NEW Razer Blade Stealth 13 – SUPERCHARGED!

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One of my favorite ultrabooks from last year was the Razor Blade Stealth 13. The specs on this really made it an interesting and capable gaming laptop in a 13-inch form factor. It had an NVIDIA MX150 GPU that was able to push 1080P at medium settings at pretty good frame rates compared to the integrated Intel UHD graphics that built into the processor. And the 8th gen Whiskey Lake processor was pretty capable of doing a lot of things as well. It’s certainly not a performance beast compared to the 15-inch Stealth variant, which has an RTX GPU and a six-core processor, but honestly for the form factor this thing was amazing. Well now Razor is updating their Blade Stealth 13 lineup with some really promising specs, so let’s take a look at that.
Updated Internals
There will be three models of the new Razer Blade Stealth 13 and they’re all going to be featuring Intel’s latest 10th gen Core i7 processor, in this case, the 4-core/8-thread Core i7-1065G7. And for those of you who are wondering what that means, I have done an entire article going through Intel’s Ice Lake lineup and that mess.
But either way, the i7-1065G7 is the second fastest CPU within the Ice Lake lineup. It’s right below the i7-1068G7, which is a 28W TDP processor, whereas all lower-end models top out at 25W TDP CPU. When it comes to clocks, the i7-1065G7 has a base clock of a 1.3GHz and it can boost up to 3.9Ghz. On paper that’s a lot slower than the Core i7-8565U Whiskey Lake processor found on previous gen Razor Blade Stealth notebooks, but Intel is really banking on the Gen11 graphics baked into these new 10th gen processors. They’re supposed to compete against NVIDIA’s MX150 GPU. Unfortunately, I can’t share any benchmarks with you guys right now because there’s an embargo for these new CPUs, and the unit that I have over here is a pre-production model. I’m just going to have to wait for the full retail models to come out here in the studio, and then I’ll do a full comparison between the new 10th gen CPUs and the previous generation CPUs to see what the performance differences are. We will definitely go over battery life and other things as well, so certainly stay tuned for that.
Now with the implementation of the new Gen11 graphics from Intel it will be interesting to see how Adobe applications can take advantage of those extra execution units. Perhaps we could expect faster render times with QuickSync. We’ll have to find out. But the main star of the show is the inclusion of NVIDIA’s GTX 1650 on these new laptops. That’s right, a GTX 1650 on a notebook this size. I mean that is just incredible. The big question is, what are some of the sacrifices that Razor had to make in order to cram that GPU into this thin and light form factor? Well it’s only 0.5 millimeters thicker than the previous generation Razor Blade Stealth, so that’s not really that much. Also they’ve added three additional heatpipes to the notebook for better heat dissipation. And that’s pretty much it. It’s refreshing to see Razor push boundaries by implementing a GPU of this caliber in a 13-inch form factor. And it’s certainly a lot faster than the MX150, since it offers more CUDA cores and higher clock speeds, so you should be able to game comfortably at 1080P with medium to high settings.
Same Design & Build Quality
Now in terms of design, there isn’t anything different compared to the previous generation. You still get the boxy shape, the same keyboard layout, as well as that glass track pad, which is one of my favorites. Port selection also remains the same, there is a Thunderbolt3 port that shares four PCI-E lanes, another regular USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port and two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports. It also features the same battery capacity as well. The display is also the same, so you get a 13.3-inch 1080P IPS matte screen. However, if you want you can opt for a 4K touchscreen option, but that’s definitely going to cost you an arm and a leg.
They have also added a Mercury White variant this time and that’s what I have in my possession at the moment. I think it looks really cool. And thankfully it won’t show finger marks as bad as the black model. It also showcases the light reflections from the screen on the chassis and it looks gorgeous and it’s photogenic as well. I still have mixed feelings about the plain white key caps. They don’t really go well with the silver finish on the notebook, and the lighting on the keys are a bit dim compared to the black variant. Again, this could be because I have a pre-production sample. I would personally leave the lighting disabled, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts about that. By the way, if you’re looking for the limited edition Quartz Pink variant it’s not here yet, but we should expect that later on.
Price Bump
This new Razer Blade Stealth 13 starts at $1500 USD. It’s certainly more expensive than the previous generation Stealth laptop. And above you can see the price breakdown between all three models. Now do keep in mind that the base model only comes in Mercury White, it does not have the GTX 1650 GPU, and it only has 256GB of NVME SSD storage. If you need that GTX 1650, you’re going to have to pony up an extra $300. And if you need a 4K screen, which honestly is pointless in a 13-inch form factor, you’re going to be shelling out $2,000 USD. My friends that Razer tax is pretty damn high.
That’s pretty much it with the new Razor Blade Stealth 13. I can’t wait to get my hands on a full production sample, as well as a model that has a GTX 1650 so I can benchmark it and give you guys all the info that you need. Specifically, battery life and thermal performance are two things that I really am curious to test out, especially since this is such a promising ultrabook. I’m also curious to test out that Gen11 GPU as well, so a lot of cool content coming your way. Definitely let me know your thoughts about the new Stealth 13.