Razer Blade Stealth 2019: I should have listened to Linus!

[dldwoods11]

Hi everyone,

 

So I recently took the plunge and bought a Razer Blade Stealth 2019… having first watched, then completely ignored, the warnings Linus gave in his review ... and I thought I'd post the results here for anyone else considering doing the same! Figured it'd make a decent 'first forum post'.

 

Disclosure: I've been a total fanboy for the Blade Stealth ever since it first appeared in 2015. I didn't want to believe it might be anything less than completely 100% awesome. And with Razer having a sale at the moment? Yup, £240 discount was all the excuse I needed: I went all in, and ordered the top tier, 4k touchscreen MX150 version.

 

An unfortunate series of events

 

The idea was to use the Blade Stealth as a portable work laptop, as a light gaming machine for older titles like Starcraft 2, and to dock it with a Razer Core for proper gaming at home. "Work Faster. Game More"... literally the Stealth's USP, right? Perfect. So I ordered my unit, followed it obsessively across the world via the DHL tracking site, and put it to use as soon as it arrived: data analysis and design work in coffee shops, and an assortment of Blizzard games when I was at home.

 

But you know what? Linus was right. The keyboard is infuriating - I've hit the up arrow key instead of the shift key at least 5 times just writing this. The 4k screen doesn't make any sense for a 13" laptop - in real life I can barely see the difference, and the GPU is too weak to actually run anything at 4k. Light gaming does struggle at anything other than 1080p and medium settings. The battery life is dreadful, at barely 2.5 hours on low power settings. The trackpad is a bit... shmeh. And so on.

 

And then there's the unexpected extras! The speakers make this weird crackling noise when the fans are running at half speed or lower. You have to disable hardware acceleration in Excel or it's totally unusable, as the GPU struggles to render a simple spreadsheet (you can literally hear its pain, as it has really loud coil whine or something going on). The screen will occasionally lose its colour calibration and flicker into a weird sepia. It sometimes ignores my power settings, like what to do when the lid closes. It picks up fingerprints like you wouldn't believe... etc. The 'single zone' Chroma RGB is proper disappointing, too. No per-key lighting effects for me.

 

Well... at least my credit card will be relieved

 

Long story short, I really, really, really wanted to love this thing. And it's not like it's unusable - Windows Hello is really cool, and I do like the 'slab of metal' design aesthetic.  But when I'm spending £1560 on a laptop, I sort of want to be 100% satisfied and in love with it... not trying to think of ways to be less disappointed. And it could all have been avoided... if I'd just listened to Linus .

 

So that's it! A cautionary tale for anyone else who is tempted to ignore the reviews. Luckily, Razer has quite a forgiving returns policy, and the reviews for the Blade 15" and Blade Pro are much more positive... I feel an exchange coming on.

 

Hope someone finds this helpful!

-Daniel.

[Streetguru]

5 minutes ago, dldwoods11 said:

 

Ya, basically every laptop that isn't a T420 or X220 Thinkpad Sucks

[5x5]

You got a defective screen, broken speakers and horrid coil whine. That's pretty normal on Razer laptops. The Blade 15 and Pro also have tons of issues from overheating, to battery swelling, to melting power adapters to random hardware failure for no reason.

 

Want our advice, don't by Razer again unless you want yet another defectiv.laptop to return. Serioualy, you think this is bad, wait till your Blade 15 actually melts the power adapter or the battery swells so badly it rips apart the keyboard case. Just, buy anything else. Literally anything. A Chromebook is a better laptop than the Blade series.

[5x5]

@GeneXiS_X have a read btw

[dldwoods11]

4 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

You got a defective screen, broken speakers and horrid coil whine. That's pretty normal on Razer laptops. The Blade 15 and Pro also have tons of issues from overheating, to battery swelling, to melting power adapters to random hardware failure for no reason.

 

Want our advice, don't by Razer again unless you want yet another defectiv.laptop to return. Serioualy, you think this is bad, wait till your Blade 15 actually melts the power adapter or the battery swells so badly it rips apart the keyboard case. Just, buy anything else. Literally anything. A Chromebook is a better laptop than the Blade series.

Damn seriously? Thanks for the heads up on melted power adapters, I hadn't heard that! I always thought Razer was meant to be a quality brand but this is my first actual Razer product and it's pretty poor. Even stupid things, like the printing of the serial number on the back is all jagged, like how text looks with cheap paper and a bad laser printer.

 

I was thinking like an XPS15 or something as an alternate, or otherwise shifting to a lower price bracket as I've had pretty decent experiences with Acer laptops and ThinkPads in the past.

[5x5]

15 minutes ago, dldwoods11 said:

Damn seriously? Thanks for the heads up on melted power adapters, I hadn't heard that! I always thought Razer was meant to be a quality brand but this is my first actual Razer product and it's pretty poor. Even stupid things, like the printing of the serial number on the back is all jagged, like how text looks with cheap paper and a bad laser printer.

 

I was thinking like an XPS15 or something as an alternate, or otherwise shifting to a lower price bracket as I've had pretty decent experiences with Acer laptops and ThinkPads in the past.

Don't feel bad. Many people fall for it. In reality, Razer has some of the worst quality laptops on the market. I wish I were joking but they have very high failure rates, poor reliability and almost always die after a year or so of use. The only good quality laptop Razer have ever put out is the Blade Pro 2017 4K. That one feels like a happy accident, though, when looking at the awful track record. I mean, at l at their modern ones don't have melting BIOS chips like the 2013-2015 or broken power delivery like the 2014-2016 models. Still, the current Blades are very poor and pale in comparison to even entry level 800$ laptops. Something like the Lenovo Legion Y540 is MUCH better quality.

 

As for what to get, the XPS 15 is a rather poor option as well with it having its fair share of heat and latency issues.

 

I'd probably suggest a ThinkPad X1 Extreme. It's a bit warm at stock but that's cause of the quiet profile. As soon as you apply an undervolt via XTU you get a quiet, powerful, cool and extremely reliable laptop.

 

[r2724r16]

34 minutes ago, dldwoods11 said:

I was thinking like an XPS15 or something as an alternate, or otherwise shifting to a lower price bracket as I've had pretty decent experiences with Acer laptops and ThinkPads in the past.

I would avoid modern ThinkPads (the older models are fine). I recently bought two ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 laptops (these are considered business laptops) and one of them had a defective keyboard which is really disappointing considering the intended market.

 

Eventually, I returned both ThinkPads and got two MacBooks.

[definingtime]

I really like mine actually.  I think it's the best laptop on the market.  Just a lil high priced....  The shift key was annoying at first but I've adapted and mostly use left shift anyway except for >?< ": which I just executed perfectly.. lol because like I said, Iv'e adapted.   And, I know Linus hates on 4K and small screens; but, I think it is the most beautiful thing in the world; like you can't make out a pixel, it looks so good.  I understand, it's kind of overkill; but, I'm not complaining, as soon as I opened this thing the first time, I was like wow that looks as good as my Note 9. 

 

Noooooowww; I'm just wondering if I should return it while I'm still in the window and get the GTX 1650 version.  Problem is: it's 2K and I got this one on sale for 1399... 600 more.. It's a lot faster but that's a lot of money you can get a 9900k for that lol

[definingtime]

Also, idk what 5x5 is talking about this build quality is waaay better than any windows laptop i've got my hands on including the xps 13 and inspiron.......  (which are 2nd best imo)

 

I know you're likely going to discount my comment since I own it and am defending my purchase.  But, seriously, It;s really nice.  I've gone to Best Buy, Microsoft store and apple and touched numerous laptops before buying and even bought and returned 2.  The only brand that competes with (and beats) razer is apple.... 

[Akira Shimazu]

never game on thin chassis. 4K panel isn't great for 13inch display. and the market for Stealth is as an ultrabook not gaming tbh. what they advertised its gaming on 1080p model. battery sucks because you got the 4k panel

[5x5]

9 hours ago, r2724r16 said:

I would avoid modern ThinkPads (the older models are fine). I recently bought two ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 laptops (these are considered business laptops) and one of them had a defective keyboard which is really disappointing considering the intended market.

 

Eventually, I returned both ThinkPads and got two MacBooks.

I've handled many ThinkPads, EliteBooks and Latitudes. The ratio of defective ones is extremely low. You probably got extremely unlucky since the chances of getting a defective business laptop are very very low.

[5x5]

4 hours ago, definingtime said:

Also, idk what 5x5 is talking about this build quality is waaay better than any windows laptop i've got my hands on including the xps 13 and inspiron.......  (which are 2nd best imo)

 

I know you're likely going to discount my comment since I own it and am defending my purchase.  But, seriously, It;s really nice.  I've gone to Best Buy, Microsoft store and apple and touched numerous laptops before buying and even bought and returned 2.  The only brand that competes with (and beats) razer is apple.... 

I'm talking about the glaring design flaws and shortcomings based on agregate data and close inspection of the PCB. When I say build quality I do not mean the chassis. That is utterly irrelevant. I mean the internal quality of the components. Both razer and apple use extremely cheap capacitors, overload the power delivery, place heat sensitive components in proximity to the hottest parts, the cooling solution, and insulate the battery from any airflow causing it to get hot under load. The power brick of the 15 and 17 gets so hot under load that in any warm room or on any carpet it actively starts damaging itself. That's because Razer purposefully made it too small so that it looks "good" and sacrifices reliability by doing so. It's the same situation with the battery. Razer is making the same design decisions as Apple. Make it look good and work for a few month so media can praise it then capitalise on people blindly buying it.

 

I know you like yours but that won't change the fact that it's designed to not last and I can assure you, it will be dead in a years time. You don't have to believe me, you can wait and see bit the ludicrous amounts of people sharing stories of frequent failures with Razers laptops is concerning.

[5x5]

4 hours ago, definingtime said:

I really like mine actually.  I think it's the best laptop on the market.  Just a lil high priced....  The shift key was annoying at first but I've adapted and mostly use left shift anyway except for >?< ": which I just executed perfectly.. lol because like I said, Iv'e adapted.   And, I know Linus hates on 4K and small screens; but, I think it is the most beautiful thing in the world; like you can't make out a pixel, it looks so good.  I understand, it's kind of overkill; but, I'm not complaining, as soon as I opened this thing the first time, I was like wow that looks as good as my Note 9. 

 

Noooooowww; I'm just wondering if I should return it while I'm still in the window and get the GTX 1650 version.  Problem is: it's 2K and I got this one on sale for 1399... 600 more.. It's a lot faster but that's a lot of money you can get a 9900k for that lol

Read above, it was designed to look good and fool people. It is the single worst quality ultrabook on the market and I can state that with full confidence. Go watch PBHenry and Rossmann for further analyses

[dldwoods11]

5 hours ago, definingtime said:

Also, idk what 5x5 is talking about this build quality is waaay better than any windows laptop i've got my hands on including the xps 13 and inspiron.......  (which are 2nd best imo)

 

I know you're likely going to discount my comment since I own it and am defending my purchase.  But, seriously, It;s really nice.  I've gone to Best Buy, Microsoft store andapple and touched numerous laptops before buying and even bought and returned 2.  The only brand that competes with (and beats) razer is apple.... 

That's cool man, I'm glad the Blade Stealth worked out for someone - I still like the design in principle! Mine just doesn't seem to be capable of doing any of the things I thought it was built to do (and I think 5x5 is prob right that mine is all kinds of defective).

 

Ironically the reason I bought it is to retire my MacBook, which I used to love until they made macOS so incredibly irritating haha . My Stealth is definitely going back to Razer, and I'm going to try out a few more high end laptops (possibly still including the Blade 15 because I'm a glutton for punishment)... but at this point I'm wondering if it's a better idea to just buy a much cheaper work-only laptop, and build a gaming desktop instead. Never thought it would be this difficult to find the right balance, I have to say!

[r2724r16]

9 hours ago, definingtime said:

The shift key was annoying at first

You can switch the SHIFT and FN key in the BIOS on ThinkPads.

[definingtime]

13 hours ago, 5x5 said:

Read above, it was designed to look good and fool people. It is the single worst quality ultrabook on the market and I can state that with full confidence. Go watch PBHenry and Rossmann for further analyses

LOL..  Best build quality, best track-pad, best gpu; yet, worst on the market.  Idk what I'm missing.. 

[5x5]

3 minutes ago, definingtime said:

LOL..  Best build quality, best track-pad, best gpu; yet, worst on the market.  Idk what I'm missing.. 

Look at the recent WAN show. The best trackpad of Linus' cherry picked review unit is defective and his ports are also breaking. Yeah, great build quality. Sure. Nice joke. Their internal Blades had a 40% failure rate and the people at LMG have almost entirely stopped using Razer laptops. Yep, great build quality. Sure. Please read up on what makes up a laptop PCB and what constitutes bad and good design before you start declaring a laughably bad device as the best.

[definingtime]

13 hours ago, 5x5 said:

I'm talking about the glaring design flaws and shortcomings based on agregate data and close inspection of the PCB. When I say build quality I do not mean the chassis. That is utterly irrelevant. I mean the internal quality of the components. Both razer and apple use extremely cheap capacitors, overload the power delivery, place heat sensitive components in proximity to the hottest parts, the cooling solution, and insulate the battery from any airflow causing it to get hot under load. The power brick of the 15 and 17 gets so hot under load that in any warm room or on any carpet it actively starts damaging itself. That's because Razer purposefully made it too small so that it looks "good" and sacrifices reliability by doing so. It's the same situation with the battery. Razer is making the same design decisions as Apple. Make it look good and work for a few month so media can praise it then capitalise on people blindly buying it.

 

I know you like yours but that won't change the fact that it's designed to not last and I can assure you, it will be dead in a years time. You don't have to believe me, you can wait and see bit the ludicrous amounts of people sharing stories of frequent failures with Razers laptops is concerning.

weird.. my macbook pro I had before this lasted 5 years.  It was working great when I sold it for 450.  I guess I hope you're right that they're similar to Apple.  And, I think you have it completely backwards about what actually matters.  Chassis design is the most important part of a laptop.  Further, I highly doubt the internal components are as poor as you're making them out to be; but, I don't know much about it, other than that mine works perfectly.  I assume they source the boards from another company who specializes in making them and has experience making thousands and thousands of them for razer and others.  I would assume the PCB, capacitor and whatever else manufacturing processes are so refined at this point that even cheap parts are reliable.  Similar to cheap lawnmower engines, the cheapest ones are fine and will start, run and take abuse for years.

 

I would not buy a laptop that doesn't have a small, light and rigid design.  That's the whole reason I have it...?

[5x5]

1 minute ago, definingtime said:

weird.. my macbook pro I had before this lasted 5 years.  It was working great when I sold it for 450.  I guess I hope you're right that they're similar to Apple.  And, I think you have it completely backwards about what actually matters.  Chassis design is the most important part of a laptop.  Further, I highly doubt the internal components are as poor as you're making them out to be; but, I don't know much about it, other than that mine works perfectly.  I assume they source the boards from another company who specializes in making them and has experience making thousands and thousands of them for razer and others.  I would assume the PCB, capacitor and whatever else manufacturing processes are so refined at this point that even cheap parts are reliable.  Similar to cheap lawnmower engines, the cheapest ones are fine and will start, run and take abuse for years.

 

I would not buy a laptop that doesn't have a small, light and rigid design.  That's the whole reason I have it...?

Well, you just added a bunch of wrong information since you obviously.wpmt bother to do research, I'll spare you some time. Razer used to contract Gigabyte as a supplier bit Gigabyte only handled assembly. Everything from design to component selection is done internall at Razer. I'd you disassemble yours, you'll find lots of cheap Chinese caps and overloaded phases. You will NOT find a high quality Rubicon or Nippon Chemicon capacitor.on a Razer device. O can guarantee.that. you'll also find that the battery had a thermal bubble due to bad design causing it to reach dangerous temperatures. The BIOS chip drama is fixed, thankfully, in the 2017-2019 models so that isn't gonna get listed. But the exposed cabling and loose soldering is. Clearly, Gigabyte or whoever is the current OEM isn't putting any effort into making sure the thing doesn't fall apart. You also, as seen by Linus today, have shddy trackpad sourced from god-knows where considering the amount of failed ones people are posting about. Lastly, Razer posted a 50 million net loss. Tell me, of they were making such good quality products, why are they losing millions due to unhappy customers and have the highest return rates in most etailers?

[5x5]

Also compare a MacBook cooling solution to the Blades. The Mac's actively cool the battery with the side intakes and that's for a very good reason. You do NOT want explosive Liyhiun batteries running hot. There is a very valid reason why Apple recall batteries at the first sign of smoke like with the recent recall for the 2015 MBPs.

[5x5]

I believe it was, funnily enough, someone in the industry who said "there isn't that much to making a metal box. It's what's inside that matters". This is the exact point I am making. What separates a good MacBook clone like the Mi Notebook Pro from a bad one like the Blades is how much work went into making it reliable and durable.

[definingtime]

Well, maybe your right... you seem to know more about the internal components than me.  But, all I know is:

• I like the specs (i7, mx 150, 4k touch [as I said, I know the 4k is overkill but the screen looks great], 16gb)
• I like the look and feel
• The trackpad is the best I've seen on a windows laptop (feels like my macs)
• I like the keyboard
• My experience has been great, no noises, great battery life etc..
• Literally not another windows laptop on the market I would want (Matebook... maybe).  The thinkpad you mentioned looks atrocious and lenovo's website and pricing scheme is garbage (as is dells, but not as bad)
• I got a deal 1399

We'll just have to see if it breaks in a year or starts giving me problems...  But for now it's working great.  Now I'm just wondering if I should return it and get the new one with10th gen i7 and 1650..

 

[5x5]

If I were you I'd return it for an MSI PS42. That model also comes with a metal chassis and 1650 but very good board and electrical deaign

[5x5]

Also,.in case you are still not convinced about the Blades internals, ask @GeneXiS_X. He's the de facto laptop authority on the forum