Razer amplifies its Blade Stealth laptop and introduces V2 External Graphics Enclosure

Razer is launching a new variant in its Blade Stealth laptops, swapping out the dual-core Kaby Lake processor introduced earlier this year for a much more powerful 8th generation quad-core mobile CPU. For those wanting to crank more power out of their laptops, the company has also upgraded its Razer Core into its second version, officially supporting taller cards.

It’s not been long since Razer updated its Blade Stealth laptops, with its last instalment introducing its 13.3-inch Quad HD+ (3200 x 1800), capacitive multi-touch display. This all carries over to the new variant, with the company swapping its previous dual-core options of Intel’s Core i7-7200U or Core i7-7500U mobile chips for the more robust 8th generation Core i7-8550U, upping its cores by two in the process.

The Intel Core i7-8550U is a 4-core/8-thread processor clocked at 1.8GHz to 4GHz, along with 8MB of cache and a 25W TDP. This, alongside Razer tweaking the Blade Stealth’s battery has resulted in the company managing to increase battery life by 2 hours, totalling a rating of 10 hours.

“Our engineers have done something truly remarkable with the new Blade Stealth by significantly increasing power while extending battery life,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. “The new Blade Stealth is the most well-rounded Windows laptop out there, and it can be further supercharged with the help of the new Razer Core V2.”

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The Razer Core V2 only takes a single Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) connection to connect any laptop to the graphics enclosure. It is the first enclosure to feature dual Thunderbolt 3 controllers that helps separate the lanes to speed up graphics and other connected devices rather than experiencing a bottleneck. The Core V2 also features four USB 3 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet connection to fit a wider range of peripherals.

The enclosure itself has been redesigned to fit a 500W power supply on the inside as well as its interior now accommodating a range of taller GPUs that were previously inaccessible. Officially, the Razer Core V2 is compatible with Nvidia’s 10 series and AMD’s 500 series of cards, however there is no mention of AMD’s newer Vega line-up at this time.

Like its predecessor, the new variant of the Razer Blade Stealth doesn’t contain a dedicated graphics card and instead relies on integrated graphics, making it the perfect pair with the Razer Core V2. The quad-core model is already available for $1,699, equipped with 16GB of RAM and a 512 GB PCIe SSD, whereas the Core V2 priced at $499 and is coming soon to the US, Canada, UK, Germany and France.

KitGuru Says: Personally, I feel like the cost of the Razer Blade Stealth without a discrete GPU is a little out of my price range, but the way in which the company is expanding its offering does cater to a wider range of people. Are you interested in the new Razer Blade Stealth or Core V2?

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