Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Razer Blade Stealth 13 Ultrabook Laptop: Intel Core i7-8565U 4-Core, Intel UHD Graphics 620, 13.3" FHD 1080p, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, CNC Aluminum, Chroma RGB Lighting, Thunderbolt 3, Black

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2019

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

Bought this '19 Blade for a lightweight general-use laptop. I was torn between the Blade, an LG Gram, and a Lenovo X1 Carbon. The '8565U and MX150 - plus my experience with other Razer products - pushed me to the Razer Blade. My initial impressions are positive. My "Graphics" version weighs in a 2lb 15oz on my postal scale, and it's a nice size. Build is solid and impressive. The Chroma backlighting is nice, but out of the box it is stuck in "rainbow" mode.

The lighting can be dimmed all the way to "off" through the keyboard, but any other changes need to be done through Synapse. If you don't have an account with Razer to use Synapse, save yourself some time and set it up ahead of time while waiting for the laptop to arrive. Synapse is already installed, so just login, update, and configure things the way you want (a 5 minute process at best, assuming you have an account set up).

So far my only complaint is the keyboard. Based on my experience with small Lenovo laptops I'm fairly sure the Lenovo would have been a big improvement over the Blade's keyboard. Spacing is ok, but it has a slightly mushy feel - not cheap or bad, just something different to get used to.

If I could nick a half-star off it would be for annoying size of the right shift key. It's a normal, small, square key that is placed immediately to the right of the "up arrow" (another normal, small, square key). My instinctive reach for that key has me hitting the "up arrow" constantly. My older 12" Lenovo solved that my dropping the arrows (in the same area as the Blade) a half row, staggering the keys a little, and including a full size shift.

Kind of a long rant about a simple shift key, but it's one thing I really didn't bother to study closely prior to buying. Had a been able to spend 10 minutes with the X1 Carbon, Blade, and Gram, I might have settled on something different. Then again I'm not displeased. All things considered I think the Blade has a little more value when considering the MX150, two Lightning 3 ports, full size USB-A ports, and dual cooling fans. The laptop's appearance and quality is what I'd expected. Fingers crossed it'll hold up as a winner.

Update: While giving the new Stealth a good workout I started noticing a buzzing coming from one of the speakers. A key trigger was watching Youtube - with it happening occasionally elsewhere. After a lot of experimentation to check for wifi interference, feedback from the AC charger, problems from the graphics card - etc - I finally resolved the problem by rolling the Realtek audio driver back to the stock generic MS High Def audio driver. Another solution was to install the Realtek audio drivers for the 2017/2018 Stealth 13. After more research I discovered this isn't a problem isolated to the Stealth or Razer products in general. Other brands using Realtek have at the problem for years. The problem shouldn't exist but I don't think I'm going to ding Razer for using their vendor's latest drivers.

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Mauro Rodriguez

This computer is awesome, I would buy this over a Mac book pro any day

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2019

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

I was on the market for a new computer, and I did not have a set budget. I was opened to any computer mac or windows. I have an IPad and have owned mac books before I am not an apple hater, but this computer just blows the competitors away!

First thing is that this computer is so small and light! I bought the razor blade 15inch model and that one was nice, but not practical for on the go.
Therefore, I downgraded to this model and I am not disappointed... The keys feel just right... kind of like the mac books but with more travel and feedback. The track pad is very responsive and works great!
the shift key on the right is annoying but after using it for like a day or 2 you start to get used to it.
the battery life is about 4-8 hours depending on what you are doing.

THIS IS NOT A GAMING COMPUTER. Many people will buy this thinking they can game on it and play on max settings, no you cannot. this is supposed to be a on the go computer. Now you can probably play some lower graphics games and get by but not games like GTA V or witcher 3 on full max settings.

I am in IT and I am also a student at a University I do light programming and run many programs that require multitasking.

I bough this computer for under $1,000. It's very expensive,but it's very well built and feels and looks premium. I do use this computer extensively. I also plug in a dell docking station to it and use 2 external monitors 1080p each.

Every day from 4am - 9 or 10pm this computer is running and not turned off so if any issue does rise I will update this post. So far I love it, specially how it looks sleek and not over the top with a bunch of different RGB lights.

For under 1K you cannot get a macbook with the same specs. Therefore I decided to buy this computer.

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A

So far so good!

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2019

Capacity: Intel UHD Graphics 620Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

Pros: Portability, design, battery, processing power. I picked this laptop up to have portable little laptop to carry to and from work and to sit on the couch and use. It's very lightweight and I absolutely love the sleek black metal design. It really blows other small laptops out of the water, design wise. It has two USB ports and two USB-C (high speed) ports, which is great. Some laptops now only have one USB port and I think that's ridiculous (you literally couldn't even use a mouse and a USB headset at the same time without a hub). It charges through either USB-C port. The screen is really vibrant and it has a very thin bezel (the black border around a screen, can sometimes be really wide). It comes with Razer Chroma, which is a program that (among other things) allows you to change the LEDs under the keyboard to any color you want, as well as set it to follow a color changing pattern.

I typically use this laptop at work and at home on the couch. Other than internet browsing and the basic stuff, my main focus is editing photos. I have Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom downloaded and this laptop handles those very well. I do not use it to play video games, because I have a desktop computer for that purpose. Although Razer is a gamer oriented brand, I don't feel like it's really that powerful enough to play a lot of new games on, and it's really small anyway. There is an external graphics booster that you can buy, but it's quite pricy and in most situations you'd just want to build a gaming desktop computer instead. I still picked this up over a cheaper laptop because of the pros above. Comparing to the Surface Laptop and other 13"ish laptops, I really feel like this one has a superior quality that's worth the money.

Con: It is very easy to hear certain components of the laptop. The fan noise is noticeable, and sometimes gets a little excessive. It definitely gets loud when I am saving a photoshop file, but I think that's understandable. There's another noise that I can hear very easily unless I have background noise (movie, music, etc) to drown it out. It's not annoying or very loud to me, but it is definitely noticeable. I'm actually not quite sure what it is, but there's a sort of disc movement type sound that's pretty much there at all times. The black exterior also picks up fingerprints like it works for the police department.

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Amazon Customer

Perfect laptop at a great price

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2019

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

My 2012 Macbook pro died so I started looking for a laptop with a great trackpad, good battery life, and enough performance to handle light to moderate gaming. There are almost no laptops in a 13 inch super light form factor with a dedicated GPU. This model was a bit overpriced when it was released, but with the recent price drop it's a fantastic value, and I've been absolutely thrilled with it so far.
Keyboard doesn't have a lot of travel but it's clicky and feels great to type on. The wonderful trackpad is about as close as you can get to Macbook quality on a Windows PC. The build quality is sturdy and feels a lot like a Macbook. The performance has been fantastic, and it's able to handle most games at medium settings and some games at full settings, and still get 60fps. I undervolted the CPU by 80mV and with that setting the unit gets 9 hours of battery life when browsing or doing simple tasks and the fans don't come on at all. I also replaced the SSD myself with a 1TB drive.
There is a bit of coil whine at heavy load but it's not that bad. One complaint is that although the unit charges quickly in general, under heavy load while gaming, the provided charger barely has enough power to charge the laptop so charging is extremely slow. The only other complaint I have is that it is a fingerprint magnet like others have said.
In summary, I was a little skeptical having never owned a Razer product before but so far this laptop has blown me away with how perfect it is. If you're looking for something thin and light with good battery life that's also powerful and can even play games well, this is probably the best choice out there.

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Amazon Customer

Overambitious gaming ultrabook that fails to deliver in almost every way

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2021

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

----------------------------------------------------------Overview---------------------------------------------------------------
Pros: good gaming graphics card, good sound card, good display, backlit keyboard, lightweight

Cons: Graphics card not usable for programming (such as machine learning), Poor battery life, key positions are not standard, only lasted a year before it started to break

---------------------------------------------------------My Qualifications to Review-----------------------------------------
I have a BS, from the University of Kentucky, and MPhil, from Cambridge University, in Computer Science and have worked as a data analyst and a firmware engineer in the past.

------------------------------------------------------------In depth-------------------------------------------------------------
Graphics card: It has a solid graphics card for gaming, but it's not useful for much else. I got the computer because I wanted a graphics card I could use for machine learning, but when I tried installing drivers I realized the graphics card isn't compatible with tensorflow or other machine learning software.

Size: It is an ultrabook size, which is impressive given the graphical capabilities.

Battery: It has a pretty poor battery life (~4 hours if using it for anything intensive).

Keyboard: The keyboard feels nice and is backlit, which are both positives. However, the position of the right shift key and the arrow keys is nonstandard and really awkward (see attached picture). A workaround I found is to remap the up arrow key to the right shift key and vice versa, but that is also awkward and causes problems anytime someone other than me is using the computer.

Operating System: Comes with Windows 10 installed. I do a lot of programming, so I tried to install Ubuntu linux (16.0 I believe)- It was exceptionally hard to install a different operating system and drivers didn't exist for the laptop's components.

Durability: The computer lasted about a year before I began noticing problems. The first thing I noticed is that the charger doesn't really work most of the time anymore. I have tested with several chargers and that doesn't seem to be the issue.

-----------------------------------------------------Verdict----------------------------------------------------------------------
1/5

-----------------------------------------------------My Opinion-----------------------------------------------------------------
Don't buy this computer. If you want an ultrabook, go with one that isn't intended for gaming, such as a Dell. If you want a gaming laptop, go with Alienware or a similar reliable brand. This computer is ambitious but fails to deliver on what it promises. The keyboard is also super annoying and I have no idea why they designed it that way. This computer is also not reliable.

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PeterC

Battery bloat

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2021

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

Light well performing latptop, can't do high end games. Nice keyboard, mouse good.....BUT, the battery life is not what it is stated. Generally can get around 5.5hrs with very light tasks (on Windows) and only around 2-2.5 on Linux (even with TLP/Powertop).
Two issues:
1) power supply. This thing will discharge whilst under heavy load. The 65W brick doesn't cut it. Had to buy a 100W USC-C brick so it wouldn't discharge and die whilst gaming.
2) Biggest issue is heat and battery bloat. It gets hot when under load. I suspect this poor heat management design has led to the more scary issue...battery swelling. Mine started swelling after about 7 months use. The trackpad mouse buttons stopped working after about 10 months. Finally pulled the battery due to the potential fire risk. Hard to find a replacement online (that's in stock and ships to where I live), so running just on power adaptor (yeah, for non-critical stuff) until it arrives.
All up it's pretty, sleek design, light weight, strong chassis, nice sound and keyboard but really poor power and heat management. Buyer beware!

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Blacktyde

Really solid ultra light

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2019

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

I've only had the laptop for a day, so keep that in mind. I got the graphics model on sale for $500 off MSRP. The main thing the big reviewers complain about is how you pay a premium for the name, well, this sale completely negated that. I literally could not find a better 13" laptop for the price. XPS13 cost several hundred more, Matebook was identical, Thinkpad X1 Carbon was $500 more. Crazy, right?

After purchase I researched a little more in depth and read up on many rampant issues that gave me pause. Loose USB C's (needed to charge the laptop), discharging while playing games, running hot, weird throttling issues, various quality issues with displays, coil whine, etc. I'm quite thankful to say mine has none of those issues (at least so far).

It did initially run a little hot, like around 85C max. Fans were cranking up high as well. So I used ThrottleStop to undervolt (-95mv for CPU/CPU cache, -50mv for iGPU). Everything is absolutely stable and I haven't seen higher than 62C max, and the fans haven't ramped up at all. Idle is upper 30's. Really quite decent for something so small. Definitely plan on undervolting.

The USB C's plug in very solidly, I purchased some little rubber plugs for them to keep lint and such out. I have not encountered discharging while gaming, technically the CPU and dedicated GPU can max out over the 65W maximum of the charger. I read somewhere that while it can charge from either USB C, the right one is better, so that is what I've done while doing anything intensive.

My complaints are very few and minor. One, the power button is where the del key normally is. I haven't accidentally hit it yet, but I can definitely see it happening. I would have preferred a dedicated button somewhere. Another oddity with the keyboard - typists will dislike the smaller right shift key, but I never use it and actually prefer the larger arrow keys, so not a problem at all for me.

I had a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo waiting for the Blade Stealth to arrive. Getting to bottom off is easy, 10 T5 torx screws. No issues swapping it out. The ram is non-upgradable, but that seems to be the new trend. Putting the cover back on, two of the screw heads went in, but stripped out. Awaiting a big variety pack of screws to replace them. I usually repaste everything, but given the really decent thermals I've been seeing undervolted, I'm going to wait and see. Looked super easy to pop the heatsink off.

I haven't encountered any weird throttling issues yet, I hit 3.8GHz on battery on all four cores and 4.1GHz while plugged in. Latest firmware with Windows 10 1903. So yeah, nothing abnormal to report there.

I know Razer markets this as a gaming laptop, but lets face it, it really isn't. AAA titles are eons out of its league. However, if you are like me and enjoy games like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, even some 5+ year old AAA titles (like Skyrim!), and maybe even have a nice desktop you can stream from when you are home but don't want to be tied down to a desk... this little guy will play those just fine. Just realize what you can and cannot expect from this laptop.

At 2.8lbs, this laptop disappears in my backpack. I'm really looking forward to having this for travel, instead of hauling my 17", 10lb behemoth of a gaming laptop around. The chassis is so rigid too, I couldn't get it to flex anywhere.

I honestly can't speak too much about battery life right now as I've been working it fairly hard getting it all set up and trying out games. I'm estimated to get around 8 hours while doing things like web browsing (like writing up this review!) or using Pycharm. Razer claims 11 hours for the graphics edition, so taking the usual manufacturer's inflation with a grain of salt, I'd say 8 hours is on par. Playing Minecraft with a Bluetooth controller dropped it down to 2.75 hours, so keep that in mind. But again, I just haven't had it long enough to say how true my observations on battery life are.

I'm very pleased with this little laptop, my fears have been dispelled and I just have some extremely minor annoyances with the keyboard. Its worth noting that unless you specifically want a 13" thin and light, you are much better off getting a 15" laptop. A 15" should be around the same price, yet will actually have a decent GPU, better thermals, etc at this price point. Some only weigh around 4lbs too, so it really isn't a huge tradeoff. The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon and MacBook are superior to this, but they also cost a LOT more than I purchased this for.

Update:
I've had it for about two weeks now. I further tinkered with undervolting and settled with -104.5mV for CPU Core and Cache, the iGPU is at -105.5mV. Running absolutely cool and stable for me. Idles around 35C, peaks around 68C. My 25C ambient temperature isn't helping.

The battery is quite decent. I can get about six hours of gaming on full clock speed, using the MX100 (light stuff: Minecraft Bedrock). Around 8 of web browsing, videos, streaming, etc. If I disable turbo, increase speed shift to 255, and keep the brightness below 50%, I can get a solid 10 hours of movie and game streaming. 12 of web browsing on Edge. Easily over 12 hours of simple programming with a PDF up as well. So yeah, so far I'm pretty happy with the battery life!

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T. Frink

4K Ultraportable Plus Casual Gaming

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2019

Verified Purchase

After a bumpy start with the first laptop having to be returned due to a hardware-based screen flickering issue (for which both Razer and Amazon were very supportive and helpful), I received this laptop, which was to replace a 2014 Razer Blade 14. I purchased the 4K model with the 512GB SSD.

The laptop is for me the ideal combination of SIZE and POWER. It doesn't hesitate to do whatever task I ask of it, including playing the latest Doom game (through Steam). I know better than to expect it to play "hardcore" games, but I knew that going in. I have used it for MS Office 365 programs and Visio. I also use it for UXWeb design (building HTML application prototypes). So there aren't any complaints about the performance factor. It gets the job done, though occasionally, there is the slightest lag between requesting a task and the system providing a visual indicator that the task has begun.

The USB-C CHARGING cable is slightly annoying in that it causing the power cord to stick out the side of the laptop and occasionally catch on stuff. To get around this I purchased a Thunderbolt compatible Right-angle USB-C 90 degree adapter.

The CHROMA keyboard back-lighting is good and configurable, though it acts on the entire keyboard with whatever customized profile you create. You CAN create your own color pattern. Note that whatever you customize is only in operation while you are logged in; once you lock the laptop, it resorts to the default ROYGBiV color cycling.

The KEYBOARD feel is nice and the key spacing is comfortable. That said, understand that I was already acclimated to typing on smaller keyboards, having used ones considerably smaller than this one. The keyboard is not silent, but I like the sound it makes. If you plan on typing next to a sleeping partner, however, keep in mind that they'll be able to hear you typing. That said, the keyboard has a couple of minor quirks to be aware of, but that I have been able to adapt to:
(1) The placement of the right shift key is half-sized, with what would otherwise be the left half of the shift key replaced by a full-sized UP arrow. That takes some getting used to if you're a touch typist like me.
(2) Usually the characters on keys have the upper case symbols above the lower case on the keys. For example on the number 2 key, the at symbol ("@") would be shown ABOVE the "2". For some reason, Razer reversed that on this keyboard. That'll confuse anyone who is NOT a touch typist.
(3) The Power key is NOT separated from the rest of the keyboard, instead appearing at the right end of the row of function keys. That said, it is at least intelligent requiring more than a momentary press to be recognized. I've missed the DEL (delete) key a couple times and hit the power key without the system taking any action.

The TRACK-PAD is the best I've ever used and does a great job with palm recognition (properly ignoring my palm when I get lazy and allow my wrist to momentarily touch the pad. The pad is HUGE, easily consuming a full third of the laptop width. The track-pad is very sensitive to the touch, occasionally detecting my touch just BEFORE I touch the track-pad. It successfully avoids my pet peeve of previous pads making my swipe twice to move from one side of the screen to the other - this despite the 4K resolution. I have not had to adjust the settings in any way (other than to reverse the scrolling direction) and have not have any issues with the "buttons" embedded in the bottom corners of the track-pad.

The DISPLAY is..well...AMAZING. Flawless color reproduction for my purposes that came perfectly calibrated out of the box.

Ports are obviously limited to 2 USB-C ports, only the right one of which is a 4-lane Thunderbolt port and 2 USB-A 3.0 ports. This is fairly common on ultra-portable laptops, though, and I got around that by buying a USB-C hub (with pass-through power to charge the laptop) and purchased a Bluetooth mouse (that doesn't require a dongle/transmitter).

One funny/odd note: The box that the laptop came in had large "HDMI" lettering on the side of the box. Odd, because the laptop does NOT have an HDMI port (causing me to have to buy a USB-C to HDMI adapter capable of 60fps at 4K). Razer should have been more careful with the labeling on the box.

I am very pleased with my purchase and would continue purchasing Razer products in the future.

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Y. Wang

THROTTLE HELL + LOTS OF HIDDEN ISSUES!!!

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2019

Verified Purchase

I REALLY wanted to like this laptop because it was marketed as one o the most powerful 13 inch laptops around. In certain respects, it is true, however in my many weeks testing this laptop I've discovered certain caveats that may cast some doubt on that statement.

Build:
First off I want to say this laptop is absolutely beautiful and well constructed. The many comparisons with Macbooks are well warranted because few Windws laptops have this level of quality worksmanship. Like Macbooks, It is an true unibody design, which means it was milled from a single block of aluminum rather than have several aluminum pieces pressed and made to fit separately. The resulting rigidity is truly superior. While many screens and lids flex and wobble, the lid is sturdy and thicker than most and is very strong. The sharp corners and cuts are precise and definitely have a premium feel to it. That said, the black matte finish is EXTREMELY fingerprint and hand oil prone. I find myself constantly cleaning it off with a microfiber cloth. Overall these are small annoyances that mar the looks of a beautiful laptop.

The screen:
I got the 4k model and it is a wonderful screen. The bezels are small and unobtrusive. The glass is reflective but common in the Macbook world of reflective glass surfaces. The 4k resolution is wonderful to create crisp texts and images although the resolution is somewhat waste on a 13.3 screen. The Touchscreen is helpful but not something I normally use because the trackpad is so responsive and I despise screen smudges.

Touchpad:
The touchpad is great. It's large - but not Macbook large. It is a good size for 13.3 notebooks. The key is that it is super responsive and the feel is slick and my fingers glides across the surface quickly and without hindrance. Microsoft precision drivers allows for god gestures and unique multi-finger swipes. The only problem is that the trackpad freezes often during first system boot or resumes. It's a small thing but very annoying as it freezes a few seconds and you're frantically moving your finger around trying to find a mouse cursor that wont move. I think the problem is down to Razer Synapse.

Razer Synapse:
Speaking of Razer Synapse, the software Razer uses to control the laptops's performance, lighting, and macros, it freezes and crashes ALL THE TIME. Pretty much 7/10 times when I open my laptop after resume the Synapse would not detect my laptop. This means that my volume buttons (I have a setting where I prefer not to hold function key to change volume) and brightness all get reset because all of these keys are software controlled, not hardware. It's amazing that given how long this laptop has been out on the market and how so many people complain about it, it hasn't been fixed yet.

Keyboard:
This was often criticized by many reviewers but I have no issues with it. The keyboard is shrunken compared to normal 13 notebooks because the speakers take up space on the sides of the laptop. Most other laptops of this size use downward firing speakers which help add volume but can have flimsy performance if not on a hard surface that can reflect sound. I find the smaller keyboard means less reaching for keys and your hands stay more centered. The keyboard also has an exceedingly small left shift button which can be a problem for right-hand-shift typists but thankfully I am not one of them. The keyboard has a REALLY satisfying muted sound which I love. The travel feels just right to me and I found typing on this keyboard is a pleasure. While using this keyboard I was actually looking forward to writing emails or writing in general. Maybe this is why this review is so long and wordy.... Obviously keyboards are a very personal preference and what works or is enjoyable to me may not be the same for you.

Sound:
As mentioned above, these are quad forward-facings speakers located on the two sides of the keyboard. Most laptops these days do bottom firing for added bass but can be highly situational depending on where you sit the laptop. They're not great speakers and sound is lacking bass and punch. However they're not tinny or terrible. Sound is not very loud though. I've had cheaper laptops with better sound like the HP Envy 13. Overall the sound is adequate with no lost points, but not excellent so no additional points either.

Windows Hello Camera and Camera:
In my many years with laptops and computers I have almost never use the camera for chats or videos so it doesn't really matter much to me. However I will mention the Windows Hello IR camera for logging into Windows. I've heard about Windows Hello Cameras and they sound like a wonderful convenient feature. However in practice the camera rarely works well or quickly. If the laptop lid was open from a prior session, logging in with the camera can be done quickly since you already set up with the right angle and sitting posture. However often I find that opening the lid and trying to log in with my face was frustrating because the laptop lid was not in the right angle to find my face. It would search for a long time and fail. Unlike iPhone cameras, the viewing angle of the IR camera does not seem to be wide enough. Often I'd find myself wishing for a good old fingerprint sensor. Like the iPhone, Razer decided to do away with a perfectly good technology with an unnecessarily complicated feature.

Ports:
Ports are good. There's one headphone jack, two USB 3's, one on each side which are very welcome these days. There is also two USB-C thunderbolt compatible ports that double as charging ports. These are great as USB-C charging is the future and you can use any USB-C charger and use them on either side of the laptop giving you freedom depending on your orientation and direction of the wall socket. The only issue is that both USB-C ports are rather wobbly. Many on the forums have complained about the same thing. Some have said theirs are solid. Mine are definitely not. Some have said that theirs were so wobbly if you moved the charging cable the laptop stops charging. Luckily for me, they just jiggle but don't disconnect. However the jiggle is very loose and very worrisome for the future.

Performance:
Let's talk about performance and my biggest gripe with this laptop. As many of you may well know, this has been advertised as the the most powerful 13 inch laptop made by Razer, a company for gamers by gamers. It does this with the 25 watt version of the MX150 whereas most laptops use the watered down 10w version of the MX150. What is not often known is that the Stealth also uses a 25 watt version of the Intel i7 8565u as well. Both higher TDP CPU and GPU allow for higher clocks, higher boosts, and much better performance. TDP stands for thermal design power, and to take care of the excess heat generated by these components, Razer has used three wide heatpipes with very thick metal mounting plates and also includes two large copper mounting plates for the RAM and VRMs. All in all, these are very capable cooling hardware for a 13 notebook.

Performance is generally very good and many review sites say the same thing. However what many review sites don't say is that most of the reviews are done with the laptop plugged in. When the laptop is unplugged the picture changes significantly. The CPU can boost to 40w during Turbo and downgrade to 25w during steady loads. However on battery, the CPU is limited to a mere 15w. 15 watts is the standard for most Intel U series CPUs. Normally the behavior of U CPUs are they would boost to 20 or 25w during Turbo and then drop to 15w under sustained load. The Stealth 2019 on battery power starts at 10w during the Turbo time and then boosts to 15w under sustained load. This could be a good thing on paper but I've observed the CPU do 10w, 8w, or even 7w during Cinebench R15 runs, never reaching the 15w potential, nevermind the 25w potential while plugged in. The performance is extremely inconsistent. While I am able to get high 780's scores in Cinebench R15 there are times where I get scores as low as 300+ on battery.

Then there's gaming. When gaming on battery, the GPU stays steady at around 1600-1700mhz. However the CPU runs at 400mhz with spikes of 1800mhz. After digging around on reddit, the laptop has a HARD TEMPERATURE CAP of 60C for the CPU while unplugged. With the GPU running the 60C threshold gets hit very quickly and the CPU throttles down to the bare minimum. Games of course are unplayable at 400mhz. Even using "creators mode" (high CPU power mode) in Razer Synapse had no effect on the CPU performance. Strangely this thermal protection threshold does not exist while plugged in, the CPU is freely able to go past 60C and beyond which means that temps past 60c is not damaging to the system. Most laptops with the same or similar U CPUs are able to do 90C before meeting the REAL hardware thermal maximum threshold. Razer is simply applying this thermal limit in order to keep the laptop cool while unplugged and limit the battery usage. While I can understand the need to limit heat and battery usage, I think the 60C limit is overly-aggressive and prohibitive of performance, especially in a "high performance" laptop. At the very least Razer should allow the user to decide to choose between heat and battery life or performance. The only way I was able to circumvent this limit was by disabling BD PROCHOT (Hardware thermal limit protection) in Throttlestop and some heavy undervolting. Of course I contacted Razer about this, after many days of going back and forth, the official Razer support told me that "This was how the laptop was designed."

Finally there's the issue of the laptop discharging during use. While doing heavy loads the laptop will slowly discharge to 95% while gaming or using CPU intensive demands. This means the 65W adapter is not strong enough to meet the power demands of the laptop. The system simply can't run on AC power alone and will need to supplement with battery, hence you see draining while plugged in. The problem could be simply solved if Razer provided a larger AC adapter, many on reddit and Razer's own forums have found that a 100w USB-C Adapter made by Wacom for their drawing tablet PCs work to keep the Razer stealth well saturated. without discharging. However this is another $100+ investment that Razer should have included in the laptop.

Overall, this laptop is a well built laptop that's thin, sleek, sturdy, and fairly powerful. Any other laptop getting these same praises should be very happy news for the manufacture. However I can't honestly recommend this laptop because the Achillie's heel is its price. At $1900 for the 4k model this is a tall order for a 13 inch laptop. While the reviews of this laptop are generally positive, everything is colored by the laptop's price to value ratio and the ratio is bad. If Razer is offering this laptop and its other models as premium devices competing with Apple, then it should also be judged like Apple products are judged. All too often Apple's premium offerings fall short not because they're bad products, but expectations fall short for the astronomical price. If you're shelling out an entire paycheck for a laptop when you can easily get something that is 80% of the functionality for 50% of the price, then you will ultimately be held to a higher measuring stick. Razer's stealth is a great laptop, but for the $1900 asking price, having a power brick that can't keep up with the power and power that plummets when on battery seems like almost huge mis-steps for such a premium product. If I pay a fortune for something, it had better work, and work well with minimum complaining.

As for me, I am not sure if I will be keeping this laptop. I have a week left before my return window expires and to be honest I am most likely returning it for a cheaper laptop like the Huawei Matebook X Pro 2019. It's not nearly as well built or premium, but I can configure the TDP and undervolt so it can do nearly or even better than the Razer Stealth at much cheaper price. Razer has unfortunately locked this laptop down at the hardware level where no amount of tinkering can change the TDP limits so you're essentially stuck with the limited battery performance Razer has decided to enforce. As a ultra-premium laptop that's supposed to be top of the line, it falls short. Power users like myself that need a fast CPU simply cant't get it with this laptop unless it's plugged in all the time, which defeats the purpose of a laptop. If I needed an ultra powerful machine that's plugged in all the time, it's called a desktop computer.

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Adham Khairy

Easily Scratched

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2019

Capacity: NVIDIA GeForce MX150Style: FHD 1080pVerified Purchase

Update: After more than 6 months of use, I have to say the battery does achieve around 6-7 hours if you're careful with the keyboard lighting and display brightness. Compared to other laptops I see around the office, it is still quite impressive. I still think the access panel screws are rubbish and it was extremely difficult accessing the internals, the back panel still not quite back to its original fit no matter how much I try adjusting it. The finish is extremely sensitive and any scratch is painfully visible. Synapse is still a pain and it causes all input devices to freeze for a few seconds every time Windows starts. I love Windows Hello!

------Original Review------

Battery doesn't last as much as advertised, I expected it to last at least 7-8 hours but I don't get more than 4 hours out of it. Which I know will be even worse as it gets older. As soon as the chroma effect is enabled on the keyboard, the battery life goes down dramatically. I thought they opted out of the individually lit keys to increase battery life but I don't think this made much of a difference.
It is very easy to scratch and the black color makes the scratches very visible.
I got the Core V2 with it and expected it to work without a glitch but this wasn't the case. Every time I disconnect the core I have to reinstall the driver for the MX150 onboard as Windows doesn't recognize it any more (issue is now resolved after removing all drivers and using GeForce Experience to install the drivers instead).
The location of the right shift key is horrible and takes a lot of time to get used to. I'm a touch typist and this could be the most annoying thing about it. Also, you don't get the context menu key, usually fn+right ctrl without programming it using Synapse 3.
Synapse 3 itself is very buggy and is very annoying having to watch the intro every time my laptop starts.
Windows Hello is beautiful, I never expected to like it that much (Also issues were resolved with the latest updates for Synapse 3, still does not recognize the Core V2 which is a major bummer). Synapse 3.0 also causes all input devices, including the laptop's touchpad and keyboard to stop responding for a few seconds while it starts!
The trackpad is either very sensitive or doesn't do well recognizing palm. Sometimes both the keyboard and the mousepad just act weird. The keyboard on my Surface Go is way better and the touchpad on my XPS 9350, which is way smaller, is also better. On several occasions too some keys double registered, don't know if it's a software or a hardware issue or maybe it's jut that I'm still not used to typing on this keyboard yet.
The documentation, especially with the Core V2, is not sufficient to understand how to properly configure the pair. Is it safe to unplug without disconnecting the GPU first? What if I want to disconnect the GPU only and still use the USB ports and the ethernet port? How will keeping the laptop connected to the core, which means it's always being charged, affect battery life and performance?
Coming out of the Dell experience, I really expected more from this machine and from Razer overall. Dell has this nifty software tool that scans your laptop and tells you exactly which drivers you should get and updates everything automatically. It just works.
Another major let-down was the fact that if you turn on the USB charging feature by adjusting the setting for it in the BIOS, the laptop will actually discharge while turned off. The battery died out on me a couple of times before I took to the internet and found that other people had the same problem too.
Another minor issue but to me is quite annoying, when the power adapter is connected, there is no LED indicator that the laptop is charging which is 1\ very useful when the laptop is actually turned off while charging, and 2\ every other laptop I have ever used does indicate somehow that the laptop is being charged. I understand there's this tiny green LED on the charger itself, but it is just not enough. The LED is actually there right on the front of the laptop! Why are you not using it?
The worst issue I had with it is the rubbish screws used to attach the bottom panel. I have upgraded the original 256 GB SSD to a 512 GB one which was originally installed on my Dell XPS 13. The panel on the Dell can be removed and screwed back on very easily, but on the Razer, it gave me hell, it was as if the screws aren't aligned anymore to the holes in the chassis. All the screws are now scratched with the black paint removed. Very ugly experience really. I guess it is because the screws are painted the same way the unit itself is causing the screw-driver not to gain sufficient grip on them.
It's a lovely little machine, I love how it looks and love its size which is exactly the same as my old Dell XPS 9350 which to me is the perfect size for a laptop. Just make sure you skin it as soon as you get it and carry it in a proper sleeve so it won't get scratched.

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