This Razor notebook was born to recharge your faith. Since its first appearance in 2012, the Thundersnake Blade has always been in the front of the portable game notebook, because this notebook not only has a very cool appearance, but also can be carried out at any time in your briefcase (it is light enough), there is no too much pressure to play games with high special effects, and the QHD+resolution screen, It looks absolutely beautiful.
In the iterative update of their notebook, Thundersnake has made great efforts to personalize the appearance. The super cool Chroma keyboard is added to the computer, allowing you to customize the backlight color of the keyboard. The graphics card memory and battery capacity have been increased. Thundersnake has also redesigned the cooling system and simplified the Windows system to make it less bloated. If this is not enough, Thundersnake has also lowered the price of this year's new model. The entry model is 1999 dollars (about 13312 yuan). Although it is still a short board in terms of endurance, believe me, this game notebook is definitely a first-class product.
Appearance design
Razor has cleverly retained the appearance design elements of the previous Blade. Its sleek body appearance has become the fifth generation of products adopting this design, but every time I see it, I will be attracted by its appearance. On the aluminum alloy shell, two straight lines fall down, and the green Razor logo is embedded in it. The logo will also glow. When the light is bright, my eyes can hardly move away from it, and I am deeply attracted by it.
When you open the Blade, you will see a large touchpad located below the full-size keyboard. There are speakers on both sides of the keyboard. There is a round button above the keyboard, which is the power key. It is a typical Razor family design. This is not an ordinary keyboard. Thundersnake calls it the "Chroma Keyboard". The black body improves the visual perception of the whole machine, which is almost irresistible.
This generation of Blades is lighter than its predecessor. While keeping its slim size (13.6 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches), it weighs 4.25 pounds (about 1.58 kilograms), compared with its competitor Alienware 15 (15.2 x 10.6 x 1.34 inches, 6.6 pounds *About 2.46 kg ）To be light and thin, Gigabyte Aorus X3 Plus v3 is one of the many game laptops that can match the size of the Razor Blade. Its body size has reached 12.9 x 10.3 x 0.9 inches, and its weight is 4 pounds (about 1.49 kg). The Blade has a real advantage in body size.
Screen and Configuration
The thin and light body means that the Blade will not have too many expansion interfaces. On the left side of the body, there are two USB 3.0 interfaces, headphone interface and power interface. On the right, there is a USB 3.0 interface, anti-theft keyhole, full-size HDMI interface and Thunderbolt interface (the appearance is the same as USB Type-C). This Thunderbolt interface is used to connect an external video card Razer Core. When you do not use an external video card, it can also be used to connect a 4K monitor.
(The left side of the body is connected by the power button, two USB3.0 and headphone connectors)
(The interface on the right side of the fuselage is Thunderbolt * USB Type-C appearance, USB3.0, HDMI and anti-theft latch)
Blade is equipped with a 14 inch touch-screen display with a resolution of 3200 x 1800. It has high color saturation and great appearance. It is absolutely enjoyable to play games or watch movies. When I watch the 4K video, I can even see every nick and rust iron on the train in the picture. When the picture changes to the underwater scene, I am extremely surprised at the details of plants such as water plants in the picture. It is an absolute enjoyment to play Wizard 3 on the Blade screen. The white hair, clothes and details of the scene of the hero Gearalt are very rich.
When we test the color gamut of this screen, its sRGB color saturation is 120%, while that of other similar products is generally 83%, Gigabyte's Plus v3 is 106.3%, and Alienware 15 is 97.5%. Blade also performs very well in terms of color accuracy. The Delta-E value is 0.95, while its competitors Alienware 15 and Plus v3 are 1.3 and 10.7 respectively. In the screen brightness test, the highest brightness of Blade is 338 nits, while the average of similar products is 253 nits, which is much more than them (311 nits for Alienware 15 and 203 nits for Plus v3, respectively). Although I don't want to leave any fingerprints on this screen, in my experience, the loudness of the touch screen is fast, and the response is very sensitive when sliding pictures or zooming in or out.
Loudspeaker performance is more general. When I listen to Nicki Minaj's Want Some More, the sound will be particularly loud. When I listen to the bass, it sounds like the sound issued under the water. This phenomenon is more prominent when I listen to Beyonce's Formation. However, when I was playing games, its speakers came into play. When playing Wizard 3, the sound is very clear and accurate. When I use my sword to chop with the enemy, the sound effect is particularly good. The sound of wielding the sword sounds very pleasant.
Keyboard and touchpad
I particularly like the Chroma keyboard of Blade. Like the Razer's Ultrabook Blade Stealth, it uses an RGB keyboard with independent backlight. There are a total of 16.8 million colors to choose from, and there are six light flash modes (wave, spectrum, breath, static, reaction and Ripple). It is absolutely personalized. You can adjust your own Unique lighting effect.
You can adjust the light in Razer's Synapse, the supporting program of Thundersnake, and you can also set different light modes. For example, when you play games, you can set a set of exclusive lights or a set of keyboard lights for daily office work, which are similar to Alienware's Alien FX software.
Although the keyboard light is cool, you still need to use it to type. Although the key stroke is short (1.1 mm), each key can still provide some feedback. The grams of keyboard pressure is 58 grams. In my typing test, the number of words typed per minute is 60, with an error rate of only 1% (please click *Wall climbing required ）。
The touchpad provided by Synaptics is 4.1 x 2.5 inches in size. When I browse the web page and select text, it responds quickly and accurately. The touchpad also has some gesture functions, such as double finger zoom in/out and rotation, which are easy to use. Below the touchpad are two physical keys. The feedback of keys and the experience of clicking are very good.
The best thing is that the light effects you set on Razer's Synapse can be stored on the cloud. When you use another Razer's laptop, the light modes you used to play with can be applied to other Razer's laptops. At the same time, the Razer Naga Epic Chroma mouse and the Razer Black Widow Chroma keyboard you purchased can also use Razer's Synapse for various personalized settings.
Games and graphics cards
Thundersnake usually performs very well in game performance. It is equipped with a Nvidia GeForce GTX970M GPU with 6GB video memory, which is larger than that of similar products. This makes me have little pressure when playing the super high special effect Wizard 3 (game settings: native 3200 x 1800 resolution, super high special effect, average frame rate stable at about 57). Even if I cut at the enemy crazily with a sword in the game, the frame rate is still very stable. When I turn the picture quality to high special effects, the frame rate can jump to 62. When I turn the picture quality to medium special effects, the frame rate is higher, and it remains at 71.
When I tested Rainbow 6: Siege, the frame rate was about 63 in 1080P quality (57 for similar laptops). When I increased the special effect a little more, the frame rate dropped to about 44, but the performance was still excellent (37 for similar laptops).
In the next Metro: Return game test, Blade continued to perform well, with a frame rate of about 102 under 1080P image quality (68 for similar laptops), Gigabyte's Plus v3 (also GeForce GTX970M, 6GB video memory) followed by a frame rate of 99, and Alienware 15 (GeForce GTX970M, 3GB video memory) had a frame rate of only 66. However, when we set the special effects of the game to high, the Blade can't run a bit. The frame rate is around 28, and the frame rates of Plus v3 and Alienware 15 are only 29 and 27.
performance
Blade is an absolute performance monster in terms of productivity. The 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor and 16GB DDR4 memory make me feel no pressure to open a pile of office software while watching high-definition videos.
In the Geekbench 3 test, Blade scored an astonishing 13268 points, while the average score of similar laptops in this test was only 6465, the score of Gigabyte Plus v3 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ) was 12863, and the performance was also good, while the performance of Alienware 15 (2.9GHz Intel Core i5-4210) was relatively poor, with only 6321 points.
The Blade is equipped with 256GB PCIe SSD. It only takes 14 seconds to write a 4.97GB multimedia file. The converted write speed is 359MB/S, and the performance of similar products is only 121.4MB/S. The Alienware 15 (128GB M.2 SSD; 1TB 5400-rpm HDD) is only 103.9MB/S. Even Gigabyte's Plus v3 (256GB MSATA SSD) can't compare with it. The write speed is 299MB/S.
See a set of performance tests
*In the following tests, the red font is the Razer Blade, and the bottom black bar is the average value of similar product tests
(3DMark Fire Strike test * The higher the value, the better)
(The lower the color standard *, the better. The value of Razor Blade here is 0.95)
(The higher the color gamut * value, the better)
(Image performance test * The higher the value, the better)
(Write speed test, unit: MB/S * The higher the value, the higher the value)
(Geekbench 3 test * The higher the value, the better)
fever
Generally speaking, laptops have an average heat dissipation performance, because they generally have a small heat dissipation space. In contrast, Blade has redesigned their heat dissipation system. Now it is equipped with a new fan and heat transfer tubes. Blade draws air from both sides of the body, and then exports the heat flow from the hinge behind the machine, and your hands will hardly touch the heat transfer port. When we played the 15 minute video on Hulu (video website), the temperature of the touchpad and the G and H keys was about 82 ℃ to 89 ℃. However, the temperature at the bottom of the fuselage reached 97 ℃, which was a bit hot.
camera
Blade's camera is 2 million pixels, so it's not a big problem to take photos and record videos. I took a picture at 1080P resolution, and the quality is average. But considering that the role of the camera is only applicable to video chat, so its performance can also satisfy me. I believe no one will use a computer camera to take photos in the street, right?
(Sample taken by computer camera * This woman is the original author)
Battery life
Thundersnake officially claims that the life of the Blade can reach 5 hours. In our test, the Blade lasted 5 hours and 42 minutes before shutting down (web browsing test under WiFi), which is much shorter than the 8-hour life of similar products! However, it is still a little better than Gigabyte's Plus v3 (5 hours and 38 minutes of life), while Alienware 15 performs fairly well, with 6 hours and 12 minutes of life.
Software
In addition to Razer's Synapse, Razer has pre installed some software packages designed for players, such as Razer Comms, which can communicate with your friends when playing games; There is also Razer Cortex. Through this tool, you can unleash the potential of your computer, increase the number of game frames, and reduce the game loading time.
The Thundersnake Blade on my hand is priced at US $1999 (about 13312 yuan), equipped with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor (built-in Intel HD Graphics 530 integrated display), 16GB memory, 256GB PCIe SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX970M GPU (with 6GB video memory). The $2199 (about 14647 yuan) model configuration is similar to the above parameters, but it increases the storage space from 256GB to 512GB.
summary
As the saying goes, every penny is worth every purchase. The Razor Blade is almost one of the best portable game books on the market. You can buy a 17 inch laptop with the entry model of 1999 dollars. It is also equipped with an i7 processor and a GPU with 6GB video memory. No matter you want to play games or work daily, it is very handy. In addition to the beautiful QHD+screen, you also have a cool, super personalized Chroma keyboard with high appearance!
If your budget is insufficient, you can consider Alienware 15 of 1500 dollars (about 9991 yuan) or Alienware 13 OLED , but then you won't get the thin body and powerful performance of the Blade. In general, for game enthusiasts, the Razor Blade is a good choice. It is portable and has the same appearance as Apple.
Bonus points
Negative equinox
List of parameter configurations
CPU: 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor
System: Windows 10 Home Edition
Memory: 16GB
Screen size: 3200 x 1800
GPU： Nvidia GeForce GTX970M/Intel Graphics HD 530
Unique memory: 6GB
WiFi：802.11 b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth: 4.1
Touch pad size: 4.1 x 2.5 inches
Body size: 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches
Weight: 4.25 lbs (about 1.58 kg)
Hands on evaluation of similar products: Dell Alienware 13 OLED
The above pictures and texts are translated and arranged from
