Razer Blade Stealth Laptop Review: A Essential Tool for All Level Gamers
The biggest question about Razer Blade Stealth 13 Laptop isn’t really about Blade Stealth 13. It is about the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, the best ultraportable gaming laptop ever.
Before last year, it was extremely unusual to see any GPU more powerful than the MX150 in a thin and light machine. (The reason it rhymes with “schooling”) Razer crammed an Nvidia GTX 1650 into a chassis that weighed just 3.13 pounds and looked astonishing at 12 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches. There is nothing like it on the market.
That’s no longer true, thanks to the Zephyrus, which not only has a powerful GPU (up to the RTX 2060 Max-Q) and CPU (up to AMD’s eight-core Ryzen 9 4900HS) in a chassis that weighs just 3.5 pounds, But it also has an aggressive price tag: The tricked-out model is just $1,449.
After spending time with this device, I find it hard to imagine recommending anything else for gaming on the go, so work with the razor has been cut short.
In a vacuum, the $ 1,799 Blade Stealth 13 is an improvement over last year’s model: the chips are more powerful, the display is sharper, and Razer has made much-requested keyboard changes. But thanks to Asus and AMD, this year’s competition is pretty tight.
The blade is no longer obvious (only, really) like what it used to be.
But there are certainly people for whom the Blade is a better choice than the Zephyrus. Whether you are one of them or not depends on what you care about the most.
One obvious area where the Razer Blade Stealth Laptop beats the Zephyrus to some degree is in the webcam, specifically the webcam.
(Asus didn’t put one on the Zephyrus.) Some people will notice it and some won’t. But part of the appeal of a laptop with this form factor is that it can easily double as a driver for daily work or for messing with friends on the Zoom.
The webcam makes the Blade more versatile for non-gaming purposes. Plus, it supports Windows Hello facial recognition, which is handy for quick and easy login.
The second factor that sets it apart from the Zephyrus is the design. Don’t get me wrong: Zephyrus looks fine.
But the Razer Blade Stealth 13 laptop is not only one of the best-looking gaming laptops out there; This is one of the best looking laptops out there, period. It’s a world away from traditional gaming laptop designs like the Dell G5.
The chassis is lightweight (3.11 lb) and compact (11.99 x 8.27 x 0.6 inches), making it very close in size to a 13-inch MacBook Pro (11.97 x 8.36 x 0.61 in, 3.1 lb). This Blade looks and feels like a premium Ultrabook, and it certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a school or office setting.
If I didn’t know anything about laptops, I’d be surprised to hear that it was designed for gaming.
There’s one feature that leaves the game a bit off (pun intended): the colourful keyboard. In Razer’s Chroma Studio software, you can customize all kinds of effects, colours, and motion.
The keys aren’t individually backlit, so you can’t pick up on anything fancy. But I think the dim lighting really enhances the professional aesthetic of the blade.
Where gorgeous RGB setups like the Gigabyte Aero 15 evoke a disco club, this keyboard has a classy bar.
Razer Blade Stealth Laptop has made some significant upgrades over last year’s Blade Stealth 13 model.
The first feature to know about it is the display. You can now configure the Blade with a 120Hz panel, which is the highest refresh rate 13-inch screen you can find. (There’s also a 4K touchscreen option. Obviously, you don’t want this for best gaming results.)
I measured brightness to 357 nits, covering 99% of the sRGB spectrum and 74% of Adobe RGB. The screen delivers a decent picture with bright colours and sharp details.
Response times were decent but more ghostly than I’d expect to see on a high-end gaming laptop.
As with other Blade models, Razer Blade Stealth Laptop also made a welcome change to the Stealth keyboard, with previous generations of Blade and Blade Stealth attempting to press the up arrow between the right Shift key and the accent key. This made it very easy to accidentally hit the up arrow when you wanted to hit the shift.
Not anymore: Razer has raised the Shift key and put down the half-height arrow keys. As someone who uses the Shift key more than I use the up arrow, I prefer it this way more.
The trackpad is also quite nice and extremely smooth, with a nice quiet thunk on clicking.
The other peripheral that deserves attention is the speaker. Like last year’s Blade, this laptop has speakers facing upward on either side of the keyboard. The audio they deliver is impressive for a laptop of this size, though it lacks strong bass (as in laptop audio).
I felt comfortable using the Blade to blast music in my bedroom and living room without any external speakers. It sounds better than the G14, and is on par with the 13-inch MacBook Pro, though the Pro does a better job with bass.
The Razer Blade Stealth Laptop model I tested has Nvidia’s GTX 1650 Ti with Max Q design, in addition to a quad-core Intel Core i7–1065G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
The GTX 1650 Ti is a slight step up from the previous Blade Stealth, which had the GTX 1650. But we wouldn’t expect it to deliver nearly as much power as the Zephyrus G14 can come with. It bore in our testing.
- The Stealth ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider at its highest settings, averaging 45fps.
- It’s playable enough, and you’ll definitely hit 60 if you’re willing to lower the settings.
However, it has a significantly worse frame rate than the G14, which ran the same benchmarks at 74fps at the same settings.
Agreed to Continue: Razer Blade Stealth 13 Laptop
Before using each smart device, it is necessary to accept a number of contract conditions, which in fact no one reads, we cannot read and analyze each of these agreements.
But we started by counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” when we review devices because these are contracts most people don’t read and certainly can’t negotiate.
To start using your Razer Blade Stealth 13, you need to agree to the following:
- a request for your area
2. A request for your keyboard layout
3. Microsoft account
4. Pin
You can also say yes or no to the following:
- Wi-Fi
- windows hello face
- Activity History
- sync android phone
- OneDrive Backup
- office 365
- Cortana
- Privacy Settings (Speech Recognition, Location, Find My Device, Diagnostic Data Sharing, Incoming & Typing, Tailored Experience, Advertising ID)
- razor account
In total, for using Blade Stealth 13, it is four mandatory agreements and 15 optional agreements.
Blade also performed well in our Premiere Pro benchmark, which included exporting 5 minutes of 4K video.
This unit completed the work in 5 min 50 sec. That’s a much better result than you can get from the 13-inch Surface Book 3 with the MacBook Pro 13 (which lacks a discrete graphics card) as well as the GTX 1650 Max Q.
Of course, on a laptop with this screen and size, most people are spending more time on daily productivity work than on heavy media editing. For regular office tasks, the Blade works fine.
I used it to jump between 12 to 16 Chrome tabs, Slack, Spotify, and Zoom, as well as a variety of tasks like downloading files, copying folders, and batch processing photos.
Everything went smoothly and I didn’t notice any performance difference between the shovel and bulky rigs like the G14.
Blade fans were often grooving, but they only got louder in anger when under heavy loads of Chrome tabs or other demanding programs (like games). The bottom of the chassis was usually hot on the lap, but not hot enough that I had to shake it.
Battery life is good, but the configuration you choose has a significant impact on the results.
In Windows Better Battery and Battery Saver Profiles, as well as Razer’s Battery Saver profiles, I only had about seven hours (a few starts on average). Our battery test involved running the laptop through our typical workday (mine details above) at 200 nits brightness.
On Windows’ Improved Performance Profile and Razer’s Balanced setting, I only got five and a half hours. I don’t see much of a performance difference between any of the battery presets (and you’ll want to plug it in while playing), so if you need a day of juice I’d use it instead of one. Save energy.
The battery life is quite good due to the gaming laptop. That’s compared to the seven hours I got to run the XPS 13 through the same workload and better than what we got for the MacBook Pro 13.
They don’t put the Blade at the top of its class, though;
The Zephyrus lasted 8 hours 50 minutes on a single test. I’m a little disappointed that this blade didn’t outpace the Zephyrus, considering the more powerful chips of the latter, but it’s a solid result nonetheless.
Razer’s 2020 Blade Stealth 13 is a capable and beautiful computer. Almost everything about it is good. The problem is that when it comes to its main attraction — gaming — there’s an exceptional 14-inch rig that unpacks it. Not only that but also cheaper by several hundred dollars.
From the Zephyrus to the Dell G5 to the Envy x360, AMD’s latest systems have made Intel systems a price-performance game. Therefore, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend the Blade as the best portable gaming laptop for most people.
Asus and AMD hold that crown for now.
That said, there are a number of reasons why someone might want a Razer laptop instead. There is a built-in webcam. There’s a more refined aesthetic that’s a hallmark of the Blade Stealth, including the chic chromatic keyboard. And the second is the form factor.
At the end of the day, the Blade Stealth 13 is still the most portable gaming experience you can find.
The G14 is a bit big and quite heavy. If you’re looking to sacrifice gaming performance for an exceptional laptop in these areas, the Blade Stealth 13 is for you.
