Transcript follows
So this is Razer’s brand new Razer Book 13. I bought this with my own money from the Microsoft Store $1600 and I’m not sure I’m going to keep it. I’ve got some Alyssa mixed feelings about this thing but overall I’d say I really, really like it. I got a strong like on it but there’s a couple of things that are bothering me so I’m going to do in this video is tell you about why I bought it. Give you a tour of the device.
And some of the things that were not as smooth as I would hope they would be, but maybe are alleviated by the time you’re watching this, because this is a new device, so you know the guy given.
Time to workout kinks.
OK, so now.
So one what I’m looking for, I want an Ultrabook. I have a gaming laptop and then I have my desktop, so I wanted something that I could use for working in a different part of the House or going on trips which I do have a couple of business trips coming up now. You could make the argument like my friend Kenny did that. Maybe I should use my Galaxy Tab S7 plus it’s a 12 inch display it’s it’s really high resolution and oh let it has a keyboard.
But if you’ve ever done serious work, you’re just like I’m not talking about editing videos or anything like that we’ve done, like into a lot of email work in multiple email clients like multiple Gmail accounts, and you’re doing spreadsheet work leaving our file.
Is around, there’s just something about Android, even decks that’s not as convenient or comfortable as using Windows. Simple as that. Plus I wanted a little bit more screen real estate, which is where this 13.4 inch display kicks the crap out of that 12.3 inch display. 1.1 inches goes along way alright, so.
That’s why I was looking for.
I found I can get it down to the Dell XPS 13 and this which are very similar machines, but after watching Maxtech and a couple other channels, I notice that the performance on this is actually better than on the delan you contribute that to the Vapor Chamber and the dual fans for cooling.
By the way, this is not gotten really loud, to the point where irritated me.
I’ve been listening for it because I’m a reviewer, but it never really interrupted my workflow or any conference calls or anything like that.
This device for non gaming at least doesn’t get loud and I have used it mostly unplugged.
By the way, I was blown away by the performance.
I did spend some time with the 8th Gen.
ThinkPad Carbon X One with a 10th Gen Intel I-716. Gigs of RAM and that thing was slow when it wasn’t plugged in. This is not, I mean this comparatively. It makes that ThinkPad look really slow, which is bizarre ’cause it’s such a nice device, but.
Anyhow, for now. Just know 1110 eleven 65G7 in the Razer Book is an awesome awesome processor. This also has 16 gigs of RAM, but only 256 gig SSD, so I swapped in my one terabyte SSD that had lying around, and unfortunately it wasn’t a super smooth process, which is why I was trying to earlier driver support.
Is actually good, but it took.
A long time for me to get those drivers installed so Razor doesn’t have on their support page. All of the drivers for this device and sinapse, which is what you use now in Razor laptops to go fetch drivers, didn’t have all those drivers either, so that left me to Windows Update and for whatever reason spamming that button over time talking like 3-4 days.
Eventually I got all those drivers installed.
Now it wasn’t really that bad.
Wi-Fi keyboard, trackpad, all the essentials were enabled, but things like the touch for the display wasn’t working.
Then I ended up disabling it anyway to save battery life, which is a real thing and I was also having just some random stuff teams from various sensors that even know what they did, so I had to contact Razer.
That was a bit annoying, but eventually found itself getting installed, so.
It is unfortunate it was a bit of a drag, but I feel like right now I’m in a pretty good place on those drivers.
I mean, I don’t have any missing devices right now, so I should be happy, but there’s a part of me that wonders if maybe something is missing right?
Which is totally me problem objectively.
If someone just walked up open this up you know, looked at device manager like your installer fine, but I’m being a little bit, you know.
Over sent.
OK drivers or rather ports in that type of thing, so this little tiny 3 pound device has a full size.
HDMI out has an SD card reader Micro and a full size USB C with Thunderbolt for support on the other side you get another one of those and a full size USB A and a headphone Jack, so the full size USB A is super important to me.
And so is the HDMI.
So when we eventually get back to campus, I’m a.
I’m a college teacher, I’ll be using my HDMI out to connect to the secondary screen.
The projector.
I know it sounds petty, but I’m Tommy man.
It’s so great to not have to worry about that.
I bring my dongles.
McDonald work.
That’s awesome. I’ve had the same dongle for like 6 years so not that long for a few years and eventually I think it’s going to break OK and then the full size USB is great for just everyday use. I connect the deathadder V2 to it and I don’t want to get an adapter. I want to use Bluetooth Bluetooth for me. I just I don’t like Bluetooth connections on nice. I’ve been testing them a lot lately ’cause I’ve got a slew of mice from Razer.
But I don’t have a lot of trouble like just feeling like Bluetooth is really pulling at a high rate.
And please let me know in the comments if I’m completely wrong about this or if maybe you have a solution.
OK now when you open this thing up you get a beautiful display.
Now the display will kick up a little bit off your table and give you a slight raise for your keyboard when you’re typing, but it’s not.
Now the display on this is 1920 by 1200, so it’s more than 1080P, but it’s not quite 2K or 4K. It looks really good. This thing gets super bright, think it’s rated for 440 minutes. It’s bright and I usually have it at like half brightness to 1/4 brightness right around there. I’ve disabled the auto brightness ’cause I just don’t like what Windows does that.
So for me, I’m like deliberately monitoring my brightness levels and I really feel like this.
This thing is bright and I like that now.
The speakers I’m having a problem the right speaker started popping.
It makes us like repetitive like drumming noise.
Like that while anything is coming from it when it’s dead silent, it doesn’t make that noise, but I have a ticket into razor to find out more about that the keyboard when I had it side by side with a razor blade stealth, I really feel like this keyboard lighting is better an love the look of the silver, the Gray, the white keys.
All this contrast to me is just super cool and I’ve got a.
Pretty basic backlighting schema that I use, but I do have the multimedia keys.
The brightness keys I have.
Shows a different color, so to me it just it really pops and I wish I kept that blade stealth so I can show you the side by side, but I am not the world’s best reviewer. I didn’t think about that. I just returned the stealth and kept this. I was like oh, which one do I want. So I mean hey, I put myself first so I’m going to do OK. Keyboard is not the best thing in the world to type on so I’m having some.
Issues where it’s not repeating keys or anything like that or skipping keys.
I think I’m just not pressing all the way so it feels like it’s almost like this.
How do I put this?
It’s like we’re walking.
It’s raining and you’re walking on cement and there’s like it’s just uneven ground.
So when I put my right foot down right, I type on a letter I feel like OK, there’s the ground.
So then I put my left foot down I’m typing on another key I feel like I should just put my foot the same amount of pressure downward and then I.
Find myself almost tripping like oh wait, it’s shallow werewords deeper, and that inconsistency is probably a physical thing, but I haven’t been able to nail it down yet, so I’d like to find a way to measure that and.
Hopefully it all makes sense. That was a pretty good off the cuff analogy, but anyway, hopefully it all makes sense. I’ll dig into it a little bit more, but that is one problem I feel like when I’m typing I have to go back and make corrections, which is not going to last for me. Long term I’m going to have to get a different laptop if that’s the case, but even at $1600.
He’s pretty reasonably priced and it is a gorgeous gorgeous machine.
It’s well cooled, it’s fast and powerful.
It has awesome ports.
But Dell XPS I think it’s more expensive.
I mean, I’ve been looking, it’s really complicated.
I think to figure out the price of the new XPS 13.
I mean the exact same specs.
It’s really hard to figure out what the prices on that thing.
I know that sounds weird, but you know, I’ve been looking anyway.
I think it’s still more expensive so.
I do like it.
I’m going to do a full review on this in a couple of weeks, so I’ll be doing some more tests.
I’m going to try to, you know, figure out the keyboard problem I’m going to.
I got the troubleshoot thing going on with Razer, they’ve responded so they’re getting it back to me to figure out the speaker problem and yeah otherwise.
Let me know questions you have this beautiful device and if you’re looking for something like this and it makes sense, just follow along and I’ll let you know through the next video.
And please do drop comments with your questions, but I’ll let you know the next video.
My final thoughts on this thing.
So thanks for watching and we’ll catch you on the next one.