This will be a more in-depth review from a software engineer's perspective. I'm an on-and-off gamer who doesn't pour his heart and soul into PC gaming (mostly console), but occasionally plays MMOs like League of Legends or busts out the gamepads for some Steam couch co-op. This is a review for the 2014 Blade, but the current 2015 Blade isn't much different from what I can gather (just a few more options and a slight graphics card update).
I bought this laptop about 11 months ago, and it's still going strong. I bought it because I was looking for a gaming-spec (read: powerful hardware) laptop of reasonable size and build quality. I didn't need a powerful custom desktop rig because I'm not that much of a PC gamer, and because I want to be able to take it with me on occasional travels outside home sweet home. I preferred a slimmer, more solid laptop design, but one look at the cost of a fully tricked-out MacBook Pro made me look for other options (I'm a Windows user anyway). So I decided to settle with this lovely little number (512 GB version). My wallet wasn't very happy, but Razer has shown their work with outstanding other products I owned before the 14" Blade so I took a chance.
For starters, the laptop's physical build. The Blade's chassis is absolutely beautiful. It feels like one solid chunk of metal (aluminum), very durable and has some heft to is, yet is also sleek and thin. Nothing has yet to scratch it that cannot simply be buffed out. When the computer is active, the Razer logo in the middle of the back of the screen side glows green, and the sticker that covers it is perfectly placed inside of a small indentation. More importantly, when the laptop is closed it can fit PERFECTLY into my
Visconti leather messenger bag
. This was a huge plus for me, as I won't need a second bag in which to tote it around when traveling. I am still amazed that Razer can fit so much hardware into such a slim, quality chassis and have it remain less than a dime's diameter in thickness when closed.
Secondly, the hardware. When you have your eyes set on this laptop, you are looking for an all-in-one laptop: something durable, powerful and lightweight. The hardware is no slouch in this laptop, although it is not the absolute most up-to-date mobile beast in existence--it comes close though. Most important for me was a large Solid State Drive (SSD) so Windows 8.1 could boot up and load in seconds, and I'd have plenty of room to fit my files on it. If you are careful about storage management, then you can probably get away with a 256 GB model, but to me the price for the 512 GB SSD was justified. The graphics card is easily strong enough to handle League of Legends full screen (not windowed) 60 FPS at very high graphics settings. League of Legends is not an intensely graphics-hungry game, but that fact still remains. The laptop has two fans on the bottom of the unit, one for air intake and the other for air outtake, and heat also emits from the space between the top of the keyboard and the bottom of the laptop screen when opened. It can get reasonably warm during intense usage, but I have never had any problems with it as a result (I don't place it on my legs much either). The 8 GB of RAM you get with the laptop honestly is enough--I don't run Maya, Blender or anything else too processor/memory hungry.
Thirdly, the peripherals. The Razer Blade comes with a small power outlet port, 3 USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port. Admittedly I was skeptical about the lack of an ethernet port (the 17" Blade Pro has one but the Pro was too bulky for me). However, I purchased a
USB 3.0 to gigabit ethernet network adapter
and that has served me very well, I get fast internet speeds through it. As a result, I quickly grew to enjoy using an external optic drive as well--there's no longer a need to carry one in the laptop with you everywhere since DVDs are so uncommon now. The power button is a bit wonky, sometimes it doesn't respond to presses but that's just a nitpick. The trackpad is great because it has physical left and right click buttons, and thankfully is tappable but NOT clickable (honestly, companies need to stop it with this 'clickpad' nonsense!). I hardly use them though, because I use a Razer Abyssus mouse with this laptop at my desk almost all the time. The keyboard keys are satisfactorily responsive and have all the features I desire, and they're still just as responsive as they were when I first started using the Blade last year. The built-in speakers are great but, as is the case with every laptop's speakers, nothing fantastic compared to a separate speaker system with a subwoofer. The touch screen is a really nice (forgive the pun) touch with the laptop, but not necessary for the majority of the targeted audience of this laptop.
Fourthly, software. The laptop comes with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, and it runs noticeably quicker than Windows 7--my previous laptop had an SSD and Windows 7, and it's easily slower than the Blade. If you want to avoid the ugly Metro interface in 8.1, I recommend installing Classic Shell to give 8.1 its 7 looks (and actually useful Start Menu!) back. Conveniently, Razer keeps all drivers for all versions of each Razer Blade and Blade Pro by year of release, on the Razer Support site's Drivers page. If working off of a freshly installed Windows 8.1 partition, you get to choose which ones to install and they're all in one spot, although they are all fairly important and contribute positively to your computing experience. There's little to no bloatware on Razer's systems, another HUGE plus. Razer Synapse can help you manage keyboard shortcut profiles and the like, although I have no need for this. As far as software performance goes, I have used Photoshop, Production Premium and Media Encoder (Adobe CS6) on it and I have not had any problems. As stated above, I have had no problems playing moderately graphics-hungry games like League of Legends without any dissatisfactory results.
Finally, customization (nerd moment incoming!). Being an engineer, I like to dual-boot Linux on my computers. A few months after I got the Blade, I installed Fedora 20 on it. But over the course of a few months, it got glitchy and problematic--Windows was just fine still. So a few months ago, I decided to uninstall Fedora 20 and install CentOS over it. What I didn't know is that I had accidentally installed CentOS in BIOS mode. That's right--this is the UEFI vs BIOS problem computer users are having to face nowadays. My Windows partition was left stranded on the drive, and nothing I tried could bring it back. After pulling some strings and late nights, I had to face the facts and wipe my laptop completely. I had the unknowingly brilliant idea to do a second reformat of the Blade's SSD using DiskPart on the Windows Startup Repair command line to redundantly convert it entirely to GPT instead of MBR. This fixed EVERYTHING! I could reinstall Windows 8.1 and my Linux flavor of choice alongside it in UEFI mode without any hitches, and as stated above the drivers were easy to reacquire and install on the new Win8.1 partition. Long story short, if you want to install Linux alongside Windows on the Blade, my suggestion is to wipe the entire drive and convert it to GPT using DiskPart, *then* reinstall Windows, then Linux in UEFI mode.
So there you have it, this thing is everything I had hoped for and more. Small, dependable, powerful. For the price, you get an immensely useful and strong laptop. HIGHLY recommended if you can afford it and need portability without any performance or quality sacrifices to get it (especially if you need gaming-spec laptops).
NOTE: I'm aware that there's a newer version of the Blade, but this one is still very powerful and holds its own. Unless you absolutely need the latest and greatest graphics card (in which case, why not just get a custom gaming desktop rig that can support the stronger and cheaper hardware?) then the 2014 Blade's GTX 870m is still quite viable--but only at a reduced price compared to the newest version which has a GTX 970m.
| Standing screen display size | 14 Inches |
|---|---|
| Max Screen Resolution | 3200 x 1800 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.2 GHz core_i7 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3L SDRAM |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvida GeForce 870M |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2000 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11a |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
