The 2019 Razer blade stealth is many things. It’s an entry level gaming laptop, it is one of the best built Windows computers, it’s light, powerful and beautiful. But don’t get the wrong idea, it is NOT an ultra book.

Ultrabook is a term trademarked by Intel. It is a description of a thin and light laptop that does not compromise battery life. The Razer Blade Stealth with GTX 1650 is thin and light, but does not possess a battery life that will get someone through a workday.

It feels amazing, I want to take it everywhere

The RBS 2019 ranks with the Surface and MacBook in terms of build quality. It feels lighter than the MacBook Pro 13" and is a joy to pull out of your backpack in any situation.

With the smoothest feeling glass trackpad in the game, it makes navigating through Windows 10 a smooth experience. I did feel a bit more stutter than on the Surface Laptop, but most PC trackpads have a caveat that you get used to over time.

Speaking of caveats, The right shift key is placed terribly for those of use who use the home row style of typing. With that being said, I got used to it in a few days.

I think Razer feels that as a gaming-centric company, they need to have big arrow keys, but if they were really in touch, they’d focus on promoting the usage of WASD. RGB on the RBS 19 is single-zone assumingely to help conserve battery. Giving gamers individual RGB on the WASD keys and letting writers have a full sized shift button would be a good medium.

Otherwise, the keyboard feels well built and comfortable to type on, the screen has no backlight bleeding issues. It is a very easy machine to be productive on because there are very few distractions.

What do you really expect from a 1650?

If you are spending $1799 on a laptop with a GTX 1650, gaming is probably not your main priority. You’re the type of person who is productive and on the move, otherwise you would have opted for the 15" 2060 model.

Still, this is the most powerful graphics card you can find in a 13" form factor. It means that as someone who plays World of Warcraft in your free time, you’ll be able to have a genuinely good experience at 60 fps. What this laptop really allows users to do is avoid dealing with integrated graphics.

If you’re traveling and want to play the new PC version of Red Dead Redemption, it will feel as if you had brought your Xbox One in a tiny package. The fact that Razer is the only brand who offers this kind of experience, combined with the general quality of the product helps dignify the price tag.

Everyone has already told you that you can get more performance for the price. If you are buying this, you don’t care about raw gaming performance in your laptop.

But if you don’t care about performance, you probably care about battery

And that is this laptop’s biggest flaw. With 5 hours of battery life, the selling point becomes, It is lighter than your big gaming laptop, less powerful, but you’ll still have to haul a 100 watt charger. And they don’t make the charger easy to haul around either.

Apple’s 87 watt charging brick plugs directly into an outlet, leaving one USB-C to USB-C cable to manage. Razer instead opts for a detachable wall socket to brick cable, and a big brick with a non-detachable USB-C cable connected to it. This is course for par for gamers, but is inconvenient for someone used to 13" ultrabooks.

On top of that, in order to comfortably hit 5–6 hours of charge, I had to be in best battery performance mode, with only Edge open and be conscious of closing out of apps. I felt the need to keep Discord, Slack and Spotify completely closed as much as possible, and make sure nothing was running in the background.

As a blogger and crypto trader, I always have a bunch of data feeds open to make sure I’m the first to information. While this is not the case for everyone, and a business student might use battery more passively, I know there are people out there who will drain the battery in 4 hours in their usual workflow.

Even with the GTX 1650 never showing usage in task manager, it will eat away at the battery just by being connected to the motherboard.

To top everything off, on other Stealth models, Razer advertises an estimated battery life. For the new 10th gen intel models, they opt to say 53.1 WH battery, giving no estimate. I complained about the battery on Razer’s Reddit, to which an employee responded asking me my model number so he could give me an estimate. I messaged them and never heard back.

It’s an ultraportable gaming laptop

If you are going to buy the 2019 Razer Blade Stealth with a GTX 1650, make sure you are fully aware that it is a gaming laptop in a small form factor. If you’re fine with bringing a 100 watt charging brick when leaving for over four hours, then this is an amazing laptop.

Still, it brings every bit of quality that Razer is known for to the table and is easily one of the best options for a Windows laptop. The style of Razer’s products is so amazing that I would be tempted to buy a low powered stealth that focused on battery.

This laptop is one of a kind, and if you don’t need all day battery, I’d recommend it whole heartedly.