Razer Blade Laptop (2014) Review

Introduction

With Razer Blade (2014), the company has decided to keep the same ultraportable design as its predecessor, but with a new and better display with higher resolution and touch-screen capability. With a price tag of $2399, Razer Blade (2014) is an ultraportable gaming laptop which offers a ravishing display with an attractive design and impressive performance.

Design and Features

The design of Razer Blade (2014) is almost identical to the last year’s model. It features a very slim profile with overall measurements of 0.7 x 13.6 x 9.3 inches (H x W x D) and weighs only 4.47 pounds. It has the same aluminum unibody chassis with matte black finish and bright-green accents. The lid has a glowing Razer snake-triskelion logo. One of the main features of Razer Blade (2014) is that it comes with an Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) display panel. It comes with a 14-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 3200 x 1800 pixels. The display is gorgeous with vibrant colors and the touch features work very smoothly with Windows 8.1. It is also equipped with a pair of good quality speakers which are loud enough to fill a large room.

Below the stunning display is a backlit keyboard with sharp island style keys. The keyboard is comfortable to use and offers the right amount of tactile feedback. It has Razer’s unique block font and features same anti-ghosting technology used in Razer’s gaming components. Below the keyboard is a large multi-touch trackpad with separate mouse buttons and gesture support. The trackpad is optimized for the ultrahigh resolution so the users can go from one end to the other without lifting their finger. Due to its slim design, Razer Blade (2014) features a limited number of ports which includes three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI-out port and a headset jack. It comes equipped with Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11a Wi-Fi for wireless connectivity.

Performance

Razer Blade (2014) is armed with Intel Core i7-4702HQ quad-core processor which is clocked at 2.2GHz. It is also equipped with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) for faster loading time. It is equipped with 70 watt-hour battery which lasted 4 hours 15 minutes during a battery rundown test. Thanks to its impressive hardware, Razer Blade (2014) offers excellent performance and completed the Photoshop CS6 benchmark test in 4 minutes 54 seconds. It scored 2787 points in PCMark 8 Work Conventional test.

To handle all the latest and demanding games, Razer Blade (2014) is powered by Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M discreet GPU with 3GB of dedicated memory. During 3DMark Benchmark tests, it managed to score 15713 and 2098 points in Cloud Gate and Fire Strike Extreme, respectively. Razer Blade (2014) can run most of the latest games at playable frame rates with decent settings, but some games like Watch Dogs and Crysis 3 are too demanding for the laptop to run at ultrahigh resolution. The users might have to test different settings before they can enjoy the game with decent frame rates.

Conclusion

Razer Blade (2014) comes with its fair share of disappointments which also includes heating problem. Due to its ultrahigh resolution, the work load on processor and GPU has increased and the slim chassis doesn’t leave much room for air circulation. The ultrahigh resolution display is also responsible for the poor battery life. None the less, Razer Blade (2014) is a stunning laptop with portability of ultrabooks and raw power of gaming laptops, it is one of the best looking gaming notebooks.