 Now it's hardly a secret that I like the Razer Blade. Their 2018 model addressed almost every previous problem, except the price. At $2,400 US dollars, it is darn expensive. But, what if you could save a buck by cutting, got some Razer humor there, some of the bells and whistles? Well, Razer had the same idea. This is the base version of the Razer Blade, a slightly lower powered, slightly thicker model with a significant price cut. But has this made the blade more accessible, or just worse? Well, you guys are smart kids who read the title before you click a video, so I guess you already know the answer. (*upbeat music*) Compared to the advanced version of the blade, the most obvious change is the thickness. But in return, we ditch the proprietary power connector and we get gigabit ethernet. And that's on top of the blade's already very solid IO. And I'm happy to say that the base version has actually kept Thunderbolt 3 support. But the extra thickness does take away some of the sex appeal. And while the overall look and feel is still pretty good, the bottom feels a lot more plasticky and cheap. CPU performance also stays solid though, thanks to a six core core i7 processor and the addition of two terabytes of spinning storage on top of the 240 gig boot SSD, means that you'll be able to bring a massive game library with you on the go. And there's even more good news. For years, Razer Blades were known for sounding like an F1 car mating with a leaf blower. And although the basic blade does get a bit louder than the advanced model, it is much better than the older rounded versions. So far, so good. Until now. The real sacrifice that was made for the base blade was in the graphics department. The reduction to a GTX 1060 Max-Q leaves some gaming performance to be desired. Now, it's quite a competent 1080P gaming experience. And in a vacuum, this machine would be getting a stellar review. But the issue is that other computer makers exist. Asus' Zephyrus leaves the basic blade in the dust with its GTX 1070 Max-Q, and this thing isn't even an outlier. Making matters worse, the extra FPS wouldn't even help us much, because the basic is only available with a 1080P 60 Hertz display, which is a real bummer if they at least offered. Maybe for like $100 more or something, a 120 Hertz or a 144 Hertz screen option, they could make a real play for e-sports gamers with this machine. Titles like Overwatch and League of Legends would easily run at that frame rate on a 1060 Max-Q. So once again, the Zephyrus whups the base blade's butt with a 144 Hertz display on top of its better specs. And then adding insult to injury, the webcam on the Zephyrus also pones the Blade Basic, another thing that got a considerable downgrade from the Advanced-Q. So that means that the Blade Basic is now a tough sell for performance enthusiasts, e-sports players, and for game streamers. That's rough. But the thing is that while the Zephyrus does punt the base blade out of the park when it comes to gaming, have you ever looked at this thing? It has its own issues. If you try to use it as a lap top, like on your lap, it just doesn't work. Between the flappy doodle thing at the bottom and the keyboard being so close to you, there is absolutely no way to get comfortable. And while the minuscule trackpad crammed over on the right here is more usable than you might expect, the Blade's is one of the best on the market. It's large, accurate, and really my go-to example for how trackpads should be done on a Windows machine. Too bad I can't say the same about the keyboard. So while the Basic Blade wins for gaming on the go, I'm really disappointed that they didn't manage to keep the same keyswitches as the Advanced model, trading them for a considerably mushier alternative. They're bad enough that if you can find a desk, it's safe to say that typing and gaming would be more enjoyable on the Zephyrus, at least until the battery dies. So one of the greatest strengths of the new 2018 Blade is its massive battery. But, hold on a moment, remember how the Base Blade got a two terabyte hard drive? Why isn't this available on the much more expensive Advanced Blade? Well, you don't save enough space for something like that magically. And when we did open up the Base Blade, we were greeted with, well, the man behind the curtain, so to speak. There it is. So we have swapped out the 80 watt hour battery in the Advanced for a 65 watt hour in order to make room for this hard drive. On a more positive note, at least the upgradability is solid in here with both our M.2 drive and our DDR4 SODIMS easily accessible, along with your WiFi card if you're into that sort of thing. So we've talked a lot about the Zephyrus in this video, almost as much as the Base Blade. And that's because in many ways, it is the clearly better laptop. If you're looking to do a fair bit of gaming, the better display and graphics card make the Zephyrus the easy choice. But what about the folks who only occasionally game? Well, for you guys, honestly, I don't think I can really recommend the Basic Blade either, not in a world where the Dell XPS 15 exists. For the same price, it does cost you a substantial graphics downgrade to a GTX 1050 Ti. But the much better screen, keyboard, general build quality and massive 97 watt hour battery make it superior in pretty much every other scenario. With the Advanced version of the Razer Blade 2018, we loved Razer's no compromises approach. It's a great gaming machine, but it's also usable day to day. Then with the Basic, what we realized was that once Razer started making compromises while still commanding a relatively high price tag, they opened themselves up to competition from all sides, making this machine still good. Like just to be very clear, it's still good. It's just harder to recommend. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy this stuff if you featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join. What? I just want to be respectful of the viewers time. They don't want to sit through that. But they have to anyway, that's like 25 seconds or something. They don't have to, we can't force them to do anything. Forget we.