With its propensity for mixing high-value components with well-judged firepower, PC builder Chillblast has garnered many an award over the past few years. The Fusion Ranger is another tidy gaming PC package that trawls the market for the meanest components available. Perhaps the headline act is the Maximus VII Ranger motherboard, an assured member of Asus' premium Republic of Gamers range, and a proud recipient of Intel's brand-new Z97 chipset. See what's the best gaming PC?
CHILLBLAST FUSION RANGER: SPECIFICATIONS
Slotting into place on the mainboard is an Intel Core i5-4670K processor. Generally timed at 3.4 GHz, this has been pushed up to 4.2 GHz here. It's perhaps not quite as high-end as those labelled Core i7, and only processes four rather than eight threads. But the PCMark 7 score of 6852 points shows this to be fast PC.
Chillblast has teamed the CPU with some strong sub-components. The 16 GB of Corsair 1600 MHz memory is to be expected for a gaming system, while the storage options comprise the familiar 2 TB Seagate Barracuda, and a lightning-fast 120 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD. A 24x Samsung DVD±RW tops off the battery of drives.
The graphics card is almost as eye-popping as it gets, with a PowerColor rendition of the AMD Radeon R9 290 OC driving this PC on to some emphatic game framerates.
It shattered the 300 fps mark in Sniper Elite V2, scoring an average of 321 fps at the lowest 1280 x 720 settings, and 164 fps at Medium quality. Even in Ultra quality and 1920 x 1080 resolution, it still managed to return 42 fps.
The results from Alien vs Predator were more emphatic, with the 173.2 fps at 1280 x 720 a top-grade score. Even at 1920 x 1080, it achieved a formidable 97 fps. There are faster gaming PCs, but the Fusion Ranger is still quite the showstopper. (See also: the 15 best laptops: the best laptops you can buy in 2014.)
The Corsair Graphite 230T is far from the most attractive case we've seen, and the crimson glow emanating from within does lend it a suitably demonic air. The panels slide forwards rather than backwards, and getting underneath the lid isn't quite as straightforward as it might be.
Once you're in, though, it's an impressive product. It's always going to be hard to leave room in the case when there are so many substantial components jockeying for position.
The cables from the Corsair H60 CPU cooler were a touch unruly, but realistically, there's little that can be done about that without compromising on the cooling. There's plenty of room around the memory chips, and only two of the slots are taken up. Indeed, all of the components – even the sizeable graphics card - are situated in plenty of space. And because the front panel of the case is a grid rather than a solid slab, air is allowed to move in and out with freedom. In short, the 230T works brilliantly as a means of keeping these heavyweight components cool.
The 750 watt Corsair PSU is another tidy inclusion, and keeps the PC well supplied with power. This PC certainly does demand plenty of power. We measured 67 watt while the PC is sat idle, and when subjected to benchmark tests it gobbled as much as 386 watt.
No keyboard or mouse are supplied with the PC as standard, although Chillblast has some great gaming peripherals available should you want to add something suitably suitable. A top-flight flat-panel would also be a good addition since no screen is supplied either.
Chillblast's usual two-year collect-and-return warranty is included. The company continues to go from strength to strength, so its continued existence must be one of the safer bets amongst PC builders. (See also: best laptops for games.)
This isn't perhaps Chillblast's most spine-tingling PC. Neither is it amazingly cheap. But then, you are getting a monstrous graphics card, a new chipset, and a host of highly-impressive components for the money. For those searching for good performance combined with ample cooling, this is another enticing proposition from Chillblast.
DINO PC DARK SPARK GTX 960 DESKTOP GAMING PC REVIEW
This mid-range gaming PC provides everything you need for performance computing out of the box. Read our Dino PC Dark Spark GTX 960PC review. Also see: Best gaming PCs 2015.
The Dark Spark GTX 960 from Dino PC is a complete PC package, bundled with all the peripherals you will need for an exciting gaming experience.
Based on Intel’s quad-core Core i5-4960K, overclocked from the standard 3.5GHz to an ambitious 4.6GHz, the Dark Spark GTX 960 achieves the fastest processor top speed in our mid-priced PC group test.
To keep CPU temperatures in check, Dino PC and selected a Be Quiet Pure Rock BK009 processor cooler, which features a quiet nine-blade 120mm fan and six heat pipes. Under full load, the processor reached 85 degrees Celsius which is one of the hotter results, but still within acceptable limits.
Graphics power comes from a Palit-branded Nvidia GeForce GTX960 with 2GB of RAM. This recently introduced card is proving very popular among mid-priced gaming PCs and turns in some good results at a reasonable price. Our gaming tests don’t benefit much from the boosted CPU performance, but more processor-intensive games such as Dragon Age Inquisition stand to see increased frame rates. Also see: Best gaming laptops 2015.
Storage comes in the form of two drives: A 120GB Samsung 850 EVO for fast booting and quick load times and separate 1TB hard drive for increased storage. A 120GB drive is enough to hold a Windows installation, but any sizeable game collection is likely to be forced onto the slower hard drive. We would recommend going for a larger SSD if your budget allows.
The system also comes with 8GB of RAM which is adequate, and very easily upgradable to 16GB later if you wish.
At the centre of the system is a Gigabyte Z97X-gaming 3 motherboard, which uses Intel’s Z79-Express chipset rather than the cheaper H81-Express chipset found in many other gaming PCs which, by contrast, offers fewer features and only unofficial overclocking. This particular model also includes enhanced quality audio and a built in amplifier for rear surround speakers and supports multi-card graphics setups from both AMD and Nvidia, allowing flexible upgrade options.
The Corsair VS power supply is only rated at 450W, but this proved adequate as, in our stress tests, we measured a maximum power draw of 310W. It’s worth keeping this limit in mind if you’re intending to add extra graphics cards or multiple hard drives, however. See all PC reviews.
Dino PC, like many other vendors, has chosen NZXT’s new Source 340 system case. The minimalist design of the Source 340 has no external drive bays, and presents an entirely blank front panel, while the side window obscures most of the cabling at the bottom, leaving a clean view of the more visually interesting components above.
The Dark Spark GTX 960 comes with some of the most impressive gaming peripherals, including a Corsair Raptor HS30 gaming headset and the Corsair Raptor K30 keyboard which features adjustable backlighting and programmable keys. This is matched to a Corsair Raptor M30 high-dpi gaming mouse which comes with a Raptor gaming mousepad.
A 24in Iiyama Prolite GE2488HS-B1 monitor is also included. Its TN panel is built for speed rather than colour accuracy, but it’s ideal for fast-paced gaming thanks to its 1ms response time and this display is aimed specifically at gamers.
Bear in mind that the three-year warranty covers parts for only the first two years, and none is on-site. The third year covers labour costs only, meaning you'd be better off buying and fitting defective parts yourself, or finding a local repair centre. The system will have to be returned to Dino PC should there be any hardware problems: carriage is free only for the first six months, after which you have to pay for shipping both ways. This is the only real weak point of the Dark Spark.
If you’re willing to sacrifice the peripherals, the CPU speed and downgrade to an H81 motherboard then Cyperpower’s Infinity Achilles Pro GT will offer you faster bottom-line frame rates on many games depending on the kinds of games you play.
The DinoPC Dark Spark GTX 960 is an excellent, well-rounded gaming PC with all the peripherals you’ll need to start playing. It also features the fastest overclock in our group test. It’s also available as a base unit only for £830. If you can live with the effective two-year, return-to-base warranty, it's a great deal.
An ordinary, pack-in Dell or HP mouse is probably good enough to get you through the workday. But if you spend your nights and weekends gaming on yourPC, you probably want more than two buttons and a scrollwheel. A good gaming mouse is practically an extension of the body--and the Mad Catz Cyborg RAT 7 Albino lets you tweak and interchange different parts to make it a perfect fit.
Mad Catz used to be the game-controller maker you turned to when you needed a spare console controller or memory card, and you didn't want to pay full price for the official Nintendo/Sony/Sega-branded accessory. The company changed its reputation for cheap, subpar gaming gear a few years ago with the MadCatz FightStick Tournament Edition, a high-quality (and high-priced) arcade stick for fighting-game enthusiasts. Now Mad Catz is making a splash in the PC-peripherals business with the Cyborg RAT 7 gaming mouse, which is physically customizable in ways I've never seen before.
The first thing you'll notice is that it resembles a thrown-together collection of plastic and metal plates that vaguely form the shape of a computer mouse. It's a radical departure from competing mice such as the SteelSeries Sensei, which looks as if it were cut from a single block of steel in comparison. Aesthetically, this mouse isn't my cup of tea, but that's more my personal preference than anything else--PCWorld desktops editor Nate Ralph is convinced it looks like The Future.
Don't be fooled by the future-junkyard appearance, however: The mouse is actually quite comfortable to use. In fact, it's comfortable because it consists of several discrete parts that you can swap in and out according to your preference. Everyone has a slightly different way of holding a mouse (check out our "How to Choose a Gaming Mouse" video to learn more). Rather than try to create a mouse that would be perfect for everyone out of the box, Mad Catz designed the Cyborg RAT 7 so that you can shape it to your liking.
Built into the mouse itself is an Allen wrench that you can pop out and use to make adjustments to the input device's physical shape. You can adjust the length of the thumb rest, add and remove weights from an internal compartment, and--most important--swap out the stock palm rest and pinkie rest for your preferred versions.
The palm rest and pinkie rest each have three different options. The palm rest comes in a low-profile smooth version, a low-profile version with a textured rubber layer for additional grip, and a high-profile smooth piece that extends about a half-inch higher than the low-profile flavors and feels similar to an Intellimouse (or the SteelSeries Sensei) in shape. The pinkie rest has a textured-rubber version, a smooth plastic version, and an extended "wing" version that lets you rest your little finger on it instead of keeping your pinkie on the side of the mouse or letting it hang on your mouse pad (thus causing more drag).
After trying all the combinations, I decided to stick with the grip-style pinkie rest and the smooth low-profile palm rest. Since the palm rest sits on an adjustable rail, you can make it shorter or longer as well; I have big hands, so I found it most comfortable when it was extended slightly. All in all, I liked being able to tweak the mouse to the exact shape and size that I preferred. This feature alone makes the Cyborg RAT 7 a particularly safe buy if you're choosing a gift for a gamer, or if you're buying a mouse online without having tried it out in person yourself. It isn't flawless--the left- and right-click buttons seem a little too far from each other, and they aren't tweakable--but the customizable design is neat nonetheless.
In total, the mouse has five programmable buttons, plus a vertical scrollwheel and a rather unusual horizontal thumb-scroll stick. A mode switch next to the left-click button lets you instantly toggle among three different configurations. A mouse-sensitivity switch below the scrollwheel allows you to select from four different DPI settings. And a Precision Aim button by the thumb rest will change the mouse to a different DPI while you're holding it down (by default, this button lowers the mouse sensitivity by half, which is useful if, say, you're zoomed in with a sniper rifle and you don't want the mouse control to be as jumpy).
The included configuration software is full featured and easy to use. You'll be spending most of your time tweaking the mouse sensitivity in the Settings menu, where you can adjust the four different DPI presets, the separate X/Y-axis sensitivity, and the Precision Aim sensitivity. You can also record mouse and keyboard combinations, though you won't be able to record a full-on macro with timing or mouse gestures. The software isn't nearly as in-depth or configurable as the Sensei's is--but unless you know exactly how your game could change if you tweaked the mouse lift, path correction, mouse acceleration, or other advanced features, that isn't necessarily a critical omission. You can't configure the driver software to switch to application-specific profiles, unfortunately, so if you plan to use the mouse to its full potential, you have to keep the app open and manually switch from profile to profile yourself.
A note for online role-playing game enthusiasts: Mad Catz is releasing a version of the mouse designed for MMO players in the next month or so. The Cyborg RAT 7 MMO Edition will replace the Precision Aim button with a five-way thumb switch that gives you even more programmable inputs, and it ships with a World of Warcraft driver add-on that lets you configure the mouse in-game via an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.
The Mad Catz Cyborg RAT 7 Albino is a solid gaming mouse even before you consider its physical tweakability. The fact that you can adjust its weight, size, and key contact surfaces, however, is what pushes it from good to great. The $100 price isn't cheap, but if you're serious enough about games to shell out that much for a mouse, this model is certainly worth a look.
OUR VERDICT
The MadCatz Cyborg RAT 7 Albino is a full-featured, physically tweakable gaming mouse that you can alter to your exact preference.
En plus de la PS4 Slim, Sony a dévoilé la PlayStation 4 Pro : une PS4 beaucoup plus puissante taillée pour l'Ultra HD et la réalité virtuelle. _________________________________________________________________________________ Rien ne ressemble plus à une PS4 qu'une PS4 Pro : un mélange de PS4 et de PS4 Slim
Construction
Comme la PlayStation 4 Slim, la PlayStation 4 Pro troque le plastique brillant de la partie supérieure de la coque de la PS4 originale contre une coque entièrement noire mate avec un revêtement légèrement granuleux. Les possesseurs de PS3 Slim ne seront pas dépaysés. Par rapport à la PS4 Slim, la PlayStation 4 Pro gagne un étage et ses dimensions se rapprochent de celles de la PS4 originale. La PlayStation 4 Pro mesure ainsi 32,7 x 29,5 x 5,5 cm (3,3 kg) contre 30,5 x 27,5 x 5,3 cm pour la PS4 de 2013. En pratique, l'encombrement des deux consoles est quasiment identique. La PS4 Slim reste plus compacte (28,8 x 26,5 x 3,9 cm pour 2,1 kg). De gauche à droite, la PS4 Pro, la PS4 originale et la PS4 Slim
Les boutons physiques pour la mise sous tension et l'éjection
En façade, les boutons tactiles de la PS4 ont été remplacés par les boutons physiques assez éloignés pour ne pas les confondre. À gauche, on retrouve le bouton de mise sous tension et à droite le bouton d'éjection. Juste à droite de ce dernier, les deux ports USB sont légèrement renfoncés, ce qui ne facilite pas l'utilisation de clé USB un peu épaisse.
La connectique
À l'arrière, on retrouve l'ensemble de la connectique, composée du connecteur d'alimentation (format PC C13 mais à deux broches seulement), d'une sortie HDMI 2.0a, d'un port auxiliaire (pour la PlayStation Camera), d'une sortie audio numérique optique, d'un port USB 3.0 et d'un port Ethernet. En bas à droite, une petite trappe permet d'accéder au disque dur 2,5 pouces de 1 To afin de le remplacer par un modèle de plus grande capacité ou même par un SSD pour améliorer les temps de chargement. À noter qu'il est plutôt facile de passer d'une PS4 à une autre en sauvegardant le contenu du disque dur interne sur un périphérique de stockage externe.
La PlayStation 4 Pro dispose également du Bluetooth 4.0 et du Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac sur les bandes des 2,4 et 5 GHz. L'alimentation intégrée peut consommer 310 watts, contre 165 watts pour la PS4 Slim et 250 watts pour la PS4 originale.
Processeur
La grosse nouveauté de la PS4 Pro est bien évidemment son processeur beaucoup plus puissant. Sony annonce une puissance brute de 4,2 TFLOPS contre seulement 1,84 TFLOPS pour la PS4/PS4 Slim. L'APU AMD embarque toujours huit cœurs Jaguar, mais ils sont désormais cadencés à 2,1 GHz contre 1,6 GHz auparavant. L'évolution la plus notable est celle de la partie graphique qui passe de 18 Compute Units cadencées à 800 MHz à 36 Compute Units cadencées à 911 MHz, soit une puissance plus que doublée sur le papier. Les 8 Go de GDDR5 sont également plus rapides avec une bande passante de 218 Go/s contre 176 Go/s sur les autres PS4.
Démontage (crédits photo iFixit)
Ce nouveau processeur permet de profiter, en fonction des jeux, d'un nombre plus élevé d'images par seconde ou de graphismes améliorés. Nos confrères de EuroGamer ont ainsi pu mesurer une différence notable dans certains jeux : Call of Duty Modern Warfare atteint la fameuse barre des 60 images par seconde sur la PS4 Pro alors que la cadence est limitée à 48 i/s sur les autres PS4. D'autres jeux misent sur la qualité graphique en passant d'un rendu 900p à 1080p natif, voire même 2160p pour quelques exceptions. Enfin, les jeux non optimisés pour la PS4 Pro tournent exactement comme sur les autres PS4. Pour assurer une compatibilité maximale, Sony a tout simplement choisi de désactiver la moitié des unités du processeur graphique et de ramener la fréquence à 800 MHz de faire fonctionner parfaitement les jeux, sans aucun risque de bug. Pour profiter de la puissance de la PS4 Pro, les jeux doivent donc obligatoirement être mis à jour.
L'Ultra HD native pour certains jeux et le streaming
La PlayStation 4 Pro fonctionne aussi bien sur un téléviseur Full HD (1080p) que sur un téléviseur Ultra HD. Sur ce dernier, elle affiche une image Ultra HD en définition native, à savoir 3840 x 2160 px. C'est la console qui se charge de la mise à l'échelle des jeux en 1080p vers l'Ultra HD (2160p). Comme dit précédemment, les jeux non optimisés pour la PS4 Pro tournent comme sur la PS4 classique à une exception près : ils sont mis à l'échelle en Ultra HD. Certains jeux comme Days Gone, Call of Duty : Infinite Warfare et Rise of The Tomb Raider utilisent un rendu natif en Ultra HD (2160p) grâce au procédé Checkerboard qui permet d'améliorer les graphismes. Certains jeux en cours de développement, comme Horizon Zero Dawn, sont développés avec la PS4 Pro en ligne de mire et devraient exploiter au mieux les capacités de la console.
La comparaison entre les versions "graphismes améliorés" et "Résolution 4K" du jeu Rise of the Tomb Raider permet d'apprécier l'amélioration de la netteté sur un téléviseur Ultra HD. Le niveau des graphismes est alors très proche de ce que l'on trouve sur un PC, à la différence près que la PS4 Pro est limitée à 30 images par seconde là où un PC n'est limité que par la puissance de la carte graphique et le rafraîchissement de l'écran. Rise of The Tomb Raider est l'un des rares jeux à proposer 3 options : Fréquence d'images élevée, Graphismes améliorés et Résolution 4K. Le premier mode permet de jouer en 1080p à 60 images par seconde et donc de profiter d'une fluidité très appréciable qui rapproche le joueur d'une expérience PC. Le second mode n'apporte pas grand-chose au niveau du rendu , que ce soit sur un téléviseur Full HD ou Ultra HD, et il se limite à 30 i/s. Enfin, le mode 4K offre des graphismes réellement plus fins. Ce mode fonctionne sur un téléviseur Ultra HD avec la définition native, mais également avec un téléviseur Full HD. L'image est alors downscalée en 1080p, mais les éléments sont plus nets.
Du côté des contenus natifs, on peut également compter sur Netflix qui fonctionne en Ultra HD avec la compatibilité HDR. Les séries Marco Polo, Daredevil, Breaking bad ou House of cards sont disponibles en Ultra HD et certaines d'entre elles proposent le HDR (Marco Polo, Jessica Jones ou Daredevil...).
Cette puissance est également utilisée pour améliorer le rendu des jeux PS VR. Le premier à bénéficier d'un meilleur rendu est Rez Infinite. La puissance de la PS4 Pro permet au jeu de fonctionner en 1920 x 1080 px, soit la définition native du casque de réalité virtuelle PS VR, qui se limitait jusqu'alors en 1 440 x 810 px. Les jeux PS VR devraient être mis à jour pour exploiter au mieux les capacités de la PS 4 Pro.
Le point sur le HDR
Nous avons eu beaucoup de mal à faire fonctionner le mode HDR de la Sony PS4 Pro. Premièrement, nous avons dû forcer le passage de la PS4 Pro en HDCP 1.4 pour afficher une image sur le téléviseur (démarrage en laissant enfoncé le bouton d'alimentation de la PS4 Pro jusqu'à l'émission du deuxième bip) puis nous avons dû activer le mode HDMI Ultra Deep Color sur le port HDMI correspondant. Par la suite, la console détecte bien le téléviseur comme compatible HDR. Comme c'est le cas avec la Xbox One S et le lecteur Blu-ray Ultra HD Panasonic DMP-UB700, le téléviseur passe automatiquement sur le mode HDR dès qu'un jeu compatible est lancé, ce qui est le cas avecInfamous, par exemple. Nous ne sommes pas les seuls à avoir rencontré des problèmes puisque de nombreux utilisateurs se plaignent sur le forum officiel PlayStation de l'incompatibilité entre la console Sony et certains téléviseurs Ultra HD. Toutes les marques semblent d'ailleurs touchées (Sony, LG, Philips, Samsung, etc.). Espérons qu'une mise à jour de la console ou des téléviseurs permettra, à terme, de régler tous ces problèmes.
Le mode HDR apporte une meilleure dynamique dans l'image en débouchant les zones sombres et en rendant les zones claires plus détaillées sans créer de phénomène de surexposition. Cependant, le HDR est très exigeant au niveau de l'afficheur et seuls les téléviseurs haut de gamme s'en sortent bien. Pour afficher une belle image HDR, il faut obligatoirement une dalle 10 bits, un bon contraste et un système de local dimming performant ; on trouve cela sur les téléviseurs LCD bénéficiant d'un système de rétroéclairage Full LED ou sur les téléviseurs Oled.
Bruit
La PlayStation 4 Pro n'est pas un modèle de silence. Elle fait quasiment autant de bruit que la PlayStation 4 originale, qui n'est déjà pas réputée pour sa discrétion. À 10 cm, nous avons mesuré un bruit de 41,8 dB(A), contre 36 dB(A) pour la PS4 Slim et 42,6 dB(A) pour la PS4 originale. À un mètre, la différence est moindre, mais la PS4 Pro se fait toujours entendre.
Notez également que, par mesure d'équité, les consoles ont été posées sur un meuble dans notre laboratoire audio parfaitement insonorisé. Les consoles n'étaient pas placées dans la niche d'un meuble TV, ce qui peut provoquer une augmentation de la température, de la ventilation et donc des nuisances sonores. Au final, les consoles les plus discrètes restent la Xbox One, suivie de la Xbox One S et de la PS4 Slim.
Consommation
Nous avons mesuré la consommation de la PS4 Pro en veille, sur l'écran d'accueil, en lecture Blu-ray et en jeu. Comme pour le bruit, la consommation de la PS4 Pro est proche de celle de la PlayStation 4 originale. Sur l'écran d'accueil, la PS4 Pro consomme 77 W, contre 80 W pour la première PS4. En lecture Blu-ray, la différence est de 8 W en faveur de la PS4 Pro. En veille profonde, la consommation est toujours inférieure à 1 W. En revanche, en veille classique (permettant le réveil instantané), la PS4 Pro consomme 10 W, contre seulement 7 W pour la PS4 originale. Comme nous le disions plus haut, si le jeu n'est pas optimisé pour la PS4 Pro, le processeur est bridé et la consommation de la PS4 Pro se limite à 86 W, contre 125 W pour la PS4 originale. La consommation s'approche alors de celle de la PS4 Slim (80 W). En revanche, lorsque le processeur est exploité au maximum, la consommation atteint 158 W (sous Rise of The Tomb Raider, quel que soit le mode de rendu choisi).
Not your usual gaming laptop: the Blade Stealth doesn't pack a high-spec graphics card. Instead you provide your own and pop it into that Core housing that connects via USB-C. Here's our Razer Blade Stealth review.
The Razer Blade Stealth is an unusual laptop. It’s aimed at gamers and isn’t cheap, but does not include a graphics card required to make high-end games run quickly. See also: Best gaming laptops
Instead, this is a normal MacBook-style laptop if you want it to be, but the styling has a gamer flavour. However, it can also plug into a Razer Core module when you’re at home, turning it into a proper gaming PC with the sort of power most laptops can only dream of.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: PRICE
The Razer Blade Stealth is priced like one of the latest-generation ultra-stylish portable laptops, but is cheaper than most. It’s far cheaper than a MacBook Pro with OLED keyboard display, and also costs less than the HP Spectre 13 or Dell XPS 13. Not bad.
It starts at £999 (or $999) with a 128GB SSD and QHD screen. The 256GB is £1249 and the 512GB £1349.
There are also 4K versions at £1549 (512GB) and £1949 (1TB). Razer has sent us the top-end model, but a lot of the observations in this review will apply to all versions.
If you’re just after a slim laptop and already have a gaming PC, it’s rather competitive. The lead reason to buy one of these over an alternative other than price, though, is that it can hook up to a Razer Core - an external graphics card.
This is like a small desktop PC unit, but one that only houses a PCI-e graphics card. It costs £499 (£399 when bought with the laptop), and that price doesn’t even include a graphics card. So this is not a cheap option. For reference, you’d probably want to look at a £190-ish Nvidia GTX 1060 or £210 on an AMD RX480 as a good minimum spec.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: DESIGN
Most high-end portable laptops do not come in plain moody black, the idea being you want to get away from a traditional or boring-looking machine these days. As a gaming computer, it’s no wonder the Razer Blade Stealth embraces it, though.
The entire shell is black apart from the writing on the keys and the tentacle-like light-up Razer logo on the lid. To our eyes at least, it works.
The Razer Blade Stealth seems much more “stealth bomber” than plain black box, and unlike a lot of gaming laptops, you could take it out in public without looking silly. Sure, the logo on the back looks like a sticker a teenager might put on their laptop, but it’s otherwise a super-sharp machine.
It weighs 1.2kg and is 13mm thick. While not the slimmest or lightest laptop in the world, it’s not far off either. This is a great laptop to take around with you 24/7.
Its frame feels great too. The Razer Blade Stealth is all-aluminium: the lid, the underside and the keyboard surround. It’s cool to the touch and has the hard feel you only tend to get with metal.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: CONNECTIVITY
Unlike a MacBook Pro or HP Spectre 13, the Razer Blade Stealth makes it sure caters for current peripherals as well as future ones. There are two full-size USB ports, a USB-C (also used as the power socket) and a full-size HDMI, so connecting to a TV or monitor is extremely simple.
There’s no memory card slot, though, so photographers will want to get hold of a USB SD reader.
Like every laptop this thin, there’s also no optical drive. If you think Razer could have crammed one in we’d like to know how.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD
The quality of the Razer Blade Stealth’s shell continues in the keyboard and trackpad: both are beyond reproach. However, those expecting chunky keys with a lot of travel are going to be disappointed.
These are classic ultrabook slimline chiclet keys. Their action and feedback is great, but they don’t depress massively. Still, this is nothing like the click eggshell feel of a MacBook. The keys do move a millimetre or so.
The gamer sauce comes instead from the neat backlight, which cycles through all colours of the rainbow and can be set to 12 different intensity levels. Standing out next to the all-black keyboard it looks great.
You don’t just have too leave it cycling through colours like a show room model either. Using the Razer Synapse app you can set it to display a single colour, or apply whole bunch of other profiles.
Keys can light up as they’re pressed, there’s a Fire preset that mimics the tones of a bonfire and Wave, which fires a swift rainbow gradient across the keyboard. There are others too.
There are no dedicated macro keys, as there’s just no space for them, but there’s no mistaking this for anything but a gamer keyboard.
Below, the trackpad is very tightly hemmed-in and nowhere near the size of a MacBook pad, but it feels great. Just a single touch tells you this is a very nicely textured glass panel rather than a plastic one. It’s extremely smooth, to the extent it is soft to the touch. Fresh out of the box its sensitivity was a little low, but this may have something to do with our review model having a 4K screen. That’s a lot of desktop pixels to traverse.
The pad’s click feels great and is relatively quiet too. Razer has also used a very sensible button layout. Only a square in the bottom-right of the pad acts as a right-button press, making accidental taps a rarity.
You may find your hand accidentally touching the pad on occasion for the first few days, but that’s largely because there’s so little spare space here. Not much is wasted.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: SCREEN
This only applies to the keyboard part though. Look at the fat bezels around the 12.5-inch display: compared to the Dell XPS 13 the screen to size ratio isn’t all that hot. There’s a lot of empty black space around the display.
However, aside from making us wish it stretched out a bit more, this is an excellent screen. A reminder: we’re using the higher-end 4K version of the Razer Blade Stealth, but there’s also a cheaper QHD version that should still look very sharp.
Both versions sail ahead of the competition in several respects, mainly thanks to the fact they use IGZO panels rather than IPS or TN. On our test sample, contrast was excellent at up to 1350:1 (depending on brightness), making the black parts of the screen almost fade into the pure black of the surround at the sort of backlight level you’d use indoors.
This doesn’t come at the expense of brightness either. With the backlight maxed, the Razer Blade Stealth outputs a searing 405cd/m2. We’re perfectly happy for a high-end laptop to have 350cd/m2, but this one goes the extra mile.
Colour performance too is remarkable. Our colorimeter says it covers 99.9 percent of sRGB, 98.2 percent of Adobe RGB and 87.6 percent of DCI P3 colour standards. It can also render colours outside of all three, with 147.7 percent of sRGB and 101.8 percent of Adobe RGB.
The Razer Blade Stealth is the sort of laptop that makes us much less bothered about OLED models. Who needs one with LCDs like this?
Right out of the box the Razer Blade Stealth looks every bit an Adobe RGB display, meaning colours appear intensely bold. We had some trouble getting the display to revert to an sRGB calibration for a more relaxed look, so it would have been handy if Razer had baked this into its own software, though.
The 3840x2160 pixel resolution appears extremely sharp, although given the QHD model will also appear sharp and is significantly cheaper, many of you may be more comfortable with that version. Still, it’s hard not to be impressed by this 4K screen. It’s a touch display too, a feature missing from the HP Spectre 13 and Dell XPS 13.
While we haven’t used the QHD version ourselves, we do know it doesn’t quite have the amazing colour depth of the 4K one. Razer says it hits 70 per cent of Adobe RGB, though, a figure suggesting it should cover 100 percentper cent of sRGB or very close to that. We’d likely still be very happy with the lower-spec display day-to-day, much as it’s clearly less impressive than the 4K one.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: PERFORMANCE
Most Razer laptops use discrete graphics cards to get you far better gaming performance than the average laptop. However, the Razer Blade Stealth is more conventional in this respect.
It uses integrated Intel HD 620 graphics, baked into the Intel Core i7-7500U chip. This is the first laptop we’ve reviewed with a seventh-generation Kaby Lake processor though, so it’s still cutting-edge.
This is a dual-core low voltage CPU, typical of those normally used in laptops like this, which need to maintain good stamina as well as decent performance.
One of the great aspects of the Razer Blade Stealth is that all the models have this higher-end Core i7 CPU, where many £1000-or-more ultrabooks still have Core i5 CPUs.
Performance is not a huge leap ahead of Skylake’s chipsets, though. The Razer Blade Stealth scores 2044 points in PC Mark 8 (Home) and 7393 (3620 per core) in Geekbench 3, 7894 (4070 per core) in Geekbench 4.
While this is excellent for a very slim and light productivity laptop, it’s totally different to the performance of a true gaming laptop, which would use a quad-core CPU and discrete graphics card.
The Intel 620 GPU is also only marginally better than the HD 520 of last-gen laptops. In Thief, it manages 21.9fps with the resolution set to 720p and graphics set to low, dipping to a painful 6.5fps at 1080p with visual effects maxed-out. That’s only around 1fps and 0.5fps (respectively) better than the Skylake-powered Acer Aspire S13 we reviewed recently.
On its own, this is no gaming laptop. To get anything like Razer’s usual gaming cred, you need to buy the Core attachment. In case you skipped over our intro, this is a desktop-bound unit that plugs into the laptop via Thunderbolt USB-C, and houses its own graphics card. You can buy one with a Stealth for £399, although this does not include the graphics card itself. Both Nvidia and AMD cards are supported, including full-size PCI-e models.
As these laptops only have dual-core CPUs, it’s likely they’ll become a bottleneck with certaingames when paired with, for example, an Nvidia GTX 1080. However, you can still create a pretty fearsome setup with a Razer Blade Stealth. It just won’t be cheap.
We’re also slightly disappointed by the style of fan used here. There are two to each side of the Razer Blade Stealth’s underside, but their relatively small diameter means they produce quite an obvious high-pitch whine under pressure. More so than a Dell XPS 13. If you’re going to use this laptop as the brain of a home gaming setup, you might want to find a nice sound-insulating cupboard into which you can dump the thing.
For the first few hours of testing, the fans seemed to yo-yo all over the place in terms of their revs, sounding like they were preparing for take off with no justification. However, this seems to have settled down and the Razer Blade Stealth is largely near-silent with normal light use.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: BATTERY LIFE
To see how long the Razer Blade Stealth lasts with fairly light use, we set it to play a 720p video on loop until the battery died. It lasted six hours 42 minutes at 120cd/m screen brightness.
It’s not mammoth stamina, but should be enough to get your through most of a work day. And is certainly better longevity than that of a great big gaming laptop.
You will likely get better battery life from the QHD version too, thanks to the sheer number of pixels our Razer Blade Stealth has to drive in our 4K version.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH REVIEW: SOUND QUALITY
You get no prizes for guessing how the Razer Blade Stealth’s speakers work. They pipe out from the grilles to the left and right of the keyboard, getting you a very clear stereo effect and dispersal that doesn’t depend on how the laptop sits on the table/floor/your lap.
We had a chance to listen to the Stealth alongside the new MacBook Pro, the HP Spectre 13 and Microsoft Surface Book. It’s one of the loudest and beefiest-sounding of the bunch, only beaten by the MacBook, which has quite alarmingly powerful speakers for its size.
The tone of the sound is rather nice too, without the clear skews some laptops suffer form when they try to sound bassier. We could happily watch a film on the Blade Stealth without wishing we had a speaker to plug in.
RAZER BLADE STEALTH: SPECS
12.5in (3840 x 2160) 352dpi IGZO LCD glossy
2.7 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz Turbo Intel Core i7-7500U, two cores four threads
Intel HD 620
16GB RAM DDR3-1866
512GB SSD
802.11b/g/n/ac 2x2
Bluetooth 4.1
2 USB 3.0 port
1 USB-C 3.1 port
HDMI
stereo speakers
HD webcam
Digital array mic
3.5mm headset jack
UK tiled keyboard
52.6 Wh lithium-ion battery non-removable
321 x 206 x 13 mm
1.29 kg
OUR VERDICT
The Razer Blade Stealth is an accomplished little laptop that can sidle up to the flashiest ultraportable laptops without seeming like the weird gamer kid in the corner. It’s slim, it’s moody, and you can tweak its personality with the multi-colour keyboard backlight: pink on black is a strong look. Its 4K screen is stunning if you don’t mind ultra-energetic Adobe RGB-style colours and while battery stamina isn’t amazing, it roughly matches the new MacBook with OLED touch panel. It’s a shame the cost of making this a home gaming laptop with the Core attachment is quite so high, but the Razer Blade Stealth convinces as a pure and simple ultra-light style laptop too. Black is back for everyone tired of brushed aluminium and “rose gold”. We’d recommend buying the cheaper version than we’re actually reviewing unless you absolutely need loads of ultra-fast storage and a 4K display. While the Quad-HD version loses the immense colour saturation, it’ll still look sharp across 12.5 inches and at £999 is a solid deal.
