Razer Updates The Razer Blade Stealth: More Screen, Less Bezel, New Color Option
by Brett Howse on June 14, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Razer
- Ultrabook
- IGZO
- Razer Blade Stealth
Ever since Razer entered the Ultrabook market, they have offered a solid laptop in the ultra-portable category. The initial version launched back in 2016, and although it had some concerns, mainly battery life, Razer has updated it several times to help correct that. The one thing that was tough to not notice though was that it had pretty large display bezels, when much of the competition is now doing their best to make those as small as possible, allowing more display in the same size laptop.
Today Razer is announcing their latest refresh on the Stealth, and the biggest news is the new 13.3-inch display, packed in the same size chassis. This shrinks the display bezels by 50%, making the entire device a much more pleasing laptop to use. The new 13.3-inch display is a 3200x1800 IGZO panel, offering 100% sRGB color gamut coverage, and 400 nits of brightness. The UHD option will still be available, with its 100% AdobeRGB gamut, but since it is still a 12.5-inch model, and since it doesn’t offer any way to constrain the display to sRGB, it would be difficult to recommend it over the newer, larger display.
The rest of the Stealth is staying pretty much the same, and that’s not a bad thing. The 13.3-inch model comes standard with a Core i7-7500U, up to 16 GB of RAM, and up to a 1 TB PCIe SSD. Razer gives a battery life estimate of up to 9 hours, which is not amazing by today’s standards, but still respectable for most people.
The Razer advantages over the competition continue to be their chassis, with a CNC aluminum body which is very stiff, and a keyboard with individually backlit keys offering RGB lighting per-key. They also offer a Thunderbolt 3 port, along with the Razer Core external GPU, allowing a single cable docking solution to hook the Blade Stealth up to an external graphics card when more oomph is needed.
Razer is also offering a new color option for this model release. A new gunmetal gray option allows people to choose a different look than the typical black coloring on previous Razer laptops. The new color option also deletes the backlit green Razer logo on the rear of the laptop, making it a bit less conspicuous. The rear logo is a tone-on-tone Razer logo on this model.
The new Razer Blade Stealth 13.3-inch model starts at $1399 USD, and is available now on razerzone.com
Souce: Razer
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DanNeely - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
The MBP has about 10% more internal volume (ignoring rounded edges on all models); and a customer base willing to tolerate more thermal throttling than Razer fans are likely to on average. More to the point it was designed to cool 28W not 15. I'm not saying Razer can't make a chassis that can take the load if they wanted to; but it won't be this one.vistar - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
Also the Vaio Z has the 28 watt chip with Iris 550 in a thin and light form. I think it would be great for the Stealth if it could handle the thermals, since the Iris 550 or 650 is pretty decent for a iGPU, getting 1500 or so in firestrike, which is on par with the GT940M, for example. I had a Vaio Z and it performed well with temperatures in line with other thin and light machines with the 15 watt chip.ET - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
Why 28W? So far pretty much the only official thing from AMD about Raven Ridge is "50 percent increase in CPU performance and over 40 percent better graphics performance, at half the power of its previous generation". Given that Bristol Ridge for laptops consists of 35W and 15W chips, half power is under 20W. Even if you take to top TDP of these chips, 45W, half of it is still 22.25W. I'm sure AMD is aiming at the 15W and lower range where most sales currently are, which would be a perfect fit for the Blade Stealth and other such laptops.I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what Raven Ridge really offers. 50% faster CPU and 40% faster GPU sounds good on paper, but there's always the caveat of highly selective benchmarking, and given the current comparison in performance between AMD and Intel at 15W, I read this as 'around Core i5 performance, probably slower for single threaded' for CPU and 'a little better than normal Intel integrated graphics, perhaps around Iris performance'. (But that's still exciting enough for me, given that AMD's GPU is more well rounded and has better drivers than Intel.)
R3MF - Thursday, June 15, 2017 - link
because AMD tends to follow Intel TDP's, because that is what the enormous majority of laptop OEM's design their chassis's to accomodate.and 28W is what Intel spec their Iris Pro parts to.
tipoo - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
This is using 15W TDP parts, iirc?R3MF - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
Good point, and I'd have no objection to a 15W RavenRidge APU either, in fact i'd prefer it to a 15W Cannonridge (?).Samus - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
3200x1800 on 13.3" screen seems excessive. Awesome, but excessive. This GPU won't be able to drive that at native resolution in future games.Samus - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
Obviously by this GPU I mean the iGPU. A TB3 GPU leaves everything up in the air, upgrade as necessary...lazarpandar - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
That was never the intention. Higher resolutions are great for productivity, too.tipoo - Wednesday, June 14, 2017 - link
Very few laptops with high DPI screens do, but they're still good because most people stare at text more often on laptops, with gaming less of the time that works fine at sub-native.The Stealth isn't a gaming laptop at any rate, not without the Core.