The Razer Blade Stealth 13 is, at its core, all about ultrabook elitism. This lightweight, petite laptop has always been priced outside the usual range of comparable, chunkier gaming notebooks and ultrabooks with comparable CPU specs. In the most obvious nod to the unibody MacBook, the Razer, but resolutely in black trim, carries a similar price tag.

The latest version of the 13-inch Razer machine is virtually identical to the previous version, but with some significant and welcome additions: 16GB of DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration and a 512GB SSD at its heart. The Ice Lake version I first played with had a straight GTX 1650 Max-Q variant, but the late 2020 Tiger Lake Stealth 13 has an updated GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q discrete GPU that Razer later shifted

For that reason, the Tiger Lake Stealth 13 is the most popular of the three.

This makes it the most powerful 13-inch ultrabook on the market today with the most powerful discrete graphics silicon. The closest may be the MX350/MX450 machines, but we won't go that far.

The difficulty is that the GTX 1650 Ti is old news, even with this machine coming out in late 2020; as soon as the RTX 30 series cards hit desktops, we've been waiting for their notebook versions to come out, and they were announced at CES in 2021 It has just been announced at CES 2021.

Given that MSI has now unveiled its own Stealth 15M with the Nvidia RTX 3060 as the base model, it seems that the green team's new GPU can fit into a 0.63-inch thin chassis without breaking a sweat on silicon. That said, the Razer Blade Stealth 13 is actually even thinner than that, so we're not sure if even Nvidia's current lowest-spec mobile Ampere GPU will fit comfortably inside this slender aluminum shell.

However, the Tiger Lake processor is a welcome addition: the Core i7 1165G7 runs at a current maximum of 28W, and while the cooling level provided by the slim chassis does not reach the heights of the pre-production laptops Intel tested last year, it still outperforms the previous generation Ice Lake i7 by a wide margin.

This is true for both single-threaded and multithreaded. In fact, the single-core scores are quite spectacular for an ultrabook, showing why Intel is targeting the Tiger Lake H35 series of mobile chips for inclusion in actual gaming laptops, not just ultralight models of this kind. In fact, MSI's skinny new machine promises a Special Edition 35W chip and RTX 3060 combination, which would make for one heck of a gaming machine. That said, you can't call it an ultrabook at 15 inches. [Despite announcing its new Blade series at CES, Razer itself has yet to announce anything about this next-generation successor to the Stealth 13. With its low-spec GPU, it will not be able to match the 1080p screen and ultra settings of the latest games.

Nevertheless, we ran Far Cry New Dawn at the highest Ultra 1080p setting and averaged 50 fps. However, tests of Metro Exodus and The Division 2 were closer to the 30 fps mark. This means that one must measure one's set goals against entry-level GPU silicon.

Battery life, however, may be a bit disappointing. With only 1 hour and 10 minutes of actual game time, it doesn't necessarily nail the ideal of a portable gaming device.

But given that this is the smallest, lightest, thinnest gaming laptop around, you're probably already comfortable with that expectation; if you want to spend $2,000 on a 15-inch machine that makes 1080p gaming your breakfast, the Razer has you anyway. You're covered.

Yes, $2,000. I said please ask about pricing. And that includes the $200 OLED premium due to the fact that it comes with that stunning FHD display, even if it must be limited to 60Hz for the sexiest panel technology. But the moment you pick up a laptop at this price with a GTX 1650 Ti, silly notions like "value" quickly go out the window.

We appreciate that Razer offers the option to view the OLED screen in FHD trim as well as traditional 4K resolution. This machine should not be paired with a UHD panel; we just don't have the silicon chops to support UHD panels outside of Windows desktops.

Despite the financial drawbacks, I can't help but love this machine. This rugged, slim gaming ultrabook is still just a silicon dreamboat, albeit somewhat tempered by the glimpse of the mobile future promised at this year's CES.