Hardware Overview and System Functioning

The hardware inside the Bract Stealth is typical for an ultraportable in early 2022. At that place'due south a high-end Intel Kaby Lake U-serial processor, up to 16 GB of DDR4 memory, and up to ane TB of SSD storage. Hither's the full listing of configurations available:

  • Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, 1440p non-touch display – $899.99
  • Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, 1440p bear upon display – $999.99
  • Cadre i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, 1440p touch display – $1249.99 (Reviewed)
  • Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 1440p touch on display – $1399.99
  • Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 4K touch display – $1599.99
  • Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, 4K touch on brandish – $1999.99

It's easy to discount the entry-level model, as for an extra $100, you'll upgrade the Bract Stealth from an Intel Cadre i5-7200U to a Cadre i7-7500U processor. The addition of a touchscreen is also handy, plus at $999.99 it'due south yet competitively priced against other notebooks of this course.

My review unit was a mid-spec model, kitted out with an upgraded 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Many people will be fine with just 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, particularly for basic workloads, but this $1,249 model should be pop among people that use their laptop for more than than merely web browsing. 16GB of RAM tin come up in handy particularly for artistic workloads like heavy prototype and video editing, tasks which are assisted by the extra functioning delivered by the Cadre i7-7500U over a Core i5 CPU.

Speaking of the Core i7-7500U, we're looking at a 14nm Kaby Lake CPU with ii physical cores and four threads. This processor has a base clock of 2.seven GHz with a Turbo Heave frequency upwardly to three.5 GHz, plus Intel Hard disk 620 graphics clocked at up to 1050 MHz. 4MB of L3 cache and a 15W TDP round out this processor's specifications.

The 7500U is the same processor I first reviewed in the Asus ZenBook 3, and then I was expecting to see decent operation but no significant improvements compared to Skylake-based last-generation laptops.

Luckily, here at TechSpot we reviewed the last-generation Blade Stealth with a Skylake Core i7-6500U within, which provides us with a direct comparison.

The Kaby Lake Blade Stealth is xviii percent faster on average across all the tests nosotros performed. In simply CPU-limited workloads, the new Blade Stealth was 13 percent faster in multi-threaded tests and 16 percent faster in single-threaded tests on average. These results aren't surprising, considering the i7-7500U is clocked betwixt eight and 13 per centum higher than the i7-6500U. Single-threaded results slightly exceeded what I was expecting, but non by a pregnant amount.

The last-gen Bract Stealth isn't the fastest i7-6500U laptop I've reviewed; that crown belongs to the Dell XPS 13. However, the new Blade Stealth is nevertheless comfortably faster than the XPS 13, simply by a smaller five percent margin. Compared to the Microsoft Surface Volume with a Core i7-6600U inside, nosotros're seeing similar performance margins.

These results really aren't adept enough to suggest there's much point upgrading from a Skylake laptop to a Kaby Lake laptop. However, if yous're using, say, a Broadwell-based Cadre i5-6200U laptop from a few years agone, upgrading to the Blade Stealth could give you a xxx percent performance improvement, which is decent.

Depending on the test, the Blade Stealth falls effectually the same performance mark equally the Asus ZenBook three. In CPU-limited workloads, the Blade Stealth was only 1 percentage faster, which is essentially inside the margin of error.