Razer Blade 2017 (GTX 1060, 7700HQ, Full-HD) Laptop Review

[Imglidinhere]

There is a reason for that: Blade is thin and cannot handle the heat. Moreover, there was no 1050 Ti at that point.

Are you serious? So for $2200 USD I get a laptop that has a GTX 980-equivalent GPU but throttles down to a GTX 960 under game-load because it can't handle the heat? I'm sorry but exactly what is this crap you're spouting as being "OKAY" in any case?

If my main defense against Razer is from their garbage cooling solution and their claimed Macbook Pro unibody, aluminum chassis being unique and whatnot, then why is it bad to hate on them for such practices as listed above when MSI's GS73 and GS63 hold the same hardware and don't throttle back under full load like that? It's silly to spend that kind of money and make heavy compromises on the same hardware in the SAME CHASSIS as the competition that happens to cost LESS than what you paid for!

If you want to spend money on a garbage laptop that's more plagued with BS than all of Apple's line, then go waste your money, but don't sit here and tell me I'm wrong for using basic logic to determine when something is a bad deal and should be obviously be avoided, and then spreading that information to others so they don't also waste their money on an inferior product.

[SueD]

Most Notebookcheck reviews are quite comprehensive, with detailed discussions on every aspect of the computer as well as full comparison charts to others in the same class.

This review does not follow the same template as most others here.  Simply referring to an older review is not real helpful, even if the information is known with 100% certaintly to be unchanged.  For example, it would be great to see all the comments on the case quality, dimensions, speaker performance and other systems and then include newer competitors like the Aero 14 in the comparison charts.  I want to know about the keyboard and touchpad quality and not have to go to another review to read it, and then assume that the internal parts haven't changed vendors or something that might cause the results to change.  We're buying a $2000 notebook after all, please run the tests again and report on them!  If the numbers are the same, great, that means the results are even more likely to be accurate.

Other things are missing too, just compare to the thorough Aero 14 review.  Notably, one weakness of the 2017 Blade is system noise, yet this section barely mentioned noise and included none of the usual charts or graphs.  Battery runtime didn't include the usual "Idle" and "Load" numbers at all, and this perhaps is one of the key elements of the Kaby Lake update.  Why?

All in all, it seems like a very high rating was given, even though many key factors were not even evaluated at all.   In short, this review could be improved greatly by following the template of the Aero 14 or GS43VR and testing all of the subsystems and comparing them to current competitors.

Honestly, it's too bad competitors didn't include a fully functional Thunderbolt 3 port.  What the industry lacks is a niche for a thin and light 14" notebook with an HQ processor and on-board graphics.  Maybe throw in an optional 1050Ti for adequate gaming, but also one or two full TB3 ports to allow for an eGPU to provide 1070/1080 class gaming and save all the heat and noise from the notebook chassis.  After all, the 1050/1060 just isn't adequate for all the latest displays that are 2560 or 3840.  The Blade competitors really missed out on this opportunity in the gaming notebook class.  As is, it seems an ultrabook like Blade Stealth or Spectre can be had along with a Core or Akitio Node and 1070 for a similar price to the new Blade.  You get thinner and lighter with a better display and more powerful external graphics.

[SueD]

On a separate node, Razer limits you to a 14 day return policy and 1 year warranty, with no extended warranty offered by the manufacturer.  If you're buying a compact gaming machine that creates this much heat, you know these things aren't at the top of the reliability curve.  A more competitive 30 day return and 2-year warranty would go a long way to remain competitive to Gigabyte or Alienware and protect consumers from ending up with a $2000 brick.  Or at least offer a 2 or 3 year extended warranty for additional cost.

[Bvinla]

Review did not mention that the blade without extra hardware such as the razer core can only drive one external monitor.   Users on their web forum have been unable to get the hdmi and thunderbolt  in conjunction nor separate using daisy chaining  to power multiple external display. Razor support has a blanket statement about this limitation.

Some have suplimented with  display link powered USB hubs, but your nvidia 1060 card is then no longer in play, unless you want to go swapping cables around when you want to game or do cad. 

Considering most cheap  5 year old dells and lenovos have displayports that can drive 2 or 3 displays, there is no excuse why this new very expensive i7 quad core razer blade is hamstrung like this.

[Nikila Jayasuriya]

What delta levels were you able to get after calibration?

[cjpost]

So this new Blade gets a 89% rating, which is an incredibly high score from notebook check, yet it fails to make the top 10 in lightweight gaming laptops against others rated quite a bit lower... Can someone explain the logic of these rating systems to me??????????????????