 Razer didn't surprise anyone when they released the new razor blade with better hardware and identical build quality to its predecessor It was the massive price drop that got me and a lot of others excited about it But apparently gigabyte doesn't think they went low enough Gigabyte figures they can do the same thing for 600 US dollars cheaper for a 512 gig model Wow and this is it The arrow 14 or as I'm calling it the poor man's blade Mass drop is currently featuring their exclusive k7 xx red headphones built by AKG learn more and buy one today at the link in the video description Let's start with specs it would be easy to put a core i5 with onboard graphics in this thing and say Hey, look, it's cheaper So you can't call something a blade competitor unless it's similarly equipped So like the blade 14 my config of the arrow 14 more on that later rocks a core i7 6700 hq 16 gigs of ddr4 memory and m.2 ssd and a GTX 970 m graphics card though it has 3 gigs versus 6 gigs of vram Which leads us pretty well into the differences because while raw system performance should be pretty darn close in some ways In others the experience will be pretty different for starters the ssd in my config is sada Instead of nvme in spite of the product pages PCIe messaging right at the top Onto the power brick in spite of its slightly lower rated output. It's a touch bigger But it includes a 2.1 amp usb port which is a super convenient feature for regular travelers Next is io where it's hard to declare a true winner The arrow 14 rocks three usb 3 5 gigabit type-a ports just like the blade Adds a usb 3.1 10 gigabit port on its type-c port but it sacrifices Thunderbolt on that same type-c connector, and then it gets more complicated they both have hdmi But the arrow 14 has hdmi 2.0 for 60 hertz 4k output and a mini display port for easy conversion to anything Including vga making up for some of the functionality log Lost by that thunderbolt port that's missing and then finally and if this isn't a home run It's a ground rule double for sure the arrow 14 has an sd card reader whoo-hoo Moving on to the display the arrow 14 has what gigabyte? Very optimistically refers to as a 3k 14 inch ips display with an actual resolution of 2560 by 1440 Which i've usually heard referred to as 1440p or two and a half k which is only about 64 Percent the number of pixels as the blade 14's 3k plus display but Deceptive product marketing aside. I think this is a great move at this size It doesn't appreciably affect the sharpness of text or other on-screen elements and it contributes to the sharpness of text Or other on-screen elements and it contributes directly to better battery life And longer battery life when gaming at the panel's native resolution It's not as bright as razors display and the huge chin bar reminds me of notebooks from years past But it's got dc backlight modulation That's why it's not flickering in our b-roll and a matte finish with strong contrast performance that makes it look really good in person I did miss the touch screen quite a few times And g-sync or higher refresh rates would be on the wish list for an aero 2 But these features would add cost and device thickness So overall i'm not complaining here on the subject of thickness Whatever gigabyte might think about this the blade 14 continues to be the obvious competitor here And while you could convince me that the aero 14 is the same size if it had been a couple of weeks since i'd seen a blade Side by side the difference is noticeable. The aero 14 is about 15 percent larger by volume Most of which is due to its increased thickness But once again, this is a matter of trade-offs rather than an opportunity for me to declare a clear winner For your extra thickness you get socketed memory slots two of them allowing the aero 14 to be upgraded to 32 gigs of off-the-shelf ram this apacer stuff that I had lying around from an ad spot a while ago worked great Making it a shockingly well equipped workstation competitor you get a second m.2 slot for an additional storage drive with raid support by the way and you get a whopping 90 plus watt-hour battery that translated into a huge real world battery life advantage at the same screen And keyboard backlight brightness speaking of the keyboard gigabyte also makes a point of mentioning the super long key travel In their marketing materials, but frankly, I don't think it contributed anything here I mean the good news is that it didn't hurt the experience either The force required to type is a little bit heavy for my tastes But I did get used to it in a few days and at this point I feel like the keyboard With the well positioned macro keys contributing significantly here is a strong point for this device in spite of its monochromatic backlighting and Missing right function key that makes one-handed volume adjustments a bit more of a chore as for the touchpad It's not the best I've ever used, but I've been using this thing daily for over two weeks now, and it's yet to make me upset So very good marks for both of these Onto overall build quality the one finger 180 plus degree hinge is really nice the speakers are very loud and very clear But sound like they're coming from somewhere else due to their position on the bottom of the device The built-in webcam isn't anything special and there's more chassis flex than premium products like Dell's XPS 15 Apple's MacBook line and yes that comparison again the blade 14 But nowhere near the gigabyte notebooks of old that I refused to review because I could bend them into a boomerang shape with minimal effort and You are saving a few bucks here, so I don't mind making some concessions when it comes to overall robustness But what about performance then Linus well as long as it doesn't thermal throttle this hardware combo shouldn't shock us So the only real difference here comes into play if you insist on playing at native resolution So make of that then what you will on the subject of thermals It's trade-off time again the aero 14 manages to be quieter than the blade 14 Underload and I'm thinking this is in no small part due to its much less restrictive exhaust vent under the screen But it suffers from noticeably higher keyboard and touchpad temperatures at idle Then while gaming its touchpad is actually four degrees cooler But it's keyboard which you're more likely to be touching while you're gaming because you'll probably be using an outside mouse is four degrees hotter Add to that though that the components inside the blade 14 generally run hotter And it becomes a question of personal preference at least if you have enough to afford either one Which leads us then into the conclusion? I don't like some of gigabytes sketchy claims 3k display all those callouts for m.2 NvMe raid when my config the only one available in the states at the moment has a single 512 gig m.2 SATA drive And I don't understand why they felt the need to behave this way because there's no need to stretch the truth For the aero 14 to be a fantastic machine it does that on its own it gives up some build quality It gives up a touchscreen and an RGB backlit keyboard and Thunderbolt and it is a little bit bigger than the blade 14 But it offers up significantly better battery life HDMI 2.0 an SD card reader more flexible configurations, so I talked about my config I'd expect to see more in the future thanks to two slotted memory and M.2 bays a two-year global warranty and a much lower price And it does all that while including a USB to Ethernet dongle for folks who prefer wires to killer networking Wasn't that fun? You know what else is fun saving money on your phone bill? Do you ever find yourself going cheap? Why is it that I when I go to the restaurant I have to order you know? Six cheeseburgers for the week and then if I don't use four of those cheeseburgers I just have to throw them in the garbage. I only ate two of them Why can't I just buy two well that is how mobile phone bills work you have to say in advance like oh? I'm probably going to talk to you know people for 227 minutes this month, but then if you only use 226 you paid for something You didn't use well not with Ting with Ting you pay for only what you use and the average Ting bill is only 24 bucks a month per device just head over to Linus dot ting.com We've got it linked in the video description and try out their savings calculator you enter your last couple of bills And then it spits out hey Here's how much you would be saving on Ting and boom you can see if you'd be a happy person and by the way data Is now just ten bucks per gig beyond the first gigabyte? Pretty freaking cool, so sign up and you'll get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device wow So thanks for watching guys if this video sucked Do you know what to do? But if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or check out the link to where to buy? This laptop which we will have in the video description usually it's at Amazon Also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join So you can talk shop with other tech geeks now that you're done doing all that stuff You're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right to check out our latest video Over on channel super fun. Berkel and Dennis go for a joyride in my car for some reason Does that kind of thing?