The all-new Razer Blade Stealth 13

For those reading and not posting: this is why you don't engage fanboys - they always move the goalposts. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

update 1 : I confirm that the Wacom 100W USB-C charger is working without battery draining while gaming. Link to the exact model from Amazon.

update 2 : I managed to have eGPU setup working. I am using Mantiz Venus with RX580. The system automatically use the RX580 instead of the internal MX150. I am actually surprise that Nvidia driver can get a long with AMD driver in the same system. I also heard that the eGPU with AMD card is working better with the internal MX150 compared to a eGPU with another Nvidia card in it.

update 3 : I decided to keep the system. I still think it's the best system you can get for a 13" with some kind of discrete GPU. I managed to work around most of its weaknesses. Besides, it simply looks good.

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I just received the 2019 Stealth MX150 1080p model two days ago and I would like to share my initial impression, good and bad, after spending most of my weekend with it.

I will start with the goods
- Absolutely beautiful build, the fit, the color, the finish, the hinge, all of them are perfect. I even like the keyboard.
- The 1080p screen is gorgeous, it's matte and bright, color are nice to my eyes
- I thought I don't care about the chroma, but it's great
- The power brick is tiny and the usb-c cable is high quality and braided.
- The MX150 is decent, I play Battletech and XCOM2, I can get 40fps with the Creator Mode enabled

The bads, unfortunately all the reported problems are still there
- Coil whine, it's pretty bad in my copy, somewhat mitigated after BIOS update, it''s acceptable now, but it's there
- Speaker crackles, it's very bad with the stock drivers, went away after installing alternate driver as described in post #335 above
- Discharging while gaming with the stock charger plugged in, My need is modest, while playing Battletech it discharges about 1% every few min.
- Fingerprint, the finish is susceptible to finger oils, so it looks very filthy after only a few days, can be wiped by damp cloth easily though.

Conclusion
- I think it's a fairly acceptable compromises given there is nothing else in the market that look like this

J017Rogue
My boss at work is tempted by these... and he's an apple fanboy 😜. Very well done! I personally think the price should be a couple hundred less but I think it is fairly priced if you absolutely must have the best build quality and thinnest form factor. I won't be trading in the Razer Blade 15' but it is tempting!

Let your boss know they have an optional 2 year extension warranty. That might make him convert. :wink_:

ventureRubersecret257
You guys were fast to reply! Thank you very much. :smile_:



Do you play with decent graphics, or do you lower them? Does the laptop heat fast?

So I've made a video so you can actually see how Starcraft 2 runs and how loud the laptop gets while you play:

Joikansai
Which 1080ti and is it Core v2 when I’m not wrong? Beware of Rtx cards, better get from somewhere that has fast replacement service, I’ve over a month RMA with nvidia and 2 weeks with Evga from two different rtx cards 2080 (too loud on my core, since the fans unstoppable) and 2070, 2070 was DOA. Thanks to Blade 15 that i can keep gaming and working;)

It is the Evga 1080ti fw3. It was in my main desktop so it had no problems in there. But it's the led on the side that says Evga 1080 ti is what's causing the clearance issue and hitting off the inside of the Razer core. And yes it's the V2. It originally was never gonna go in the Core but since I'm replacing my main Desktop with the Razer blade stealth I only just found out.

I was thinking Nvidia or Evga. I've always bought EVGA in the past so I'm kind brand loyal to them. Part of me wants the 2080ti but aren't they even worse with issues?

Either way I need to get the 1080ti sold first to help cover this unexpected cost. Lol

Firebat246
Glad I got some more information on your situation. Thank you for using a better stress tool than XTU. I should have specified I wanted XTU for monitoring only. This may sound weird on an already low powered CPU but have you tried any undervolting?

From his Intel XTU screen shot he didn’t undervolting, Yes I don’t think this needed too with that temperature and power usage. And power limit throttling happens (I think it’s boost to 25 watt and throttle to 15 watt), pretty similar with our 15 (from 45+ to 35/25), most probably same bios lock when doing something harder like pairing with egpu that may adding extra stress to cpu to avoid thermal throttling.

Droglez
Now I have been playing for a while - approx 2-3 hrs, and the battery is down to 25% while plugged in! This cannot be right.. Any thoughts?

If you have wattage measurement tools from power brick i think you can check power consumption rightly, is it 65 Watt AC Adapter right? More than that will use slowly saved wattage on the Battery, the Solution may be some thing you mentioned before, using bigger power adapter, Razer Core power delivery is 65 Watt as well. I’m curious now how it will run with Razer Core...does it need to be powered on both usb C to avoid battery drain.

Droglez
Yeah, I was thinkg about this too. Or maybe a BIOS update could solve it. I have heard about this before, which was a setting in the BIOS that would let the bettery discharge in order to protect the battery while plugged in. Maybe they are using a more aggressive strategy here. 65W should be enough to supply the laptop and if not, I hope they are working on a more powerful charger that can actually supply the thing they're selling. Like I said in a previous post, it's really sad that the charger is setting the limits of performance of the laptop.

I'm forwarding this information up to get some clarification on possible solutions. Shoot me a PM.

Clabby94
I understand you're having an issue, but how is it handling WoW in its current state?

I have 60 FPS in most areas, but in populated areas (capitals/cities etc.) I’m occasionally dipping under 50 FPS, which is frustrating when you see the GPU is not at full load.
Running at 1080P and settings at High/ultra. It would handle it Well, if the GPU would run at full tilt.

Teneul
This fixed my snap-crackle-pop sounds coming from my speakers when they are not being used.

I am starting to lean towards returning my stealth, base model after having used it for a couple weeks now because the trackpad is still finicky. There is still a coil-whine coming from the lite-on SSD which is rampant and the super mediocre palm detection on the trackpad in addition to other random and frequent trackpad issues (jumping cursor regardless of the presence of the palm, intermittent but not frequent periods where it freezes for about 3 seconds causes me real consternation. The size of the right shift has also been a huge learning curve. If I press the up arrow one more time...

It seems I'm getting around 8:30 hours of real-world usage out of the battery. Nowhere near 12-13 and that's with simple web browsing and multitasking. No gaming or stress application usage (adobe products, etc.). I do realize now that looking at my battery-report it does drain significantly on suspend mode overnight, 10-15%. Here is my battery report for comparison:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qrtb797hmhhhslj/battery-report.html?dl=0

Trackpad cuts out intermittently for me as well.

Joikansai
Actually previous stealth has already dual fans, so it’s really designed for huge cpu usage. From reviews it’s actually the best thermal on MX150 laptops. Yes unfortunately there’s seemly still issues this early batch. Btw I had before MX150 ultrabook with single fan, it was a nightmare laptop all running hot literally I can’t gaming on it, not a year it shows already defective parts.

I saw on Razer subreddit there’s also user who received perfect unit, he said has no of possibility issues that notebookcheck reviewer mentioned. I had only one issue with Razer Blade I bought, it was late 2016 so I rejected that and got 2017 model, it was great without hardware issue for 14 months gaming usage before I sold it for Blade 15, and Blade 15 works also like a champ in this 6 months usage. My current stealth v2 works still fine as well almost 2 years, waiting for its lifespan but seemly have to wait longer, still considering if I’ve to sell it for stealth MX150 or keeping it.

I was referring more to competing laptops like hp x360, think pad, and even apple. Now I know xps 13 has two fans. But razers seem to have bigger fans and definitely more heatpipes. So t just surprised me how nice it was to use and it actually stayed cool. Most of these small laptops have small noisy fans.Was that the huawai laptop with the mx150 you had?

BaffTech
Thanks for your replies.

And, yes, sure, there is a majority of unhappy guys who post on forums but I don't see that kind of frequency of unhapiness with every brand... The unit I had was fine but the poor battery life and the below average confidence I had in the products given all bad advices I had read were questioning me even before I see those dead pixels...
I then remember thought that with a mate screen this had much less chance to occur.
And there is this new Stealth. But now I can see that the coiled wine that was finally fixed is back... Not very encouraging to be honest :/

Well, I might wait for some other reviews before I decide to give another try through Amazon. Knowing that I have nothing wrong with my Dell XPS 13 except it's beginning to getting old and for sure I can't play much with it, even in low specs...

You should join me and @Joikansai over on Notebookreview.com. Msi, Alienware, Clevo, Gigabyte. . .all the brands on one forum. Trust me they all have complaints and issues. Some more than others, but overall it seems they all are about the same and have terrible customer support. That's just the reality of it all.

To be fair I've heard the xps 13 is plagued with coil whine too ever since the first model. So it's unforunetly common. Even my blade 14 has it. But, it was very faint. So it never bothered me.

If you can wait until after CES, like I said I will be getting something for sure. If it's another Blade Stealth I will share my experience here on the forums for sure.

rglasser
I actually bought a higher wattage charger (will arrive in two days). I’ll report back if it works or not.

I’m fairly convinced this is the “normal.” Honestly I’m okay if it means not crippling the machine by automatically lowering power settings or speeds. It would be great if a razer person(s) could confirm though here that this is normal for the 4k graphics model. Or if anyone who has it can also report in.

I see your point, but it should be able to deliver enough power while not cripplling the thing - not one or the other. I’m pretty sure that it’s the charger falling short. It’s not acceptable for me at least. I don’t really Care how it’s fixed, as long as it gets fixed. It’s not a cheap device, so I think it’s fair to expect it to work properly.

I’m having a hard time understanding how this can go through QC. I mean; if you produce cars, you take the thing for a drive before you start selling it. And if you produce (casual) gaming laptops, I suppose it would be pretty smart to game on it before you start selling it. And it’s not like it’s happening after 1 year of use, which would make it impossible for them to see; it’s there from day 1. Am I wrong here..?

Hfffff I need it so badly !

I wish I could afford it