The Razer Blade Stealth 13 is one impressive gaming ultrabook. It’s thin and light, but importantly, it’s very powerful.
Armed with a GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card and Full HD screen, the Razer Blade Stealth 13 boasts impressive performance and sleek graphics in a tiny package. While it is let down by abysmal battery life and a boring matte design, Razer’s latest gaming laptop proves that even the smallest packages can pack a lot of punch.
The Razer Blade Stealth 13 comes in four different models, starting at $1,999 for a Full HD model with Intel UHD graphics, up to a $3,699 model with a 4K touch screen and GeForce GTX 1650 graphics.
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Benchmarks
So, how did the zippy little Razer Blade Stealth do? Well, for a laptop of its size, pretty damn good.
When testing it with classic benchmark game pillars, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 5, it did very well. It was able to maintain a steady average of 47.7 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and a slightly more impressive 53.6 FPS for Far Cry 5. It should be noted that the Far Cry 5 benchmark tests had lows of 48 and highs of 74, so the variation here was on the wild side.
Both games looked crisp and gorgeous in their benchmark tests.
What’s Good About It?
Great performance in a tiny package
At 13 inches, the Razer Blade Stealth 13 is tiny, particularly when you compare it to the heftier form of your typical gaming laptop. Yes, the Stealth 13 is heavier than your usual everyday machine, and if you’re used to travelling around with, say, a MacBook Air, the weight will take some getting used to. But it isn’t at all bulky, and fits away easily into a handbag or backpack.
The best part of this is that despite the size, it doesn’t make significant sacrifices to performance. As you can see from the benchmarking, it’s a formidable gaming ultrabook, with slick graphics and meaty performance, even when playing graphically-intensive games.
Very portable
The Razer Blade Stealth 13 weights just over 1kg on its own, and closer to 1.4kg with added battery. As far as ultrabooks go, that’s on the heavier side for a 13-inch, but when you consider the usual heft of standard gaming laptops, the portability is impressive.
The battery isn’t as heavy as I expected, and only adds a little bit of heft to the ultrabook, making it far easier to carry around than your typical gaming laptop. It fit into my handbag easily enough, and I was able to carry it to and from the office easily.
What’s Not So Good?
Battery life
Fair enough, you don’t buy a gaming laptop expecting it to last ages, but the Razer Blade Stealth 13 lasted a whopping 57 minutes when I played Disco Elysium off charge. While gaming, it wouldn’t last any longer than around 1 hour and 20 minutes before it needed a recharge.
That’s fine, and to be expected from a smaller gaming laptop, but don’t think you’ll be marathonning a Witcher session purely on the Stealth 13’s internal battery.
Heat build-up
The Razer Blade Stealth 13 gets hot fast. The minute I started up a game, the temperature was rising, and about 15 minutes into The Witcher 3, it was too hot to keep in my lap. Depending on the performance intensity of the game you’re playing, heat can also emanate from the keys and upper chassis of the body. It never felt like the laptop was heading towards overheating, but it was definitely too hot to keep on exposed body parts while gaming.
Boring design
Razer is known for its snappy product design. But the Razer Blade Stealth 13 is boring. It’s not ugly, by any means. It’s sleek, smooth and well-designed. But it’s just ‘nice’. And that means it’s barely remarkable.
It also commits the sin of having a completely matte black housing that absorbs heat and grease like it’s going out of style.
Before you gaze on that hideous mess, I would like to say my hands were completely clean when I touched the ultrabook’s surface. Everywhere my fingers touched, an unsightly smudge bloomed. It took several minutes of scrubbing with a dry tissue to get the surface smooth again, and even then I could see my imprints.
As someone who is a total clean freak, the matte surface on this and the ease of smudging it was very disappointing.
The Razer Blade Stealth 13 is an impressive little machine. It maintains steady and robust gaming performance, and even if it doesn’t hit the high peaks of graphical fidelity, it does a mighty fine job for a 13-inch ultrabook. It’s well-designed, compact and sleek, and while I had my gripes with its matte finish, it doesn’t detract too much from the overall package.
Those looking for a handy and portable gaming laptop would do well to consider the Razer Blade Stealth 13 in their purchasing journey.
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