With a dual-core 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-2640M processor, 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT555M graphics with 2GB of dedicated memory and a 256GB solid state drive, the Razer Blade isn't ready to take on dedicated gaming desktops or monster laptops, but it should still be screaming fast. For the most part, that's true. Our unit booted into Windows 7 Home Premium in just 19 seconds and was ready for action 27 seconds after we hit the power button, and proved to be a capable multitasker, too, popping open application windows just as soon as I launched them and notching a score of 14494 in PCMark Vantage, much of that on the strength of its SSD.
The solid state drive was a last minute upgrade Razer made to the Blade, and while the 256GB Liteon M2S isn't the best one you can buy -- in some tests, like random access checks and small-chunk file transfers, it's actually comparatively slow -- it definitely gives the Blade a speed boost while still providing enough space to install a small game library, a hard thing to do even in a $2,800 system. I measured over 400MB / sec reads and 285 MB / sec writes in the AS-SSD benchmark, in case you're curious about sequential performance.
I don't know if I've ever seen a cleaner desktop than the one on the Razer Blade. It's completely free of software bloat: just a fresh install of Windows 7 and Razer's Synapse software and Switchblade UI on top. You even get to set up Windows yourself. I'd appreciate that more, though, if the software that controlled the touchpad and LCD keys didn't have some nasty bugs. I tested two different machines, each of which exhibited the following behaviors:
- If you put the Blade to sleep while the touchpad is in certain modes, two of Razer's applications controlling the software go nuts, eating up over 50 percent of the computer's CPU time, heating up the machine, causing the fans to run full bore and triggering a massive memory leak
- Sometimes, when the Blade's screen shuts off, the touchpad, LCD keys and keyboard shut off too, and sometimes there's a delay before they wake up
- Sometimes, they don't wake up at all: several times, I had to restart the machine after the touchpad failed to load, and another time I had to plug in an external keyboard and mouse when the included one failed as well.
- Occasionally, the LCD key controller hangs, eating up CPU time and disabling those awesome buttons until you restart
- Occasionally, the Synaptics driver will fail, disabling all gestures (like two-finger scrolling) on the trackpad
Razer tells us that it's hugely committed to the Blade, and that any software bugs will be sorted out in time. Also, it's worth noting none of these immediately appear after you restart the machine. As of today, though, they can be a bit annoying.
Gaming
If you're hoping to play the latest titles at maximum detail, the Blade isn't the machine for you — instead, try our formula for a homebuilt gaming rig — but it still soundly trounces every machine its size and weight. Just Cause 2, my favorite mid-range benchmark, is quite playable at around 40-50 FPS at the system's 1080p native resolution, as long as you turn down the eye candy to medium setings, and surprisingly Batman: Arkham City will let you take the Dark Knight up to 1080p on high settings, just so long as you turn off DX11 and anti-aliasing. The Witcher 2 eats the Blade for lunch, though, as I needed to drop down to 1366 x 768 resolution and low detail to maintain an average 30 FPS through the opening siege, and you'll want to play at 1600 x 900 and low detail (or lower) to enjoy Battlefield 3. For a general purpose computer, these results are pretty great, but I have to admit I expected more from a dedicated gaming machine.
All of our benchmarks were performed with the AC adapter connected, because it seems the Blade's original BIOS doesn't allow the the discrete graphics card to properly engage unless it's plugged in. Half a dozen times, I literally started playing a game on battery, as sluggish as can be, and as soon as I plugged the power jack in, framerates quadrupled immediately. Mind you, Razer has already fixed this in a future BIOS update, and I can confirm the fix works on my test machine.
Battery, noise, and heat
So long as the machine's just browsing the web free of tethers, the Blade lasts longer than you might expect. Nvidia Optimus tells the machine to switch to its integrated Intel graphics core most of the time, and when we ran our Verge Battery Test (which cycles through 100 top websites and downloads high-res images with the screen brightness at 65 percent, the 5440mAh battery lasted 3 hours and 21 minutes before dying. Not bad. Even after the aforementioned BIOS update, though, you're not going to want to play games without a cord: starting at 50 percent battery, we only managed 20 minutes of Battlefield 3 before the Blade told us that our juice was running out. Heat and noise are also concerns. Though most of the heat is directed out the far corners of the machine by a pair of fans, the palmrest can get pretty warm, and at full bore those fans are loud enough to wake light sleepers. The cooling design is clever, though: the CPU and Nvidia GPU each have their own fan. If you hear a buzz from the left side, you'll know your CPU is hard at work, and if you feel hot air rushing out the right side, the discrete graphics are chowing down on something.
Not the machine to buy if you're hoping for cool and quiet, but it won't burn your lap.
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