Razer Blade (late 2012) - Final Thoughts
Though they are unwilling to release sales figures, Razer claims that the original Blade was an unqualified sales hit, with demand far outstripping supply in the first number of weeks after it went on sale. Undoubtedly, they weren’t manufacturing units in any huge volumes, but it’s safe to say that Razer themselves weren’t expecting the Blade to sell as fast as it did. But even though the original Blade was a success, it wasn’t really a hard product to follow up. It had a fair list of flaws, but an equal number of relatively obvious solutions. Jarred and Anand both mentioned that it probably would have made more sense for Razer to wait for Ivy Bridge/Kepler to launch the Blade, and from an end product standpoint I think they were right—the new Blade is a significant upgrade in almost every way.
But with that said, I think the original Blade was a very important product for Razer to launch from a process standpoint. The ability to launch a product successfully and support it post-sale was an important aspect for Razer to deliver on, and the original Blade allowed them to gain that experience while developing a superior followup. Now, this of course meant that the early adopters might feel jilted, and to that end, Razer decided to give a $500 discount to original Blade owners that wanted to pull the trigger on a new one.
The new Blade is a far more well rounded system than the original, with the computing power to match its looks and a far more robust hardware (thermal) and software platform to support it. They even gave it a price cut. Razer has really taken in the feedback they got from the media and their own customers to bring some significant improvements to the Blade. The only thing left that I really think is an important fix is the browsing experience in Switchblade. Based on what I know of the Switchblade UI computing backend, I’m not sure how feasible that is without a complete overhaul of the software platform (like a switch away from Windows CE6), but hopefully I’m wrong. I'd also like to see an optional SSD-only configuration, and perhaps an IPS display panel as well. Beyond that, there's hardly anything I would change with the new Blade.
I suspect that the Blade will remain a relatively niche product, as most notebooks in this price range tend to be—it’s still an expensive system, there is no doubt about that. But there are a grand total of three notebooks that I could see myself paying more than $2000 for, and the Blade is easily one of them. The others? The Retina MacBook Pro (I actually already did) and the M17x R4 with the GTX 680M. Obviously the Apple is a different story entirely, but between the Blade and the M17x, it really comes down to what you’re looking for in a gaming system and how much GPU horsepower you’re willing to give up for the sake of style and portability. That the Blade is actually part of this conversation is a testament to how far the new one has come.
If you're in for the highest gaming performance, it's still not the system for you—Alienware will give you a GTX 680M for the same price as the Blade, while Clevo and MSI can give you that GTX 680M for significantly less money. No matter how much compute and gaming performance have improved, the Blade still isn't a system that will win an out-and-out numbers game with the botique performance notebooks. The Blade is about more than that—it’s one of the most unique and interesting designs on the market, particularly in the world of mobile gaming systems. It's the best looking 17" notebook on the market, and it offers a portable gaming experience unlike any of its competitors. I used the term desirable to sum up the Blade last time around, and it's still probably the the best way to describe the new one as well. But this one has more performance to back up the style, and that just makes it all the more compelling.
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