[pagetrip]

Budget: Around USD 1600-1700
Purpose: Every day general use and photo editing (no video editing)
Prefer 2 in 1 form factor: No
FHD or 4K: Screen color accuracy is more important .
Gaming: NO

I am considering these two laptops:
Lenovo C940: 10th Gen i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Iris Graphics, 14inch 4K display - $1600 (with employee discount)

Razer Blade Stealth 13: 10th Gen i7, 16GB RAM, 512TB SSD, GeForce GTX 1650 Max Q, 13 inch FHD display - $1700

Did not select 4K screen for Razer because the price would go over my budget. I also considered Dell XPS 13 and HP Spectre X360. Had to eliminate HP due to their QC issues and their 4K screen banding issues. Dell is costing 1900 for similar specs which is beyond my budget.

Both Lenovo C940 and Razer Blade Stealth 13 have awesome specs and are around the same price. I like Razer due to its smaller form factor, build quality, and the graphics card. I like Lenovo due to 4K screen and 1TB SSD.

How good is Razer's FHD screen in terms of color accuracy and brightness? I know it cant match quality of a 4K screen but I am good as look as it has good color accuracy and decent brightness. Also, how critical is external graphics card for photo editing? Is it any more helpful than Intel Iris graphics?

Which one would you pick?
Thanks.

[Collin Cate]

hey i wanted to give you my experience with both. I dont do a lot of photo or video editing but i was looking for a thin light laptop with good screen quality and relatively good power. I purchased a Razer blade stealth 13 with the 1650 initially. I love the build quality and form factor. The screen is very good as well. However, the keyboard is just horrible. They made the right shift key the same size as a regular key and its very difficult to get used to it if you type a lot. The keys themselves are quite crammed and overall it is not a good typing experience. I know they gear this laptop towards gamers and maybe that why they altered the keyboard but is was a complete deal breaker for me. I am typing this on a Lenovo C940 with 4k display and I will say this is a much better laptop overall. The screen is awesome and it has a full size keyboard which i excellent as well. Another issue with the Razer is the CPU throttling. When the 1650 is enabled the CPU throttles down and never gets above about 2.5 ghz when it is capable of 3.9 i believe. I had to disable the GPU in settings to get the full potential out of the CPU. This may not matter depending on what your doing but I thought it was odd and annoying. I am very happy with my purchase of the as the screen is bigger, brighter and more colorful on the C940 vs the Razer. I was able to get a 1TB ssd during Lenovo's presidents day sale and actually paid less than I did for the Razer. Granted I don't have the dedicated GPU but that was not much of a sacrifice for me and my use profile. I hope this helps. Good luck