Guess a gaming brand that runs on the motto “By the Gamers, for the Gamers, of the Gamers”? You guessed it right. Razer has just launched their latest Razer Blade for 2018 with a bigger screen, smaller bezels and the latest Nvidia’s Max-Q GPUs.
Contents
Introduction
Razer is one of those brands that don’t compromise on performance or quality. Their newest addition to Blade Lineup, Razer Blade, which is the middle ground for Razer Blade Pro and Razer Blade Stealth; has finally received the much-needed upgrade since 2013.
What’s new?
First, let’s speak some design aspects of this machine. This laptop has been completely redesigned to match the trends of 2018 which is “Bezel-less”(almost there). Razer managed to fit a 15.6-inch display, a definite upgrade over the previous 14-inch models; by only widening 0.4 inches than the older models and also has added some minor changes to the body.
The company also claims that this is the smallest 15.6-inch gaming laptop in the market. When it comes to the performance department, the laptop has been beefed up by Intel’s top of the line i7 processors and Nvidia’s Max-Q GPUs. With that hardware, it sure does give some competition to the high-end gaming laptops in the current market.
Specs
Coming to the specs of the machine, the blade comes in three main variants based on the display. A 60Hz 1080p panel, a 144Hz 1080p panel and lastly a 4k panel with a touchscreen. Th 4k panel supports 100% Adobe RGB color spectrum but the G-Sync is a no-show due to focus on power efficiency as quoted by the company. Easy upgradability of RAM and storage is the new addition to the blade series. All the blades have 16 GB RAM and come with 256 GB to 512 GB of M.2 storage which can be upgraded to 32 GB RAM and 2 TB of storage.
Whereas coming to the hardware that can’t be upgraded, all the variants ship with a 6 core Intel i7-8750H (2.2 GHz- 4.1 GHz) processor. Depending on pricing, they come with Max-Q variants of GTX 1060 or GTX 1070. Port selection is excellent on this laptop. It has a Thunderbolt 3 port, an HDMI, and a mini display port along with three USB 3.1 Type A ports and a dedicated charging port. It also has a decent 80Wh battery which should be enough to run the gorgeous display along with all that serious hardware. According to Razer, it should definitely get the job done better than the previous gen models.
Pricing
As far as the pricing of the laptops is concerned, the base model ships with a 256 GB SSD, GTX 1060 and 60Hz panel at $1,899.99. While the 144Hz variant gets you a GTX 1060 or a GTX 1070 with a 512GB SSD starting at $2,199.99. The 4k panel variant comes with a GTX 1070 along with 512 GB of SSD, maxes out at $2,899.99.
While all those terms “Bezel-less, Max-Q, 144Hz or 4k” might sound refreshing and 2018ish, but we might wanna wait till we get our hands on one of these beasts and see if it performs as good as it is on paper.
