I have a 14" 1080p Blade at home and another one for work. Overall it's my favorite laptop I've ever owned. I can do game dev, VR dev, and play games on it. It boots up fast. It's solidly built. The keyboard feels good to type on even though the travel is pretty shallow. The trackpad works pretty good. My only real complaint is that the fans can get pretty loud, but if that happens and I'm in a coffee shop I just switch to the power saver power plan and then it quiets down.
I read that quality control was an issue so I bought it from Microsoft's website so if there was a problem I could bring it into a MS store. But I haven't had a problem with it.
I and all my VR startup coworkers used Blades (mostly 14", a few 17") as daily drivers for the past year (since the 14" ones are one of the few non-huge laptops that can run a Rift) and we are basically all happy with them, so there's like 10 counter-anecdotes for you. I like mine better than either the Thinkpads or Macbooks I've used in the recent past.
my brother in law got a new razer gamepad, a Sabertooth, and the joystick won't go to 11 o'clock, only 10 or 12
i got a Razer Onza gamepad , secondhand but like-new, the R trigger jitters, if youre holding it all the way down, it flickers between 100% and 0%, but if you hold it say 90% of the way down, it stays at 90%
also won a new razer keyboard, an Ornata, in a competition, the clickiness of the keys is extremely uneven, some are very soft, some are very clicky, and the lights are also non-uniform. It works fine, but why pay a premium for low-quality uneven goods?
Also, a non-QA gripe, you have to install a big blob of razer software, and sign up for a razer account, and be online, to change the lighting effects, lol. There is open source software to change the lights that requires none of that.
I will never ever ever recommend razer hardware based on this sample of 3 different products that all suck and cost a huge premium over stuff that doesn't suck. The gamepads are twice as much money and lower quality than the microsoft or sony ones?
Throwing that stuff on the pile since it really annoyed me.
The issue with Razr appears to be inconsistent quality, not consistently bad quality. The definition of poor QC, really. It's also a reputation they've had for a long time, which I'm sure has a confirmation bias impact.
The failure rate for the big Windows laptop makers is 18-19% in 3 years. I am pretty sure they've all adopted a basic component level QA process and lets the customer be the QA for the final product.
I've only dealt with Dell and Lenovo products, and their QA is all over the place...from very poor to very good on identical products.
I suspect Razer has their laptops made by Foxconn or Asus or Large_Manufacturer_X. Foxconn not only manufactures a lot of products and components for Apple, but they also make laptops for many other manufacturers. I'd not be at all surprised to learn they have the same 18-19% failure rate as the other big names since they all are born from similar processes.
There is a certain pucker factor when you roll the dice on an expensive Windows box these days that shouldn't really be there.
Apple's failure rate over the same period of time is 10%.
I've been using a Razer Blade 14" as a daily work computer for several years now. It's been running great, and I've frequently recommended it in previous HN threads. The best part is that it runs Ubuntu almost flawlessly. (Usual Linux caveats apply, hibernate is borked and the Nvidia drivers are wonky, but you won't be gaming on Linux anyway.)
The only downside is that repairs are expensive and require shipping the machine to the shop which will take weeks. (Though I haven't had to send mine in, yet.) I wish they sold new batteries separately so users out of warranty can replace them themselves.
I've worked every day off of a Razer Blade for well over a year now and love it. Build quality seems great, battery life as well, beautiful screen, runs like a dream. I'm just one case of course and it's possible they have quality issues overall, but I'd recommend it to anyone who asks.
I use Razer mice exclusively for a good while now; find them a lot more ergonomic than whatever else I tried as a person with relatively large hands. Quality-wise, they're just fine, don't remember a single one actually breaking.
Not just qa - not durable enough buttons start double clicking in some mice. Happened to 3 Nagas (2 of which were warranty replacements for the 1st one) my wife used and to Lachesis I've had. Other mice have lasted years before and after.
I have a MSI GS60 ghost Pro (https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GS60-6QC-Ghost.html). There are newer models now but the specs are great and the look is (relatively) clean. There's lights on the keyboard which can be dimmed, but the slightly silly dragon logo on the lid can't. It's fairly inconspicuous though.
Not up to date on windows laptops to recommend a better alternative , but that’s not good industrial design at all. The fact that you have to dim the keyboard to hide the manufacturers bad taste is a clue!
I bought a MSI GT72VR - very pricy, but perfect for gaming and development, especially with the huge screen. Case design is pretty poor though: mines cracked in several places due to small drops from the couch (should take better care with a NZD 6k laptop, admittedly).
Get the Razer. If you go with cheap thin options like MSI or Gigabyte, you get backlight bleed in the screen. If you go with more name brand like HP Omen or Asus ROG stuff, you get thicc heavy or lower spec. Razer is the best, but there's a loud and obnoxious group of people who constantly whine on every Razer thread about build quality, which just isn't true. I suspect they're paid Apple shills, since Razer is Apple's greatest hardware threat now, especially with this new phone.
Found the Sonos employee. They've been extremely good about updating their software? I had to join the beta program and wait a year to get Spotify integration to work even after they advertised it as a feature. If you think they're the gold standard you've never seen their support forums..
I had a problem with their mac app years ago and ended up having a call on Christmas night with one of their engineers trying to track down what the bug was.
That said last I saw their software was just as buggy as its always been. Not worth the price IMO.
Snapchat just update for me today and they rolled a new feature that I'm assuming incorporates what Zenly did. You can now share your location with friends and see public/shared locations and stories. I can now zoom around the map looking at snap stories of specific locations without waiting for Snapchat to show it to me. It also shows a heatmap over your map so you can see areas with heavy activity. You can't click on the "hot" areas, it's just info.
Interesting, I totally can tap any "hotzone" I want and Snapchat will serve me random videos from that approximate location. It's very interesting to watch sporting events.
1. Because I'm often the domain specialist in how a certain daemon works and I've been asked to debug some issue
2. Because the production environment didn't have SELinux, until the ops team that manages it read this blog article, and decided to enable it: but I still need to do my job.
