I have used the blade and I have played with the older style stealth.
The razer blade is very niche. It tries to be a good halfway point between good battery life and good gaming performance. I think it works well for people who are looking for a truly portable gaming laptop. But for your situation, I think the Dell is by far a better fit and is cheaper to boot.
The stealth don't really interest me because of the price. Its a good bit weaker than the xps 15 and costs almost as much.
The asus is interesting. The UX550 pro is not out quite yet (afaik) but it has the same issue as the razer blade does. It sacrifices battery size for gpu power.
As the happy owner of a thinkpad t430s, I would happily recommend looking at the newer thinkpads to see if there is something small and light, but with enough power. From looking at the x270, there seems to be a good port selection, and being able to set it up with high capacity batteries makes it look like a good option if the lack of computing power would still be enough to get by. Otherwise, since Lenovo seem to not be making many smaller form laptops with the choice of a quad core cpu, I don't like saying it but the Mac books could be an interesting trade off since the 15 inch model has a quad core cpu and it is hard to find any other new laptops with the very nice 16:10 screen choice(I have briefly tried the 2016+ keyboard for MacBook, personally prefer my thinkpad style keyboard, but can see why some like the new mac one). I do not have experience with any of the recent products from any of the other laptop brands mentioned however, so cannot comment on the choices from them.
I bought the 2015 MBP when the 2016 version came out. That retarded emoji bar ... no, thanks. I went with the lower end model, Iris GPU but 16GB RAM. I mainly use it for photo editing, there is just no better screen to do that on a laptop, ... I checked.
How about a Thinkpad X1 Carbon? Haven't seen that one mentioned...
Personally I'm waiting for the first reviews on the UX550. It looks sublime, but I'm still on the fence on battery life, keyboard stability and fan noise.
Otherwise, since I bought a UX410 for the kid, I've been looking at ASUS. Considering the price point, that quality cannot be beat, especially since XPS15's are extremely expensive here (BE).
True, but looking through their lineup and considering my budget also has me looking at the 5th gen X1 Carbon. Good (enough for me) port selection with 2 USB amd 2 Thunderbolt ports, solid battery, and a 14" screen in the same external dimensions as my current ThinkPad Yoga 12. Hmmmm.
Yeah ThinkPads are still great laptops in the modern day, by my reckoning.
Haha, never have a seen the input selection on a laptop garner so much hatred. Between that bar and the new keyboard people are absolutely livid. I like the keyboard and find the bar to be a neat toy if I spend any time in MacOS, which I may do for photo stuff.
This is really what keeps the MacBook interesting for me. I love the keyboard, but their screens are great. My current daily, a ThinkPad Yoga 12 inch, has a screen that is too dark compared to most screens and is colored slightly off, so my photos turn out strange if I edit them here.
Just looked at it again. Very interesting! 14" screen in a body the same size as my ThinkPad Yoga 12, which has a 12.5" screen. Yeah it's in the running now too. Plus the port selection is good. 2 USB and 2 Thunderbolt 3.
Iām looking into a new laptop. And Iād like to use it for a bit of gaming as well, mostly Total War and other strategy games. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.
I recently got an XPS 13, and I love it. I use it for pretty much everything that you do, and Iāve had a wonderful experience. If I had to say which laptop you should get it would be between the XPS 13/15 and Lenovo Carbon X1. They are both amazing.
I love everything about the XPS 13 except for the keyboard. I hate the keystroke feel. It feels like typing on a sponge to me.
As for the Carbon X1, Iām considering it. I wonāt be purchasing for a couple more weeks, but itās currently between the X1, the Blade Stealth, and a MBP.