Razer’s Blade Stealth is getting the quad-core processor treatment with access to Intel’s eighth-generation Core i7-8550U CPU, boosting the horsepower of the high-end ultraportable.
The refreshed Blade Stealth looks identical to its older Intel Kaby Lake CPU equipped siblings, with it sporting the same 3,200 x 1,800 resolution 13.5-inch display and 16GB of RAM.
But the addition of a quad-core version Intel’s mobile take on its Core i chips, should give the Blade Stealth a solid performance boost, with clock speeds running at a base rate of 1.8GHz but boosting to 4GHz, trumping its predecessor’s already impressive power.
Razer’s ultraportable joins the likes of Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 in getting access to Intel’s eighth-gen processors, but it comes at a price; $1,699 for a machine with 512GB of SSD storage.
Despite that price converting to £1,300, the Blade Stealth, available right now, costs a hefty £1,699. Razer pointed out that the upgraded Blade Stealth not only gets a processor boost but also had its battery improved so it lasts up to 10 hours away from a power socket.
One of the perks of the Blade Stealth is its Thunderbolt 3 port which allows for it to be connected to an external graphic enclosure giving it the grunt to run games and graphics heavy applications.
To go alongside the upgraded Blade Stealth, Razer has also revealed the Razer Core V2, an external GPU aluminium box toting support for Nivida’s latest 10 series Pascal GeForce cards and AMD’s Radeon 500 series GPUs via XConnect tech.
Claiming to have the world’s first dual Thunderbolt 3 internal controller, the Razer Core V2 has separate lanes for both graphics cards and other connected devices to ensure that GPU power being piped to the Razer Blade and other convertible laptops is not being hampered by other device data travelling through the Core V2. For additional connectivity two USB 3.0 ports can be found on the enclosure alongside a Gigabit Ethernet port.
Razer said the new Core V2 will give the high-end Blade Stealth desktop-grade power; we’ll have to test this before we can cast judgement on such a claim, but all that power will add to the new Blade Stealth’s price.
While the Core V2 is currently marked as ‘out of stock’ on the UK website, the GPU enclosure starts at $499 without a graphics card in it, so we can expect that getting close to the power of a decent gaming desktop PC will cost a considerable amount. Of course, a desktop isn’t so easy to lug sound as a laptop, so the steep costs of the Razer Blade Stealth and Core V2 at least buy mobility.
Related: Razer Blade review
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
