gaming
laptops are known for their ostentatious, sometimes outrageous looks.
And while the Stealth inherits some of that from Razer’s other portables
(check out that bright green, backlit three-headed snake logo on its
lid), the notebook’s overall aesthetic is refreshingly adult. Think of
it as a business suit matched with some pink-and-white polka-dot socks.
Save
for the two symmetrical peaks on its lid and the aforementioned snake
logo, the Stealth’s matte black aluminum chassis is as buttoned up as
anything Apple has ever produced. Its keyboard is well spaced and
bracketed by stereo speakers on either side and a power button at the
top.
In
terms of design, the Stealth’s only demerit is the size of its screen
relative to the bezel that surrounds it. Compared to the Dell XPS’s
edge-to-edge display and the relatively small bezels on the MacBook and
the Yoga, the Stealth looks almost garish. But overall it’s a beautiful
laptop.
A beauty of a screen
Though
(as noted) the Stealth’s display is smaller than some of its
competitors’, it’s no less beautiful. The $1,000 base model Stealth
comes with a 2560 x 1440 QHD touchscreen display, which can be upgraded
to an even higher resolution 4K touchscreen panel.
Apple’s
13-inch MacBook Air, by comparison, has a 1440 x 900 resolution screen,
which at this point seems really antiquated. Dell’s XPS 13 comes with a
1920 x 1080 non-touch display but can be upgraded to a 4K touchscreen
panel, while every version of Lenovo’s Yoga 900 comes with a 4K screen.
In
truth, though, a 4K screen isn’t really going to do much for the
average person. In fact, 4K displays eat up your battery’s charge faster
than lower resolution displays (simply because they have more pixels
that need to be lit). That said, videos, photos, and games look
fantastic on the Stealth: Colors are dynamic, and the blacks are so deep
the Windows toolbar at the bottom of the screen blends into the
notebook’s bezel.
Quirky keyboard
Like
most high-end laptops, the Razer Blade Stealth comes with a backlit
keyboard. But the Stealth’s is unique in that its multicolor backlights
are fully customizable and capable of producing a stunning 16.8 million
colors per key. Sure, your average office worker doesn’t need keys that
light up like the Las Vegas Strip, but there’s nothing wrong with a
little fun.
Using
the Stealth’s built-in Chroma Configurator app, you can set the
keyboard’s backlights to nearly any color imaginable. Or you can make
them cycle colors over time. Want to breathe some life into your laptop?
Then set the Chroma Configurator to the Breathing option and the
keyboard backlight will pulsate as if the notebook is breathing. The
Ripple setting causes a ripple effect across the keyboard every time you
press a key, like a stone skipping across a psychedelic pond.
Does
any of this serve a functional purpose? Not really, but it is one hell
of a fun party trick. I couldn’t stop playing with the feature when I
switched on the Ripple setting. But after about 10 minutes of turning my
keyboard into a desktop rave, the novelty wore off, and I switched back
to the regular backlighting.
It’s
also a letdown that the actual functions assigned to the function keys
at the top of the keyboard don’t light up. Sure, the F1 through F12
icons glow, but the mute and brightness buttons don’t, which can make
them hard to see when working at night.
When
it comes to actually typing on those light-up keys, the Stealth offers a
mixed bag. Because the laptop is so thin, its keys don’t travel very
much; they don’t have the kind of tactile feel you get with the MacBook
Air. The keys are, however, extremely responsive, which means you can
type fast — as if you just mainlined a gallon of espresso. Seriously, your fingers will fly on these keys.
The
Stealth’s touchpad, meanwhile, is comfortable to use but takes some
getting used to. Fresh out of the box, its scrolling and movement are
incredibly slow — it’s like you substituted NyQuil for that espresso.
Turning up the touchpad’s responsiveness in the Settings menu, though,
perks it right up.
Powerful performance (for normals)
What
makes the Razer Blade Stealth truly impressive is that, for $1,000, you
get a high-powered Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB
solid-state drive. Those are some beastly performance specs. You
shouldn’t see any slowdowns when doing things like browsing the Web,
streaming movies, and processing photos and video.
A
similarly equipped MacBook Air will cost you $1,150 and doesn’t offer
as crisp a screen as the Stealth. The closest the Dell XPS 13 gets to
the Razer is a system with a sharper screen but slower processor for
$1,300. The base model of Lenovo’s Yoga 900 is actually faster and has
more storage space than the Razer, but it costs $50 more.
Naturally,
the Stealth can be upgraded to include a higher resolution 4K display
and larger 512GB SSD, but that’ll cost you a cool $1,600.
The
Razer Blade Stealth does fall short in one key area: battery life. I
unplugged my laptop at about 4 p.m. while at work. Streaming music and
browsing the Web, with the display brightness set to 100 percent, I was
down to 20 percent battery life by 7:00 p.m. That’s not exactly
marathon-level performance. Granted, keeping the screen’s brightness
pumped up to 100 percent eats through battery life, but still, that’s a
relatively quick drain.
For hardcore gamers
While
the Stealth is ostensibly targeted at average consumers, Razer’s
traditional gaming customers will certainly be interested in it.
Unfortunately, the Stealth’s gaming-specific horsepower is basically
nil.
That’s
because the notebook eschews a discrete graphics chip from the likes of
Nvidia or AMD in favor of Intel’s onboard chip. You’ll still be able to
play some games with the system, but you’ll have to throttle the
graphics down to their lowest settings.
Why
the down-powering? Well, the Stealth was designed to be used with
Razer’s special Core external graphics enclosure in mind. The Core
serves as a special case for a desktop graphics card (which you’ll have
to buy separately).
Using
the Stealth’s USB-C port, you can connect the Core and its graphics
card to the laptop to get desktop-level gaming performance. Desktop
graphics cards are on a whole other level compared to built-in notebook
graphics chips — it’s like He-Man and his Power Sword.
Available later this month for $400, the Core also adds four USB 3.0 ports and a gigabit Ethernet connection to your laptop.
The
idea behind the Stealth-Core combo is to make it so gamers don’t need
two separate computers: You can have your hardcore beast of a gaming
desktop and a work laptop in one system; just unplug the Core and you’re
good to go. You don’t even have to turn off your Stealth when you plug
in the Core, because it’s plug-and-play.
Naturally,
if you’re going to get the Core and a graphics card for it, you’re
talking about adding $800 to the Stealth’s base price, which makes it
just a bit less affordable. Still, $1,800 isn’t bad for a desktop-style
computer that can run all of today’s most demanding games and a laptop that’s as thin and light as a MacBook Air.
The bottom line
The
Razer Blade Stealth is one heck of a laptop. It’s attractive and edgy,
more than powerful enough for your daily tasks, and can be used as a
desktop-level gaming rig. I wish its bezel wasn’t so large and that its
keyboard offered more give, but those are small complaints. More
seriously, I wish it had better battery life; seeing its charge fall to
20 percent after using it for just three hours with the brightness is
disconcerting to say the least.
If
you’re a gamer who wants to consolidate your desktop and laptop into
one computer, you really need to take a look at the Stealth. And even if
you’re not into gaming, the value proposition the Stealth offers is too
great to ignore, and I think everyone should check it out.
