Tim Gwynne
- Comment
The design of the Razer Blade Stealth 2019 is a flawless machine on paper, and exactly what I want out of a machine. The perfect size at 13.3", with a dedicated (albeit not super powerful) dedicated GPU at the mid-tier and high-tier models, a quad core low power consumption processor, a beautiful 4k touch screen thats calibrated perfectly, fantastic build quality on par with Apple... etc. There are not many (if any?) other machines on the market that fit all of these qualities. **FYI THIS IS NOT A GAMING LAPTOP. The marketing sure makes it seem like it is, but youre better off with a Razer Blade 15 for that*** With that said, you CAN do light gaming on it. This is the perfect portable laptop for a designer/creator. Im in to photography so after much research, I jumped for this near-perfect on paper machine hoping that I would avoid all of the hardware/quality issues that are common with it (see below for description of what they are). Unfortunately, I was unlucky and experienced almost all of them and ended up deciding to return it and not get a new one/work with Razer support. I did my research prior to purchasing this machine and knew going in that it was a bit of a gamble. The Razer Blade Stealth is plagued with some quality issues that appear to affect the majority of users in some fashion. Some users report that hardly any have these issues, so you may get lucky (unlike me) and get a machine that doesnt have it. Here are the common issues/gripes with this machine: a) coil whine from the SSD. For those of you not familiar with coil whine, it is a harmless but annoying whiney sound which comes from electronic parts. this occurs in more than just razer products, but most users complain that the stock ssd of the razer blade stealth produces this noise. I experienced this with mine. I was willing to live with it, or replace the ssd to get around it despite the issue. but I experienced the other following issues that made me decide against it. b) the machines battery actually depletes while plugged in to power, and doing heavy lifting tasks. For example, while doing photo editing, I watched my battery bar slowly deplete despite being plugged in to power. I also experienced it even more dramatically while gaming. I dont know if this is a hardware issue or if it is just because the included power adapter is only 65W. Some users have reported purchasing a higher rated usb-c charger and no longer having the issue. Again, this is another thing I was willing to try as with the above ssd issue, but I also experienced the other below issues that made me decide against this too. c) loose USB-C ports. This is probably my biggest gripe with the machine. I use a few USB-C hubs and found that the USB-C ports on this machine were so loose that my hub (and therefore power, mouse and keyboard) were constantly becoming disconnected from the machine. this was a dealbreaker for me. d) The right shift key, which I use heavily, is spaced poorly. Other common issues with this machine which I DID NOT experience, but to look out for (not reflected in my star rating): e) CPU clocks down to 400mhz randomly f) machine does not work correctly with Razer Core eGPU products. TL;DR: Heres the thing. This is an expensive machine. There are way more machines out there in this price range that dont have the quality issues this machine has... I think this machine is worth the cost if it didnt have all of these quality issues, but when you consider the cost and and weigh against the quality issues, its a pretty bad deal. If razer can figure out their QA/QC issues I think they can produce beautiful machines that will easily rival Apple. I can’t give this one star because I think Razer is on the right track, but I’d never recommend anyone buy this. I ended up getting a Dell XPS 15. I know this is a very different machine (as its 15 inches instead of 13), but ultimately it had everything else I wanted so I caved on that one piece - and its much less expensive, more powerful and better battery life, at least on Amazon right now.