Razer, once known solely for its mice and keyboards, has earned a reputation of late as one of the few companies bringing real innovation to gaming PCs. The new Razer Blade (2013) is just another in a steady stream of gaming PCs, with a new 14-inch form-factor and extra-long battery life. This isn't the first gaming laptop to try blending gaming prowess with portability, but it's definitely one of the best, maxing out all the potential afforded by today's wafer-thin, battery-efficient components to offer a gaming laptop that you can actually take with you on the go. It's our new Editors' Choice for ultraportable gaming laptops.
Design
Plenty of ultraportable laptops can be described as sleek, but few can also be called intimidating. The Blade, however, manages to pull off both descriptions at once with a slim aluminum chassis that has all the minimalist appeal of a MacBook Pro while being unapologetically gamer-oriented with a jet black finish and sporting glowing green snakes on the lid. The aluminum chassis of the Blade measures only 0.66 by 13.6 by 9.3 inches (HWD) and weighs only 4.1 pounds, making it even more portable than last year's 17-inch Razer Blade (2012), which was thicker (0.88-inch) and heavier (6.6 pounds).
The slim and portable design does require losing a couple features, most notably an optical drive. That won't be an issue for the gamer who relies on Steam or similar online game services, but it will be a problem should you want to purchase a game on disc, load up an older game, or need an optical drive to use software or enjoy movies on disc. You'll need an external USB drive for those situations. You also won't find Razer's Switchblade UI. The embedded touch screen has been omitted to reduce the size of the 14-inch model, though you can still get it in the 17-inch Razer Blade Pro.
The keyboard is rather good, with chiclet keys, glowing green backlight, and good key-travel for such a slim system. One added touch you won't find on other laptops—the keyboard has anti-ghosting, the same used in Razer's peripheral keyboards, which allows multiple keys to be pressed simultaneously—a necessity for anyone that's ever found themselves pounding out commands as fast as their fingers will type. Stereo speakers on either side of the keyboard offer very good sound for such a slim laptop, with audible (if not thumping) bass and decent treble.
The touchpad is also gamer-friendly, though most users will opt for a USB mouse. All of the standard multi-touch gestures are support, and worked without issue during our testing.The trackpad surface is extremely smooth and responsive, with the right and left mouse buttons separate—no clickpad for this laptop. The buttons offer just enough resistance to prevent unwanted button-presses, but light enough for rapid-fire clicking.
The 14-inch display looks good, but some may scratch their head over the fact that it only offers 1,600 -by-900 resolution. A conscious decision by Razer's designers, the slightly lower resolution is high enough to look crisp on the smaller laptop screen, but low enough to offer the smooth, stutter-free graphics performance that you can only get with higher frame-rates. Given a choice between resolution and frame rates, Razer went with frame-rates, allowing better gameplay on the go. It's also not an unusual choice for a 14-inch laptop—the Alienware m14x R2 also sports a 1,600-by-900 resolution.
Features
The Razer Blade may be slim, but it has the features that matter: Three USB 3.0 ports (all in Razer's distinctive bright green color), a combination stereo headset jack, and one HDMI port, complete with 7.1 surround sound output. Above the laptop display is a 1.3-Megapixel webcam, and all of your wireless connectivity needs should be taken care of by the system's Killer Wireless N 1202 networking card, which provides both 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
The Razer Blade is also outfitted with a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD), though configurations are available with 128GB and 512GB drive options ($1,799.99 and $2,299.99, respectively). The drive comes preinstalled with Windows 8 and Razer's Synapse 2.0 software, but otherwise, the drive is unencumbered with any unwanted programs. Razer covers the 14-inch Blade with a one-year warranty and free online tech support.
Performance
In processing performance tasks, the new Blade trounced last year's gaming ultraportables, with a PCMark 7 score of 5,904 points—the closest competitor was the previous Blade (2012) with 4,557 points. In Cinebench the new Blade scored 6.23 points, nearly tying the Alienware m14x R2 (6.26 points) and blowing past the rest—the Editors' Choice Maingear Pulse 11 only scored 4.20 points. This raw performance especially shone through in multimedia tests, where the new Blade completed Handbrake in 37 seconds, and Photoshop in 4 minutes flat, leading the category by a large margin.
But the most important bump in performance was seen in graphics capability, where Razer has replaced last year's mobile Nvidia GTX 660M graphics with a more powerful GeForce GTX 765M. The result was better graphics performance, with 3DMark 11 scores of 6,364 points (Entry settings) and 1,248 (Extreme settings). The real proof is in the gaming, where the Blade (2013) pumped out 26 frames per second (Alien vs. Predator) and 25 fps (Heaven) both at 1,600-by-900 resolution and high-detail settings. Dial back the detail just a bit, and you'll be playing any current game stutter-free, even on the go.
Perhaps the most significant performance improvement wasn't in gaming, however. Thanks to the dramatic efficiency gains offered by Intel's Haswell processors the Razer Blade (2013) lasted 6 hours 52 minutes in our battery rundown test, literally hours longer than any competitor equipped with the third-generation Core processors.
Conclusion
From its lightweight, portable design to its significantly improved performance, better graphics, and much longer battery life, it's clear that the Razer Blade (2013) is the laptop to buy if you want PC gaming on the go. Compared to the bulk and weight of other gaming PCs—even portable systems like the Maingear Pulse 11 and the Alienware m14x R2—the 14-inch Razer Blade (2013) is something different. It's not so drastic a change as Razer's other portable gaming PC, the Razer Edge Pro, but with such a clear improvement in performance, battery-life, and overall portability, it's our new Editors' Choice for ultraportable gaming PCs.
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