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So if you're interested in purchasing one of these three, I'm hoping to make this video to help you choose between them. Now first, I want to tackle the issue of pricing. The XPS 13 comes in a wide variety of configurations. You can get it as low as $800 for a
kinda gimpy-load out, but to make the three laptops comparable, I think the $1300 configuration is the best value.
The Razer Blade Stealth also starts at a thousand dollars, but the best value there comes in at $1250, where you get 16 gigs of RAM. And then the MacBook is $1500. Paper specs look weak for the price, but like I mentioned in my full review, the overall experience is very good. These all have excellent build quality.
The leader here is the MacBook, the machining on this thing is fantastic, and all the moving parts are very well fitted with no play. Structurally, it's rock solid as well. The XPS 13 deserves second place here. Carbon fibre chassis, aluminium panels, it's really well made.
The Stealth is also really good. Just not as good as the other two. The black anodisation can get nicked,
so be careful with it. Get a sleeve or a skin to protect the finish.
There's a link to those below. Now without a doubt, Apple has the best customer service amongst these three. They're far from perfect, in fact this particular MacBook is basically irreparable outside of Apple. But, I think their customer service is really good.
Dell would be a distant second. Still decent, but because they don't have retail stores it's harder to get stuff fixed and their support can be
hit or miss. Razer... They are a smaller company so you have to respect the fact that it's harder for a smaller company to have immediate customer support like the other two, They are also hit or miss, I would say they are the worst of the three.
If you need absolutely amazing customer service,
go for Apple. The keyboards are all pretty good, so it's more of a preference thing. For me personally, I would rank them as MacBook Pro first, Stealth second, and the XPS 13 third. The second-gen butterfly switches on the MacBook are better than the first gen, but they're not perfect.
The Stealth also has RGB lighting on the keys, which looks pretty cool. In terms of trackpads, the MacBook trackpad is king. It's big, it has the Taptic Engine so you can click anywhere, tracking is dead accurate, and clicking feels awesome. The other two are both good, I would say the XPS 13 is mildly better, but I'm happy using either of them.
Speakers on the MacBook Pro are by far the best. The loudest, the clearest, the best bass. I'd say that the Stealth is second best, a distant second best, but it's there, and the XPS 13 is third. Port selection is best on the XPS 13, there's Thunderbolt 3, two USB 3's, and an SD card slot.
And it has that sweet battery indicator. The Stealth trades the SD card slot for an HDMI port, and then the MacBook Pro is the worst of the bunch with only two Thunderbolt 3 ports. If you've seen my full review, you'll kinda understand my take on the whole "two port" thing. The best looking screen lid is still the XPS 13 because of that infinity edge display.
The panel itself also looks really nice. The MacBook Pro has larger bezels, but the display panel itself is the best of this group. It's lower resolution than the XPS 13, but it gets very bright. Plus, the colour gamut and accuracy is really good.
The panel on the Stealth is also solid, but it's a 12 inch screen and... Those bezels. Oh, those bezels! See, when I use the Stealth normally, I don't really notice the bezels. They're...
There, but because I'm doing work or I'm playing games on it, I don't really focus on the bezels. But when I do a comparison video like this, and I look at the difference between the two, it's pretty obvious and it sticks out like a sore thumb. But here's the thing. If you own one, I think you'll get used to it.
I don't think the bezels are a big deal. The two Windows machines have user upgradable storage. The Mac storage is technically upgradeable, but it's proprietary. Fortunately, it's already very fast.
They also have different processors, but they actually feel really similar to each other under normal use. You'd actually have a tough time telling them apart. Now, none of them have user upgradable RAM, the 16 gigs of RAM on the Stealth is nice if you keep lot of tabs open in Chrome and the i7 in there is also decent at 1080p video edits, but if you're doing regular Ultrabook things like emails, word processing, and media consumption or Excel stuff, these will all feel very similar in terms of performance. For gaming, the MacBook Pro actually has the best integrated video card of the bunch with the Iris 540.
You can get some decent frame-rates in light games, I'll do a full video on that later. The other laptops have HD 620 chips, newer chips, but slower. Moderate frame-rates in lighter games, but the Iris 540 on the MacBook Pro is definitely the clear winner here. The Stealth also has the best compatibility right now with external GPUs for gaming.
It connects with the Razer Core perfectly. The XPS 13 kinda works with the Core, but the 13 inch MacBook Pro doesn't connect at all right now, even in BootCamp. There are external GPUs on the horizon that should connect with these nicely though. The fans on the XPS 13 and the Stealth are the most audible on idle, quiet but audible.
The fans on the MacBook Pro on idle are essentially silent. When they're under load, they're all pretty quiet still. That's one advantage of dual-core CPUs. Thermally, they're all very comfortable to use under load with the XPS 13 being slightly warmer, but I wouldn't worry about thermal issues on these laptops at all.
The MacBook has the best battery life at over 9 hours of use. Now Apple laptops traditionally had much bigger batteries, but in tuning down its size, the battery is smaller. The XPS 13 and the Stealth both deliver good battery life too. Partially because of the more efficient Kaby Lake chips that they're running, they can comfortably hit 8 hours of battery life as well.
OK, here's the deal. You can't go wrong choosing any of these three, they're all very good laptops. But if you're comfortable with both MacOS and Windows, I would consider the best value to be the... Razer Blade Stealth right now.
Core i7, 16 Gigs of RAM, 256 Gigs of storage. It's a really good value. Now, it's not to say the other two aren't good, they are very good or else they won't be in this video, but they all kind of have their pros and cons. But best value? Razer Blade Stealth right now.
Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. It's been nice, I'll see you guys next time..