Is the Razer Blade Stealth $999 laptop worth it without the Razer Core?

For normal everyday use yea why not, I'd personally go for something else if it's just for surfing and stuff...i wouldn't buy a $1000 laptop just for that.
If you want to play any games on that, don't even try without the core.

I hope this answer helps you.
1. The RAM IS DUAL CHANNEL meaning it might be upgradable to 16GB
2. It's an ultrabook with a general "future proof" design especially considering the CPU might be detachable and upgradeable.(not sure)
3. This laptop would be amazing for my lifestyle as I love the design, must look professional, and programming is fairly nice on a laptop like this. College would be a breeze with this. High school would be. I am on highschool now and even in our robotics club. A nice laptop that is light weight and durable, is a must. Comfy typing, is a must. Long battery and a nice screen is a must. (Ok, the screen on it is just my opinion, but 100%srgb is nice)
Could I know what you plan on doing with a laptop? The core is meant to be used at home while the laptop it's self at school/work.

Older games like Skyrim can be played with a mix of low / medium settings at 720p or 900p with ok performance.

The razer blade may be worth it
if you are looking for a gaming laptop, then no the razer blade core is going to game well so it will not be worth it

But if you are looking at a slim portable laptop that looks cool and comparable in price with the ultra book competition, then absolutely it may be worth it.

Nope. The RAM is soldered onto the motherboard. There are no RAM sockets in it.

if this thing was a 14 or 15.6" screen i would jump all over it for the price. but 12" is seriously crap, way to small for me.

Well then, you simply aren't in the market for an ultrabook. Can't really blame it for being what it is, but it's good for you to know it's not for you.

The Razer Blade Stealth is advertised as an ultrabook, not a gaming laptop. So you cannot make it into something it is not without the core add on component. So you're looking at 1K for the laptop, another $500 for the core (when it's released) and then another $300 to $600+ for a compatible vid card to go with it. Although, now that Nvidia is coming out with the new 10 series Pascal family of cards, this could get interesting as the price point will be significantly lower while the performance will be up to 3x more than the counterpart Maxwell cards. So you could bet a new GTX 1080 for $600 that well outperforms an $800+ TitanX. Or a GTX 1070 for $300 that will outperform a current GTX980ti @ $600 (which kind of makes me sad since I just picked one up 3 months ago).

Having said that, it's great for ultrabook-y things and offers lots of hardware bang for the buck. I almost got one of these but instead decided on Dell XPS 13 because although it doesn't have some of the really cool wizbang of the Blade Stealth it seems to have better key travel (important to me) and was $300 cheaper for the gen 6 i5 version. The difference in compute power here on the new Skylakes isn't worth it for my particular needs and I already have a dedicated gaming rig. If I really wanted an i7 though, I think the Stealth Blade would have been the choice.

It really depends on what you want.

Do you want a normal ultrabook or a gaming lapotp?

For an ultrabook its good but there are better.

For gaming it depends on the type of games. Low intensive its good if you need the portability if you don't mind that it will make a lot of noise. For intensive games its a definite no.

The memory is not upgradeable at all, you are stuck at 8GB.