Razer Blade Stealth Review

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All work and no play makes the Razer Blade Stealth light and long-lasting.

By Lewis Leong

The Razer Blade Stealth is not a gaming laptop, which is sort of strange considering Razer’s motto, “For Gamers. By Gamers.” The Blade Stealth is the company’s first ultrabook, which is fancy-speak for a thin and light laptop.

So why did Razer decide to build a thin and light laptop that can’t play modern games? Firstly, there’s a big market of people just looking for a laptop to do work and web browsing on the go. Secondly, the Stealth can game with the Razer Core graphics amplifier, which will be releasing soon.

In a way, this review is a review in progress until we can get our hands on the Razer Core. But for now, let’s evaluate the Stealth against the ultrabook competition.

Build Quality and Design

The MacBook Air started the thin and light laptop craze, which has resulted in a ton of clones. The Stealth definitely looks like a blacked out MacBook Air, from its metal unibody chassis to its sizable bezels around its display. This isn’t a bad thing, as the design still looks good, but it does look a bit dated compared to the near-bezel-less display found on the Dell XPS 13.

The body anodized black aluminum body of the Razer Blade Stealth feels great. There’s a slight satin texture to the metal that makes a pleasure to touch and didn’t cause me any irritation after hours of use. The only bad thing about the finish is that it’s a fingerprint magnet, though it’s not as bad as glossy plastic.

Unlike the MacBook Air, the Stealth’s speakers are located on the sides of the keyboard and they sound good. They get loud but don’t generate much bass, which is expected from such small drivers. They’re good enough for playing music and watching movies but for the best sound experience, you’ll want to plug in a pair of external speakers or use headphones.

On the bottom of the Stealth is a one piece cover with vents, as well as two rubber strips to raise the laptop for cooling. At full load, the Stealth does get hot, but I never found it uncomfortable. The wrist rests remain cool and the fans are audible, but not overbearing.

All About That Screen

The Stealth’s 12.5-inch screen is gorgeous. You can choose between a quad HD resolution panel or a ridiculously crisp 4K display. Both options are multi-touch enabled and feature LED backlighting that gets very bright, though I wouldn’t recommend using the Blade outside. The screen is glossy and highly reflective, and I wish Razer offered a non-touch matte screen option. However, viewing angles on the glossy screen are excellent, providing accurate colors and contrast when viewing at every angle.

The review unit I have came with a 4K display, which honestly, is overkill. While the picture is extremely sharp, Windows still has issues with high resolution screens and will display some menu elements extremely small. Some text also looks fuzzy as it’s not being scaled properly. For example, the playback buttons for VLC are hilariously tiny and impossible to use. For this display size, I would much rather have a full HD (1920x1080) panel but Razer doesn’t offer one.

Keyboard and Trackpad

If you’re going to be productive on the go, having a great keyboard and trackpad are essential. The Razer Blade Stealth’s keyboard is great but its trackpad is just OK.

Like the super-thin MacBook, the Blade’s keys don’t have much travel and it’ll take some time getting used to typing with less force. After a week of using the keyboard, it still felt a bit awkward but I was typing as quickly as with any other laptop keyboard.

What makes the Razer Blade Stealth’s keyboard unique is that it’s fully RGB, meaning you can change the backlighting to any color or enable effects to make it barf rainbows. Razer boasts 16.8 million colors as well as gaming profiles that integrate game controls. For example, you can light up the keys to activate MOBA abilities in a different color than the rest of the keyboard. Razer’s software also allows you to make keyboard profiles which you can quickly switch between using the function key.

Holding onto the function key disables the keyboard backlight except for the function row and numbers if you have keyboard profiles, which is a neat touch. However, the volume and brightness symbols aren’t backlit making them impossible to find in the dark, which seems like a pretty big oversight.

Beyond the physical aspects of the keyboard, it's Razer’s Synapse software that makes the keyboard powerful for gamers. Users can control the color for individual keys, create macros, and link programs to specific keyboard profiles. This means you can launch Adobe Photoshop and have useful keyboard shortcuts highlighted on the keyboard. Or you can tie a keyboard profile for a specific game. Synapse lets you sync all of your data to the cloud so you can use them with your other Razer peripherals.

Windows laptops are notorious for having terrible trackpads but they’ve gotten a lot better recently. The Razer Blade Stealth’s trackpad is one of the better Windows trackpads I’ve used, but it’s not perfect. The glass touchpad feels great, with just the right amount of resistance and it’s big so three and four finger gestures work well. I found tracking to be accurate and scrolling smooth. Momentum scrolling isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll need to dig in the settings to turn on the feature.

Now for the bad news. The single-button trackpad is extremely stiff, and can get fatiguing after a while. Like the keyboard, there’s very little travel, which doesn’t give a satisfying click. Apple tackled the lack of trackpad travel in its MacBook by vibrating small motors beneath the trackpad to simulate a click. It’s slick and works well. I ended up enabling tap-to-click and avoided clicking the Razer’s trackpad altogether.

The biggest trackpad annoyance is its palm rejection, or lack thereof. While typing out this review on the Stealth, the tap-to-click feature was triggered by my palm hitting the edge of the trackpad, causing me to unintentionally type in the middle of random sentences where my cursor was hovering. Synaptics, the manufacturer of the Stealth’s trackpad, really needs to update its software so that this doesn’t happen. It’s a good trackpad but little annoyances keep it from being great.

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