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Razer's new pc gaming campaign?
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RanceJustice
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I wrote a long, long post for another site that pretty much details how I feel about this thing. Here goes...
I'm probably fairly close to the market that Razer has to entice with this laptop. When it comes to my "main" laptop, I don't like to compromise. I look for power, portability, and hardware autonomy/linux compatibility; I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount for it.
There's not a very big market segment for my interests, any longer. Most manufacturers are not interested in providing a maximized product out of the best materials. The biggest margins are on big-box "Facebook, Flash game, Word processing" low-mid types. Even the "specialty" offerings tend to be lacking more or less - for instance, Clevo (and all their rebrands) have excellent power, but they're 8lb minimum and crammed into a big ugly hunk of black plastic, with sub-par displays and other mediocre secondary features, with a complete lack of tertiary niceties like backlit keyboards. The extreme opposite are the underpowered (often WAY overpriced ultraportables). For what usually doesn't amount to "that much smaller" and for those that don't understand that "thin doesn't mean small, and doesn't always mean light" you're paying well over $1000, sometimes double that for something with integrated graphics and an ULV CPU. However, you typically get better build quality and maybe premium secondary components.
Thus, when I was searching for a laptop a year+ ago, I started with a relatively limited group, which are much the same as those who hold the "Balanced Premium" crowns today: The MacBook Pro 15, The Sony Z, and HP Envy14. After much deliberation, I ended up buy the HP Envy which gave me the most I was looking for, for the best price. However, I've always wanted a third party to come out and really design an entirely new, no-compromises, carefully balanced, laptop in this field. The other major issue for me is Linux compatibility, and many laptops are utter nightmares thanks to everything from greed to simply poor tech decisions, like having a castrated BIOS that mosly relies on pre-installed proprietary crapware to regulate its cooling! When a brand new laptop a relative purchased was overheating to shutdown point ever since they reinstalled Windows from one of their own copies, I found out this practice still continues. This kind of thing makes Linux use a pain, and ideologically I would rather not support those who use this kind of hardware. I rather hoped that someone with venture capital behind them (maybe myself, if I had the time to do it right) would start a little boutique business that takes inspiration from these "Balanced Premium" laptops, fixes their flaws, and lauds their Linux compatibility as a feature, offering a distro or two preconfigured instead of or beside Windows at user choice. Razer seems to have seen many of the same problems that I have and has the funds to fix them, but from first glance it appears they too have fallen short in many ways, especially if $2800 is the list price. Lets go over the specs....
Chassis - Aluminum, 17" less than an inch thick. I really can't find fault with this, provided the build quality is sound. I'm questioning 17" a bit, especially if they're talking portability, because "light" does not automatically equal portable as I said earlier. You will still need something capable of handing a 17" notebook. Seems that items made for the 17" MacBook Pro and HP Envy will work; these two are also a good basis for comparison in terms of other options/features, both of which come in much cheaper "reasonably loaded" (ie without buying user upgradable items from the factory, like RAM and HDD/SSD).
CPU- Core i7 2640m 2.8/3.5 .... Dual core? DUAL Core? In both the 17" Macbook Pro and Envy14 you can pick up a quad. On both you can opt for at LEAST a 2820 (Envy allows 2860), which has similar turbo-boost speeds while giving you quad core performance. Its really time to drop the "but Dual is all you need for gaming, nothing is multithreaded etc." rhetoric. Its growing less true by the day, and especially on a portable laptop with that kind of power, users will benefit from the additional cores and threads in other activities. In a 17" laptop for $2800? There's no bloody excuse.
Chipset- Not much to say here. Only major omission I see is Thunderbolt. For the price, this would be another premium product that Intel could roll out Thunderbolt to a boutique userbase. Not sure why it was omitted, especially if this is an "Intel partnership" device, I'd think they'd want to put their flagship technology in.
Display - Specs look good so far. The only question is the actual quality - brightness, color gamut and the like.
Memory - Looks good. 8gb is the minimum for high-end gaming on a dual-channel chipset. Less would be an insult, at the price. I am hoping that it properly scales/OCs if necessary, at least up to 1600mhz.
Graphics and Video - This is where I have mixed feelings. The GT555 2gb is certainly a good mobile card, however Optimus is in my opinion, a horrible move. This implementation basically takes control away from the user and hardware, in search of better optimization for battery life. Unfortunately, this means that you are completely dependent on Nvidia's software to regulate when your graphics card is working. Furthermore, when the tech came out a few years back they refused to support it in Linux, even with their binary driver! It is just barely being hacked together through resourceful reverse engineering. I've purposely avoided anything with Optimus for these reasons. Razer would have been better served to ensure that, if they were going to have multiple graphics chips, to enable you to enable/disable 1 or both at the UEFI/BIOS level. I also question if an AMD 6700, 6800, 6900 series graphics chipset would be a better and cheaper option. On the notebook side, AMD has a rather commanding lead in performance, features, power/heat, and price over the past few years, all without requiring a cobbled together switchable like Optimus. I bet that an AMD mid-high end chipset would provide similar power, cheaper and with less hassle. Oh, and as far as the webcam is concerned, I hope it is up to par with the Apple and Envy (Envy's even has infrared/night vision mode support. Or at least, they did).
Storage - 320gb 7200rpm? Unacceptably low-end for a 2800 starting price. Allow a user to select something like that and save a few hundred, but at least offer a high performance 500GB-2TB option that's price/performance conscious, like a Seagate XT Hybrid, WD Black etc... and then (for the big bucks, which I'm pretty sure this qualifies) offer a high end SATAIII SSD at 128 or 256gb. Most performance laptops overcharge for a craptacular older generation SSD. Stand out by including something like a Corsair Force Series 3 or Force GT, latest generation SandForce running on SATAIII.
Connections/expansions - There is an obvious lack of Thunderbolt here as I mentioned earlier, but besides that all the "requirements" are here...but not much more. Would it have been too much of an issue to make all the USB ports USB3? No eSATA is annoying considering its easy to integrate in the same space as a USB2/USB3 port. Lack of a SDXC-class multi-card reader also seems to be an oversight, but its forgivable if they absolutely didn't have the space... but then again the Envy and Apple can do so, usually placed below the keyboard. Hope the HDMI is latest generation.
Battery - I hope the damn thing is made with newest available tech, for the cost. Lots of laptops phone it in on battery quality. It would be neat if they were able to license the Envy's "Slice" battery design - its actually the best secondary battery style I've ever seen/used. In addition, I think its time that someone besides Apple provide a magnetic power connector or something similar. The patents can't be "that" locked down (though in our current climate....). What would really be cool though and what I planned if I ever put my own laptop into production, is to see about putting an induction charging pad on bottom of the laptop and contacts in the "traditional" places on the side. It would be a little like the tech used for charging high-end electric cars like the Tesla.
Wireless - The basics are taken care of with Wireless N and Bluetooth 3.0. I hope its a nice compatible Intel chip. It wouldn't hurt to have a "4G" tech included, but ideally something like WiMax would be the way to go instead of any locked-down cellular-style stuff.
Special - Finally we come to the most important things that it brings to the table, the user inputs. I commend Razer for including a backlit keyboard, especially one that can be altered to any color. I can hope the multitouch trackpad is capable of at least 3-5 touch points, and using it as a little display is pretty awesome as a concept - I love my Logitech G-series keyboards and having a GamePanel is very useful for daily tasks. The macro keys are also a nice touch - I assume it would be cost prohibitive (more than it is!) to make the entire keyboard out of display-keycaps. This seems like its going to be a tech that Razer is rolling out in their $150 Star Wars Keyboards (they have the same panel with macro keys and multitouch display-pad), so I suppose it isn't too horribly expensive. These features would be an easy in for me if Razer made them accessible, but using their drivers and utilities in the past, I'm very skeptical (he're looking at you, N52te drivers!). Ideally, Razer would do what Logitech has done with their GamePanel and basically provide a SDK and documented APIs so that others can build in support - especially considering they're using this tech on stand alone keyboards, this seems the smartest thing to do, imperative even. Otherwise, we'll be up to using Razer's software to control everything, provide support for games etc... and that can cause problems. I can go into Mumble, Teamspeak 3 or even Ventrilo and turn on sending info to my G-series display and works without logitech having to make modifications and send out a new software variant. Likewise, World of Warcraft, RIFT, Star Trek Online and tons of other games build G-panel support into their clients, because the tech is available from Logitech. They could also improve by ensuring that the UEFI/BIOS has the option to control certain things, like backlight control - simply put in an RGB 0-255 slider option and let the user pick? Likewise, if someone wants to use a third party to display something on the trackpad or set-up macro keys in Linux, it should be possible without spending the better part of a couple of years reverse engineering. The reason that the Logitech G-series GamePanel has been a success and goes through multiple iterations is directly related to the SDK and API documentation, Razer should take note, lest this really promising tech be yet another gimmick, limited by the inability to surpass a proprietary lockdown - gaming hardware is full of them!
In conclusion, if Razer has made some correct decisions, I'd easily be able to overlook a few quibbles here and there regarding hardware and lack of ports (Gotta have a Quad proc option, and I'm none too happy about the Nvidia/Optimus crap, though. Others are relatively minor), but the price is the other big sticking point. Considering that the UI system is very similar to that on their upcoming keyboards in the hundred dollar range, the need to put that into perspective - it can't be the only thin justifying the huge price. If they could lower the price to a starting of around 1800, and "loaded" around 2200-2400 I think it would be a much more reasonable option, comparing it to Apple and Envy specs. If the can do this an ensure that the hardware and driver choices aren't Linux hostile, the Blade line will shoot to the top of my list for new laptops - but they still need to remember there are competitors in the area and compete on both hardware and price. Right now, I'm not sure it stands.
I'm probably fairly close to the market that Razer has to entice with this laptop. When it comes to my "main" laptop, I don't like to compromise. I look for power, portability, and hardware autonomy/linux compatibility; I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount for it.
There's not a very big market segment for my interests, any longer. Most manufacturers are not interested in providing a maximized product out of the best materials. The biggest margins are on big-box "Facebook, Flash game, Word processing" low-mid types. Even the "specialty" offerings tend to be lacking more or less - for instance, Clevo (and all their rebrands) have excellent power, but they're 8lb minimum and crammed into a big ugly hunk of black plastic, with sub-par displays and other mediocre secondary features, with a complete lack of tertiary niceties like backlit keyboards. The extreme opposite are the underpowered (often WAY overpriced ultraportables). For what usually doesn't amount to "that much smaller" and for those that don't understand that "thin doesn't mean small, and doesn't always mean light" you're paying well over $1000, sometimes double that for something with integrated graphics and an ULV CPU. However, you typically get better build quality and maybe premium secondary components.
Thus, when I was searching for a laptop a year+ ago, I started with a relatively limited group, which are much the same as those who hold the "Balanced Premium" crowns today: The MacBook Pro 15, The Sony Z, and HP Envy14. After much deliberation, I ended up buy the HP Envy which gave me the most I was looking for, for the best price. However, I've always wanted a third party to come out and really design an entirely new, no-compromises, carefully balanced, laptop in this field. The other major issue for me is Linux compatibility, and many laptops are utter nightmares thanks to everything from greed to simply poor tech decisions, like having a castrated BIOS that mosly relies on pre-installed proprietary crapware to regulate its cooling! When a brand new laptop a relative purchased was overheating to shutdown point ever since they reinstalled Windows from one of their own copies, I found out this practice still continues. This kind of thing makes Linux use a pain, and ideologically I would rather not support those who use this kind of hardware. I rather hoped that someone with venture capital behind them (maybe myself, if I had the time to do it right) would start a little boutique business that takes inspiration from these "Balanced Premium" laptops, fixes their flaws, and lauds their Linux compatibility as a feature, offering a distro or two preconfigured instead of or beside Windows at user choice. Razer seems to have seen many of the same problems that I have and has the funds to fix them, but from first glance it appears they too have fallen short in many ways, especially if $2800 is the list price. Lets go over the specs....
Chassis - Aluminum, 17" less than an inch thick. I really can't find fault with this, provided the build quality is sound. I'm questioning 17" a bit, especially if they're talking portability, because "light" does not automatically equal portable as I said earlier. You will still need something capable of handing a 17" notebook. Seems that items made for the 17" MacBook Pro and HP Envy will work; these two are also a good basis for comparison in terms of other options/features, both of which come in much cheaper "reasonably loaded" (ie without buying user upgradable items from the factory, like RAM and HDD/SSD).
CPU- Core i7 2640m 2.8/3.5 .... Dual core? DUAL Core? In both the 17" Macbook Pro and Envy14 you can pick up a quad. On both you can opt for at LEAST a 2820 (Envy allows 2860), which has similar turbo-boost speeds while giving you quad core performance. Its really time to drop the "but Dual is all you need for gaming, nothing is multithreaded etc." rhetoric. Its growing less true by the day, and especially on a portable laptop with that kind of power, users will benefit from the additional cores and threads in other activities. In a 17" laptop for $2800? There's no bloody excuse.
Chipset- Not much to say here. Only major omission I see is Thunderbolt. For the price, this would be another premium product that Intel could roll out Thunderbolt to a boutique userbase. Not sure why it was omitted, especially if this is an "Intel partnership" device, I'd think they'd want to put their flagship technology in.
Display - Specs look good so far. The only question is the actual quality - brightness, color gamut and the like.
Memory - Looks good. 8gb is the minimum for high-end gaming on a dual-channel chipset. Less would be an insult, at the price. I am hoping that it properly scales/OCs if necessary, at least up to 1600mhz.
Graphics and Video - This is where I have mixed feelings. The GT555 2gb is certainly a good mobile card, however Optimus is in my opinion, a horrible move. This implementation basically takes control away from the user and hardware, in search of better optimization for battery life. Unfortunately, this means that you are completely dependent on Nvidia's software to regulate when your graphics card is working. Furthermore, when the tech came out a few years back they refused to support it in Linux, even with their binary driver! It is just barely being hacked together through resourceful reverse engineering. I've purposely avoided anything with Optimus for these reasons. Razer would have been better served to ensure that, if they were going to have multiple graphics chips, to enable you to enable/disable 1 or both at the UEFI/BIOS level. I also question if an AMD 6700, 6800, 6900 series graphics chipset would be a better and cheaper option. On the notebook side, AMD has a rather commanding lead in performance, features, power/heat, and price over the past few years, all without requiring a cobbled together switchable like Optimus. I bet that an AMD mid-high end chipset would provide similar power, cheaper and with less hassle. Oh, and as far as the webcam is concerned, I hope it is up to par with the Apple and Envy (Envy's even has infrared/night vision mode support. Or at least, they did).
Storage - 320gb 7200rpm? Unacceptably low-end for a 2800 starting price. Allow a user to select something like that and save a few hundred, but at least offer a high performance 500GB-2TB option that's price/performance conscious, like a Seagate XT Hybrid, WD Black etc... and then (for the big bucks, which I'm pretty sure this qualifies) offer a high end SATAIII SSD at 128 or 256gb. Most performance laptops overcharge for a craptacular older generation SSD. Stand out by including something like a Corsair Force Series 3 or Force GT, latest generation SandForce running on SATAIII.
Connections/expansions - There is an obvious lack of Thunderbolt here as I mentioned earlier, but besides that all the "requirements" are here...but not much more. Would it have been too much of an issue to make all the USB ports USB3? No eSATA is annoying considering its easy to integrate in the same space as a USB2/USB3 port. Lack of a SDXC-class multi-card reader also seems to be an oversight, but its forgivable if they absolutely didn't have the space... but then again the Envy and Apple can do so, usually placed below the keyboard. Hope the HDMI is latest generation.
Battery - I hope the damn thing is made with newest available tech, for the cost. Lots of laptops phone it in on battery quality. It would be neat if they were able to license the Envy's "Slice" battery design - its actually the best secondary battery style I've ever seen/used. In addition, I think its time that someone besides Apple provide a magnetic power connector or something similar. The patents can't be "that" locked down (though in our current climate....). What would really be cool though and what I planned if I ever put my own laptop into production, is to see about putting an induction charging pad on bottom of the laptop and contacts in the "traditional" places on the side. It would be a little like the tech used for charging high-end electric cars like the Tesla.
Wireless - The basics are taken care of with Wireless N and Bluetooth 3.0. I hope its a nice compatible Intel chip. It wouldn't hurt to have a "4G" tech included, but ideally something like WiMax would be the way to go instead of any locked-down cellular-style stuff.
Special - Finally we come to the most important things that it brings to the table, the user inputs. I commend Razer for including a backlit keyboard, especially one that can be altered to any color. I can hope the multitouch trackpad is capable of at least 3-5 touch points, and using it as a little display is pretty awesome as a concept - I love my Logitech G-series keyboards and having a GamePanel is very useful for daily tasks. The macro keys are also a nice touch - I assume it would be cost prohibitive (more than it is!) to make the entire keyboard out of display-keycaps. This seems like its going to be a tech that Razer is rolling out in their $150 Star Wars Keyboards (they have the same panel with macro keys and multitouch display-pad), so I suppose it isn't too horribly expensive. These features would be an easy in for me if Razer made them accessible, but using their drivers and utilities in the past, I'm very skeptical (he're looking at you, N52te drivers!). Ideally, Razer would do what Logitech has done with their GamePanel and basically provide a SDK and documented APIs so that others can build in support - especially considering they're using this tech on stand alone keyboards, this seems the smartest thing to do, imperative even. Otherwise, we'll be up to using Razer's software to control everything, provide support for games etc... and that can cause problems. I can go into Mumble, Teamspeak 3 or even Ventrilo and turn on sending info to my G-series display and works without logitech having to make modifications and send out a new software variant. Likewise, World of Warcraft, RIFT, Star Trek Online and tons of other games build G-panel support into their clients, because the tech is available from Logitech. They could also improve by ensuring that the UEFI/BIOS has the option to control certain things, like backlight control - simply put in an RGB 0-255 slider option and let the user pick? Likewise, if someone wants to use a third party to display something on the trackpad or set-up macro keys in Linux, it should be possible without spending the better part of a couple of years reverse engineering. The reason that the Logitech G-series GamePanel has been a success and goes through multiple iterations is directly related to the SDK and API documentation, Razer should take note, lest this really promising tech be yet another gimmick, limited by the inability to surpass a proprietary lockdown - gaming hardware is full of them!
In conclusion, if Razer has made some correct decisions, I'd easily be able to overlook a few quibbles here and there regarding hardware and lack of ports (Gotta have a Quad proc option, and I'm none too happy about the Nvidia/Optimus crap, though. Others are relatively minor), but the price is the other big sticking point. Considering that the UI system is very similar to that on their upcoming keyboards in the hundred dollar range, the need to put that into perspective - it can't be the only thin justifying the huge price. If they could lower the price to a starting of around 1800, and "loaded" around 2200-2400 I think it would be a much more reasonable option, comparing it to Apple and Envy specs. If the can do this an ensure that the hardware and driver choices aren't Linux hostile, the Blade line will shoot to the top of my list for new laptops - but they still need to remember there are competitors in the area and compete on both hardware and price. Right now, I'm not sure it stands.
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End of thread. You win it all.
Your post/points generally echo how I feel. For the price and given their lofty claims, it's just not enough. It's not that the price is too high for me, but the specs don't line up with the price. I'd be ok paying $2800 for an amazing, innovative laptop but this just doesn't completely fit the bill.
haha.
What annoys me is that Razer are touting this as 'WORLDS FIRST REAL GAMING LAPTOP' i've had an msi Gx740 for nearly a year now, the 5870 is still handling all the latest games, it does me fine. this is overpriced garbage as I'm sure many have already said in this thread.
Yakk
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Nice design and machined aluminium is expensive, but CRAP! that is too expensive with second rate components to boot!
caddys83
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Splinter24
Gawd
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That same feeling anyone should have when they purchase a product from Razer.
$8 mice housed in shiny plastic with a few flashy lights = $100+?
Kettleback
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yuk...
Horrible looking laptop. Would never but something like that in my home.
Horrible looking laptop. Would never but something like that in my home.
I am not a big fan of razer, but they really did a good job with Orochi and Mamba..
So far this two mouse gave me the best experience...
At those pricepoints - they'd better be great.
silent-circuit
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I'll chime in and say that while many people seem to hate them I really like my Lachesis, and it's still going strong after 3+ years of daily use. Could probably use new feet soon, but nothing else wrong with it.
According to notebook check the 555M is worse than the 460M...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html
So you pay 2 and a half times the price for a 1.4" larger screen and a worse GPU.
It was pointed out to me that there are a few different versions of the GT555M, the only current laptop with the full powered version of the GPU is the M14x. This one looks like the one in Sager laptops, which is 128bit, 144sp and 16ROPS, which is far less then the 460m I think.
silent-circuit
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Odd comment. The one thing I can't honestly say about this thing is that it's ugly -- anything but.
Is it overpriced? Yes.
Is it underpowered? Yes.
Is it obnoxiously marketed? Yes.
Is it ugly? No, I like black aluminum.
no no no, its not the first "real" gaming laptop they are saying its the first "proper" gaming laptop.
Commander FAT
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I don't see how it's proper. Those keys make it look easy to lose your place being all flat. Indentations would be nice like a regular keyboard.
I personally think it looks very sleek and cool.
That's about the only positive thing I can say about it, though.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally it just looks like a black and green macbook to me. Then again I'm the sort of person who would give two shits what my laptop looks like.
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Yakk
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Can anybody confirm if it's BLACK ANODIZED aluminium? Or a cheaper material?
RanceJustice
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Check out their "Star Wars: The Old Republic" gear - the keyboard has exactly the same setup. Its actually a nice little idea, IF it was compatible with all the LogitechGamePanel applications, had an open API and a nice little SDK that's free and open source, and doesn't require lots of fucking around in proprietary software. The chances of this happening however, based on Razer's history, is next to nil.
oh I agree, I just don't like how they're touting their proper gaming laptop.
SBSuperfly
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whoever wrote that article at kotaku is obviously mentally ill...
"The death of PC hardware might be the rebirth of PC gaming. Don't get me wrong—PC gaming is doing alright. I'm not a doomsayer. But I'm tired of the enthusiast market holding back the innovation in the space. It's just like what happened to cars over the last 15 years. They became more difficult to work for the shade tree mechanic, sure, but they also became faster, more fuel efficient, and cheaper."
i stopped reading kotaku articles after i read my first article from there... not big surprise from them really.