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00:00This is the OLED Razer Blade. It's a device that I've been looking forward to for a while.
00:07They announced it like six months ago, it's finally here.
00:09And if you're interested in gaming laptops at all, regardless of whether or not you want an OLED screen,
00:14you should probably pay attention to this because this technology is expensive right now,
00:17but it's getting to the point where it's going to become increasingly available to all the manufacturers out there.
00:23And I think more and more companies are going to offer an OLED panel.
00:26And I think it's just, it's a great screen for some people, but it's not a great screen for other users.
00:32So, you should just be aware of what this thing offers.
00:35So, Razer is a gaming brand.
00:38Sure, let's go with that, a gaming brand.
00:40And I'm going to focus on gaming first.
00:43And just, I'm not going to sugarcoat this.
00:45For certain games, OLED panels can be awesome, but for other types of games, it's not great.
00:50Just to be blunt, if you're playing first-person shooters, and that's the type of game that I like the most,
00:54it's just not ideal.
00:56So, when you're playing shooter games, you're normally staring at, like, a reticle on your screen, right?
01:00Like, your targeting reticle.
01:02You'll look at other stuff, like your health, like your cooldowns and stuff like that,
01:04but the majority of your time, your eyeballs are glued onto that reticle.
01:07And there's stuff behind the reticle, like the environment, the players you're shooting at,
01:11that moves around.
01:12And the smoother the screen, the better.
01:14And OLED panels are capped at 60Hz.
01:16So, the most you're going to see is 60 frames per second.
01:18So, the motion that's behind that reticle, and the environment, and all the stuff that's happening around that reticle,
01:23it is choppy compared to a 120 or a 144Hz panel.
01:27And because you can get gaming laptops with, like, a high refresh screen for a thousand bucks nowadays,
01:33you kind of have to bring that into equation when you're talking about a $3,000 gaming laptop.
01:38So, that sentiment of the choppiness I'm talking about is only a problem for me with competitive shooters.
01:44If you're playing other stuff, like RTS games, or MOBAs, or single-player games,
01:48it really isn't as big of an issue.
01:50But for competitive shooters, where stuff is moving around really fast, a 60Hz panel is limiting.
01:55Now, I will say that after playing games for a couple days at 60 frames per second,
01:59my eyes got used to that lowered refresh rate.
02:02And, I mean, it's fine. Like, you just kind of get used to it.
02:05But do you really want to be in the business of getting used to things if you're spending this kind of money?
02:09Like, I feel like you should be paying for what you actually want in your gaming experience.
02:13So, if you're picking up a Razer Blade, you want to make sure that you're buying one with the right screen,
02:17depending on the games that you're playing.
02:19Now, if you don't play games at all, then there's massive benefits to OLED panels for media consumption and media creation.
02:26So, the first thing you'll notice when you look at an OLED panel on a laptop is how bright the image is.
02:32Like, it's super bright, it's super vibrant, and it's because the way that this technology works.
02:37OLED panels work differently from your standard IPS panel.
02:40Like, the individual pixels can turn on and off by themselves,
02:44and when they're off, the black that it's producing, or the black image that you're seeing,
02:49it's a completely black pixel.
02:51It's as if there's no screen there.
02:53You can notice it most dramatically when you have a black wallpaper.
02:56Like, you can barely tell where the screen edge starts and begins.
03:00The pixels also get super bright.
03:02These panels are not lit by, like, a backlight, like a traditional IPS panel.
03:07These pixels are individually lit.
03:09They all turn on by themselves, and so when they're on, they become super bright.
03:13This is almost 600 nits compared to the 300 on the regular IPS Razer Blade.
03:18Now, when it comes to colors, because it's an OLED panel, the colors are just super vibrant.
03:23You see it on phones, you see it on TVs, and now we see it on laptops.
03:26Just super poppy colors on these screens.
03:29When it comes to watching movies or videos or any kind of media consumption, especially HDR content,
03:35like, you're just getting such a treat on the OLED panel.
03:38If you're working with a screen, like if you're doing photography or video work,
03:41and you need color accuracy, you just need to make sure that these screens are color calibrated properly.
03:46Because if they're not, like, you're just gonna get super oversaturated colors.
03:50You do need to make sure that you run a proper calibration program.
03:52Now, Razer does a decent job coming out of the factory,
03:54but I still found that when I ran my Spyder on this thing, it adjusted it a little bit,
03:59just to be a little more natural looking.
04:01The performance on the OLED Razer Blade is fantastic.
04:04They've configured this thing with an RTX 2080 Max-Q and the 9th generation 6-core CPUs.
04:09These things are super powerful.
04:10But there's an interesting discovery I found on this laptop while I was reviewing this thing.
04:16The thermals on this device are great.
04:18It actually gets better temperatures than my 2018 Razer Blade, which has been undervolted a little bit.
04:23It turns out, however, that Razer has undervolted this device out of the factory.
04:28It's been lowered by negative 100 millivolts,
04:30and it's something that will improve the thermal performance of these devices.
04:34But interestingly, when I checked my Razer Blade Pro, like the new recent one,
04:38that was also lowered by negative 100 millivolts.
04:41So it's something that Razer's been doing to their devices more recently to improve the temperatures on their systems.
04:47And there's a part of me that's like, that's fantastic.
04:49I'm glad that they're doing this because this is something that I would normally do,
04:52and I feel like a lot of, kind of, consumers would not know or care to undervolt their systems.
04:57So this is something that provides the consumer with a, kind of, better thermal performing system.
05:02However, it's weird that they don't tell their potential customers that they're undervolting their systems.
05:07Now, there's a part of me that's perfectly fine with this,
05:09but there's another part of me that wonders, by not stating that they're doing this,
05:14does it mean that their regular systems, before they started undervolting their CPUs,
05:19does that mean that their vapor chambers and fans aren't good enough to keep up with thermal output of these new CPUs?
05:25Because it kind of seems like that's what's going on here.
05:27And also, I did a review recently of Apple's most recent MacBook,
05:31and I wondered, how is the thermal, like, performance of that new MacBook so good?
05:36And I just thought, maybe they're undervolting their CPUs as well.
05:39I don't think that's something that's easy to discover, but they're clearly doing it on these Razer systems.
05:44And it's something that I think is good.
05:46Like, I think it's a good thing that they're doing this for the end user,
05:50it's just that I don't think this has been done before in the laptop industry, before 2019.
05:54So, this device, if you're interested in the OLED panel, I mean, you might be concerned about burn-in.
05:59I've talked about burn-in in previous videos.
06:01I do not think burn-in is an issue with the Samsung panels.
06:05All of these laptops that have OLED displays right now, they're all being made by Samsung, the panels.
06:10So, I've done some tests, it seems clean.
06:12I don't think that burn-in is an issue.
06:14And if you're wondering about battery life, this is something that I think some of you might be interested in.
06:18I ran the same battery tests as I normally do with previous laptops.
06:22250 nits is like the screen brightness I normally set it to.
06:26It's about a 4-hour battery life compared to the 5.5 from the regular Razer Blade.
06:30Now, this is a 4K panel, but it's also an OLED panel, but that's really the difference.
06:35Okay, I feel like for most people that are interested in this device, there's some information now that you have to work with.
06:41For most people that are looking at gaming laptops, I don't know if I'd recommend the 60 Hz OLED panel.
06:48I feel like most people should still lean towards the higher refresh IPS panels.
06:52But if you're interested in really nice visual image, this is a really good option.
06:57I will say, though, that I think this technology will improve over the next year or two
07:01to the point where we're seeing high refresh OLED, and at that point, like, that'll be the option of choice.
07:07Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
07:10See you guys next time.