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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here, and this is the newest Razer Blade Stealth. This is
00:09running the 8th generation CPUs from Intel, Kaby Lake-R, so it's a quad-core CPU, and
00:14I did a review of the previous version of this, the, I guess the 7th generation. Fantastic
00:19device, I feel like they had updated a lot of stuff that people wanted, and this is just
00:23kind of a revision that's just a little bit better. Now, I want to clarify one thing before
00:27we go too much further into this review. A lot of people think that this device is
00:31a gaming laptop. I know most of you don't, but there's a surprising number of people
00:36that are like, hey, does this thing play games? It is not meant to be a gaming laptop. It's
00:40made by Razer, Razer makes gaming peripherals and gaming stuff, but this is not a dedicated
00:45gaming laptop. Not to say that it can't play games, like, by itself, it can't. It's running
00:49some, like, non-gaming internals, but you can plug up an external GPU if you do want
00:55to play games, which I'll explain further down the line, but just to clarify, this is
00:58not a dedicated gaming laptop. Okay, so let's talk about things that haven't changed. The
01:03build quality hasn't changed, nothing actually from the exterior has changed that much. The
01:07one biggest difference is that this model is the gunmetal gray version, so they still
01:11make the regular black one with the green Razer logo and RGB lights and stuff, but this
01:15one's gunmetal gray, and I like this one more, maybe because I've seen the black one so often,
01:20but this one's just a cleaner design to me. The logo's more subtle and everything just
01:23looks a little more muted. The one thing that is a good thing or a bad thing is that
01:27the RGBs on the keyboard that are on the regular Razer Blade Stealth are not present on the
01:33gunmetal gray version, they only light up in white. The keyboard, the trackpad, basically
01:37everything is exactly the same on the exterior. It's a good keyboard, good trackpad. They
01:42updated the trackpad in the previous version to use the Windows Precision drivers, which
01:46are just way better, and the screen options aren't changed. This one here is running a
01:493200x1800 screen IGZO panel. It's not the brightest thing ever, but it's fairly bright
01:55and it has a pretty good color gamut. It also is a touchscreen if that's your thing. If
01:59you really like the colored RGB keyboard from the black model, but you want a clean finish
02:03like this, you can always get a skin from dbrand, just cover it up, and it'll mute the
02:06logo and protect your laptop. The ports aren't changed, it's got two USB 3s, an HDMI, and
02:12then your Thunderbolt 3. Now this Thunderbolt 3 port is for power, like you can power it
02:16up through here, and it also supports four lanes of PCIe, so if you connect an external
02:20GPU to this thing, it gets full bandwidth. The one thing that's a little bit different
02:25between this one and the previous generation of Gunmetal Gray is that this one's a little
02:30bit darker. So this is the other one, the 20, like the earlier 2017 one. It's really
02:35hard to tell from this camera, but this new one is slightly darker than this one. You
02:39know what, there's also another difference. On the inside, the little Intel stickers,
02:44the 8th generation one is like a quarter of the size of the old version. Now I've seen
02:48some other 8th generation laptops that had a regular sized sticker, so I don't know why
02:53this little one exists. I don't know, this is really important, right? You guys should
02:57be aware of all the little details about this laptop. Okay, the internals have changed a
03:02little, the layout is just a little bit different from previous generations. The RAM is still
03:06soldered on, and the SSD is still removable, but they've actually used a much faster drive
03:11this year, which is nice. Now in terms of coil whine, my unit here does not have coil
03:15whine. I have seen a lot of reports of people getting Razer Blade Stealths with coil whine
03:19issues. All the review units I've ever had didn't have it, so I can't really comment
03:23on it, but this one, yet again, does not have it. Performance is excellent, this one's running
03:28the i7 and 16 gigs of RAM, and these new Kaby Lake R chips are quad-core CPUs that get really
03:33fast for short bursts. They benchmark really well. The built-in GPU is still pretty weak,
03:38you're still not going to be able to play some amazing games on it or anything. You
03:41can play some light games, but even moderately demanding games are going to make it choke.
03:44So if you want to play games, you either get something completely different, like a gaming
03:48laptop, or you're going to have to connect an external GPU to this thing. Thermals under
03:52load are fine, and same thing with fan noise, it doesn't get super loud or anything. When
03:55you connect it to an external GPU, temperatures are also good. The external GPU handles most
04:00of the graphical stuff, so the laptop stays cool. Now if this is the type of setup you
04:05want, so like a thin and light ultrabook combined with an external GPU, there's a lot
04:09of companies that do this kind of thing, but I still think the best company is Razer. They
04:14were the first people to do it, so they probably have a little bit more experience with it,
04:18but the connection is rock solid, and it just works really, really well. And I'm running
04:22the first generation core still, they have a newer version that has an updated Thunderbolt
04:263 controller, and you can connect external devices that work on a different pipeline,
04:31but I mean the performance is going to be identical to the first generation. But yes,
04:36if this is what you're looking for, I cannot recommend a better setup than these two. Now
04:41it's still not 100% efficient, there's some issues with using Thunderbolt 3 GPUs, but
04:45for the most part, they're pretty good. Now if you want to learn more about them, I've
04:48done a video that kind of details this whole process a little bit more, I'll link that
04:52below. Okay, the performance in video editing is not as good as you might expect. This is
04:57a quad-core CPU, but it's a 15-watt CPU. There are quad-core CPUs, like gaming laptops,
05:04that are 45-watt CPUs, and those are just able to maintain a higher clock speed for
05:08just longer periods of time. This can hit 4GHz for a little burst, and then it'll drop
05:12down to its base clock. And when you're video editing, that's just not ideal. So you can
05:16get stuff done if you're working with 1080p footage, or you're just not video editing
05:20very frequently, sure, it can kind of work, especially with an external GPU, but if you
05:25want something that's just more long-term, or you're working with higher-res footage,
05:29go with something like a quad-core gaming laptop. Those just do much better for edits.
05:33Okay, battery life has not changed. I'm still getting 7 hours on this thing. I know with
05:37the Kaby Lake R, it's supposed to be slightly more efficient. I'm still getting 7 hours,
05:41and I think it comes from the screen. The IGZO panel looks nice, and the colors pop,
05:46but it just uses a little more juice. It is still, like, for the most part, a full-day
05:49battery, so I'm not too worried about it. If I had to nitpick on some things, and if
05:53I, I mean, I do like this laptop a lot, but if I just had to be that guy that just hated
05:59on something, it would probably be the speakers. They're not bad. They're, like, really well-positioned,
06:04but they don't sound amazing. They sound very, like, you know, run-of-the-mill Ultrabook.
06:09There are thin and light Ultrabooks, like the MacBooks, that are just, they sound amazing,
06:14and it would be really cool if Razer could stick something like those into here, then
06:17this thing would be, like, really, really cool. But, yeah, not amazing speakers. The
06:22other thing is the backlighting on the function key. So, like, Function 2, Function 3, it
06:26also controls volume down and volume up, but in complete darkness, you can't see the secondary
06:31controls because they just don't light up, and it doesn't bother me because I rarely
06:35work in complete darkness, but for people that require that, yeah, you can't control
06:39brightness and stuff unless you know exactly which keys do what. But that's basically it.
06:44Those are some minor complaints about this really good laptop. They did a really good
06:48job of it last revision, and it's just even better now with the 8th Gen CPUs. I'm gonna
06:53talk about one last thing. It's customer support, because I talked about it in previous videos
06:56with other devices. Razer's customer support is, I would consider, pretty mediocre. They're
07:02not a laptop company, right? They were originally a peripheral company, and they got into the
07:07laptop game, and they do a good job at it, but their customer support is lacking, and
07:12they don't have stuff like next-day support. So, if you have something with your laptop,
07:16some companies like Dell and HP, they'll send a technician to your house or your work,
07:19and they'll kind of try to fix it. Razer doesn't have that. You have to send it back to them,
07:24so that's a bit of a bummer. It depends on what you want or need with your laptop support.
07:28I mean, if it's really important to you, then you might want to look elsewhere, but they
07:31make great laptops, and I think especially their Stealth line is thumbs up all around.
07:35Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See
07:39you guys next time.