The Razer Blade 14 is a very nice machine, if you can get over the Matrix-esque green backlit keyboard. Sane keyboard layout (but missing the pgup/dn/home/end column). Beautiful screen and 14 inches, which is my ideal screen size. Amazing gaming performance for the size, if you care about that. Surprisingly good (but not perfect) Linux compatibility too. The three big problems with it are:
1) The choice of Wifi card, the Intel 7260AC, wasn't a good one--it constantly drops wifi connections that work fine on other devices, and sometimes isn't even recognized on boot in both Windows and Linux. Tried this over several Blades so it's a chip issue, not a bad unit. I'd rather have Intel than Broadcom considering Linux compatibility, but the 7260AC is just a nearly unusably buggy card.
2) The screen, while stunning if you can get a perfect unit, is apparently susceptible to dead pixels during manufacture. I ultimately returned all of the Blades I bought--something like 3--because the screens arrived with dead pixels. I even sent a unit back to get a new screen put on, and the replacement screen also came back with dead pixels, and worse, a horrible color shift. It was my dealbreaker. Dead pixels might be acceptable in a $700 laptop, but not in a ~$2,800 laptop. I suspect Apple bought out all of Sharp's grade A screens and Razer got stuck with the B screens.
3) The parts are all proprietary so if and when you need a repair, you have to mail your unit in and it ain't gonna be cheap out of warranty. Razer quoted me $200 when I asked for the cost to get an old battery replaced (as you have to do for aging laptops). Plus, since the unit gets very hot during gaming, I expect Blades will need frequent repair as they age.
If you can deal with these issues, the Blade is a genuinely good machine. Really the only serious competition the MBP has. Razer just has to sort out their screen supplier's QA process, and maybe make replacement parts available for home repair, and they'd be golden.
Similar to the Razer Blade 14, but cheaper, and without the matrix-esque green backlight (just white) is the Aorus XP3+, which is ridiculously powerful and light. The only difference appears to be that it's actually even a little lighter than the blade (1.8kg vs 2.03kg), the screen is not touch based, the processor is a little beefier, it has more memory, and by default comes with 2x 256GB SSD's in RAID0 rather than a single SSD.
And of course it is ENORMOUSLY cheaper. This may differ depending on locality but I bought the Aorus a couple of days ago for 2599 AUD, and the razer with the same storage is 3699 AUD.
I got rid of both my every day carry notebook and my beefy leave it on a desk workstation just from buying the XP3+, very impressed with it so far.
1) The choice of Wifi card, the Intel 7260AC, wasn't a good one--it constantly drops wifi connections that work fine on other devices, and sometimes isn't even recognized on boot in both Windows and Linux. Tried this over several Blades so it's a chip issue, not a bad unit. I'd rather have Intel than Broadcom considering Linux compatibility, but the 7260AC is just a nearly unusably buggy card.
2) The screen, while stunning if you can get a perfect unit, is apparently susceptible to dead pixels during manufacture. I ultimately returned all of the Blades I bought--something like 3--because the screens arrived with dead pixels. I even sent a unit back to get a new screen put on, and the replacement screen also came back with dead pixels, and worse, a horrible color shift. It was my dealbreaker. Dead pixels might be acceptable in a $700 laptop, but not in a ~$2,800 laptop. I suspect Apple bought out all of Sharp's grade A screens and Razer got stuck with the B screens.
3) The parts are all proprietary so if and when you need a repair, you have to mail your unit in and it ain't gonna be cheap out of warranty. Razer quoted me $200 when I asked for the cost to get an old battery replaced (as you have to do for aging laptops). Plus, since the unit gets very hot during gaming, I expect Blades will need frequent repair as they age.
If you can deal with these issues, the Blade is a genuinely good machine. Really the only serious competition the MBP has. Razer just has to sort out their screen supplier's QA process, and maybe make replacement parts available for home repair, and they'd be golden.