💻 New laptop
Got a new laptop ‘cause my old XPS-13 has a dead battery and the charger. It’s the 2023 Razer Blade 14.
Specs:
| ? | = |
|---|---|
| Display | 14” IPS, 2560 x 1440, 165Hz |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 16GB GDDR6 VRAM |
| Memory | 16GB DDR4 3200MHz (soldered) |
| Storage | 1TB PCIe Gen 3 NVMe SSD |
| Build | Machined aluminum body, black paint |
| Ports | 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 2 x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (PD), 1 x HDMI 2.1 |
| Keyboard | Compact, RGB backlighting |
| Trackpad | Large, glass surface, precision touchpad |
| Battery | 61.6 Wh, “up to 12 hours of battery life” |
| Weight | 1.78 kg |
| Dimensions | 319.7 x 220 x 16.8 mm |
| PSU | 230W power brick, supports USB-C PD charging (up to 100W) |
Thoughts
- 🪟 Windows 11 is okay, it’s not great, but it’s not bad either.
That said I’ll get Linux running on it ASAP.
- ✅ Update: I did. Upgraded to 4TB of SSD and Ubuntu Just Worked™
- 🔌 Battery life is terrible compared to the M1 Mac I’ve been using for work.
But it is a bit of a monster and I’ve most spent time installing stuff, so
it might get better.
- ❌ Update: it didn’t. It’s a greedy bastard.
- 🔌 Charger port is on the wrong side as usual, but thankfully it supports
USB PD as well as the chunky charger, so I can charge it with the client’s Mac
charger (like my phone, vape, Switch, headset, e-reader etc).
- ❌ Update: unfortunately the PD port isn’t powerful enough to keep it charged during heavy use. But the power cable goes in both ways so I can tuck it around the back, which is nice.
- ⌨ Keyboard has a nice feel. On par with the MacBook Pro, better than Dell
XPS. I think it was Acer that had the best keyboard feel when I tested them
last. Lights on it mean I can’t see the symbols, which is the only time I look
at the keyboard (switching between Mac and PC - grr).
- ❌ Update: Yeah the keyboard isn’t great. The lights are crap and the buttons are just not quite right, too squishy. Needs more firmness. It was premature to compare it to the Mac.
- 📺 The screen is high enough quality but still not bright enough to work in the garden. That said I mostly work in the terminal, so my opinion here isn’t worth much.
- 🔈 Audio was nice at first in Windows, but not sure about the range. Seems quiet on some videos and over-amplification makes it rattle. Might be my Linux drivers though.
- 🐏 16GB of RAM maximum seems a bit limiting, but 16GB of GPU RAM is liberating. Not that the 32GB I had on my XPS was ever used, it’d slow to a crawl long before I’d filled it.
- 🌪️ Cooling seems to be better than the XPS. Well, anything is better than
Dell’s cooling. It’s not that loud, but it does get toasty.
There’s time for the fans to get clogged up yet, so time will tell.
- ✅ Update: pubes stuck in the fans underneath get loud. Other than that, cooling is better than anything I’ve had before.
- 🔥 PassMark score was pretty good:
And it plays Cyberpunk 2077, and runs LLMs at a decent rate.
Verdict after 8 months
Battery life and keyboard are a let-down, cooling is great, size and weight are perfect. It’s survived a few drops including a drunken smash into a wall that damaged the wall.
Overall, I’d make the same decision again, it’s a nice piece of kit.