 A short while back, I switched to the new Blade Stealth after my old one died. And in this video, I outlined my reasons for switching, which ultimately came down to... They were bad and I should have waited for Alex to come back from vacation because he knows what's best for me. Since then, I've actually been daily driving the XPS 13 two-in-one though, which I love other than its lack of IO. But what we have right here could change all that. This might look like a normal Razer Blade Stealth, but it is much more than that. And the thought of being able to game on the road without needing an external graphics card sounds pretty darn tempting. LTT fans are gonna get $10 off iFixit's holiday sale with offer code Linus10. So grab that ProTech toolkit you've been wanting to buy or get it as a gift this holiday season. It's iFixit.com slash Linus down below. Let's get into it. For the most part, the Razer Blade Stealth remains unchanged, but that's a good thing. Size, shape and the weight are all the same in spite of the big upgrade. The anemic MX150, which we considered to be basically a pointless power sink due to its lack of performance last time around has been replaced with an invisible power sink. And with the default power sink, has been replaced with an Nvidia GTX 1650 Max-Q. Now, obviously, this is still not gonna be a gaming beast like the Blade 15, but given the portability of the stealth, this is a huge deal. I mean, many have tried to combine the best of portability and performance, and some, like the original Blade 14, the Alienware M15, they get close. But this is something different. This is a three pound machine that is just over 15 millimeters thick, and yes, that is a real AAA game running on it. But how well do they run? Well, first up, we've got Rainbow Six Siege, and we're able to maintain nearly 100 frames per second on ultra detail, with the minimums barely dropping below 60 FPS. This excellent showing continues in Doom 2016 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where you might need to drop the details a bit to get a solid 60 FPS, but it is certainly attainable. So I think it's fair to say that when it comes to e-sports titles or slightly older games, you'll be having a shockingly good experience. Now onto the big guns, though. Can this mini monster chew through Rockstar's famously poorly optimized Red Dead Redemption 2? Now, in fairness to it, we did test this the week of launch, so I hope the game runs better by the time this video comes out, but, you know, screw it. We're doing it raw, and hey, that's actually not bad. It's not great. We're running mostly on low, with occasional drops below 30 FPS, but another way to look at this is, hey, you're playing basically the most demanding game on the market anywhere at console frame rates. Now, all this testing was done at 1080p, the resolution of the display behind me, which brings us to one of the largest shortcomings of the Stealth GTX when it comes to gaming. The highest refresh rate available on this machine is just 60 hertz. Now, it's not a bad panel. It's factory calibrated, and it looks pretty darn good to the eye, but given that there are thousand dollar gaming laptops out there with high refresh rate displays, I would like for it to at least be an option here, because this thing would easily pump Rocket League at over 100 FPS. Alternately, instead of a high refresh rate option, I would at least enjoy having a 1080p touchscreen option. There is a 4K touchscreen, but like, come on guys, it's 13 inch. I do not need 4K at that size, and it's a little rich for me at 200 additional dollars. Although with that said, the change from plastic to glass on the bezels does class up the joint a little. So, all right then, since the display is clearly aimed more at creatives or mobile professionals than really your hardcore gamers, how is the Blade Stealth as a mobile workstation? The four core Core i7-1065G7 is pretty snappy for light tasks, ramping up to a respectable 3.9 gigahertz at times. But when we hit it with an all core load, it's settled in at just 1.9 gigahertz. The good news here, I guess, is that temperatures are kept in check while all this is happening, but the 15 watt power limit seems to really prevent this chip from stretching its legs. So in the real world, what this means is that while you're on the go, the Blade Stealth will be powerful enough to photo or video edit without much trouble. So if you're doing that casually, it's a great choice. But if you're doing it professionally, you'd wanna step up to a Blade 15 or a Dell XPS so that you can use six cores or more running at peak performance to chew through your renders. On that subject, we're actually reviewing Dell's version of the XPS 13 with a six core CPU. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. One thing to note is that as you're video editing or gaming, the palm rest area can get pretty toasty. Now, for some Canadians, I could see that being a feature, but I'm well equipped with warm, comfy clothing thanks to lttstore.com. So it was kind of a drag for me. So then we can safely say that the Blade Stealth GTX is a powerful enough for a little machine laptop, but how does it fare as a super portable thin light? Well, one area where Razer never disappoints is in the quality and rigidity of their laptop chassis. This all aluminum frame feels super solid with none of the surfaces yielding in the normal problem areas. The design overall is understated, like besides the RGB on the keyboard, the thing is basically just a matte black rectangle, and we consider that to be a good thing. One of the things I actually miss most too about the Stealth is the I.O. With dual type A ports and two type C ports, both with charging and one with full Thunderbolt 3 functionality, along with a headphone jack, the only dongle you really need is a type C to HDMI. Unfortunately, what I don't miss is the keyboard. The things I liked are still here. The switches have a nice snappy feel and there are almost no stabilization issues, but the small annoyances add up to making this one of the most frustrating laptops that I have ever used. First up, the backspace, backslash, and enter are all too small and the edges of the device are a little bit on the sharp side, which can be uncomfortable if you have larger hands. But I could have forgiven all of those things. The reason I stopped using this laptop is the shortened right shift key. Like, I just don't get it. Is the lead keyboard designer at Razer a henpecker? Because there's no other scenario that I can imagine where they would allow something this stupid to occur. What makes it particularly egregious is that if you miss the tiny shift key and instead accidentally bump both the shift key and the up arrow while you're reaching for it, you will successfully highlight your entire current row of text and then assuming you don't notice because you're typing, immediately write over it. This happened so often while I was taking notes in meetings that with a couple of weeks into using this thing, my entire staff would start yelling at me every time it happened for me to ditch it for a different laptop. Now, I'm sure there's some reason that they couldn't move the arrow keys down and then elongate the shift like on the regular blade, but this is how it is. And the cold hard truth is I'm not a fan. As for the trackpad, I still think it's great, but funny thing is on the last unit I was using, it actually broke in this really weird inconsistent way that led me to question whether it was actually broken or if I just sucked at using it. Turns out it, yes, it was broken. And it was one of the worst trackpad experiences that I've had in quite a while. Now this one's fine. And given that none of the other Blade Stealths that I've ever used have had this issue, I can't say definitively that it's a common problem. But the thing is that given our past experiences as a whole with Razer's laptop build quality, I don't feel like I can just not include mentioning it. What I also need to mention is the battery. With 53 watt hours of juice, the total raw capacity of the Stealth GTX is pretty similar to other ultrabooks like the XPS 13 or Surface Laptop. But the addition of a GPU and a particularly beefy one does drop your battery life significantly, down to between five to six hours in our testing. Now that's actually pretty reasonable, but it's still a pretty big drop from the eight to 10 that we got with the integrated GPU. And it does take the Stealth GTX out of the all day battery category. So then once again, would I recommend the Razer Blade Stealth GTX? Well, with the 1650 version starting at $1,800, you need to be sure that both the portability and performance are absolutely necessary for you because there are certainly cheaper options if you're willing to sacrifice one of them. But if you have the cash, hate compromises, and you just plain suck at typing, then I think it's a great option. Just like watching another LTT video. How about the one I did on the XPS 13 II and we're gonna have that link down below. Micro Center has 25 locations across the US and they are featuring the Manegear Vibe 1 PC exclusively available at Micro Center. It's got a Core i9-9900K, an RTX 2080 Ti, and much more. And if you buy it in store, there's a $500 discount on the PC. If you're not near a Micro Center, no problem. You can also buy the system off Amazon. Check it out at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching guys. If you're looking for another video to watch, we already suggested one, so I guess we're done here. Subscribe.