RAZER Blade Stealth And RAZER Core: Desktop Graphics Performance For Laptops

RAZER gaming laptops are known for their excellent performance/size ratio, but with the introduction of the RAZER Blade Stealth and RAZER Core, this company wants to compete in both the ultra-light and high-performance market. This combo is an interesting new take on an old problem.

In a nutshell, the Blade Stealth is a 12.5” display (0.52” thick) ultra-light laptop with Intel integrated graphics. However, the RAZER Core is a dock/box that can house a full-size graphics card that will provide Desktop-level graphics performance to the system. Although the concept of external GPUs has been theorized for some time, and even though similar products exist on the market, no-one has been able to bring external GPUs to the masses – yet.

The Razer Blade Stealth is by itself a very attractive laptop that only weighs 2.75 Lbs. It is build with machined-Aluminum and relies on a 12.5” touch display that comes in either 4K (3840×2160) or Quad-HD (2560×1440) resolutions. Razer doesn’t say, but it seems to use an IPS-LCD technology which ensures high-quality images and wide-angle views.

Inside, the laptop is powered by Intel’s 6th generation Core i7 processor, which is the de-facto high-end option these days. There’s a single option of (only) 8GB of RAM, but that should work for most people. The storage system gets a fast PCI-E SSD drive, which can provide high throughput for things like game loading…

Maybe the most surprising is the price: at $999, the Razer Blade Stealth is surprisingly affordable. The most expensive, fully-loaded, model ships at $1599. When asked about how this pricing came to be, Razer has explained to us that it is using a direct to consumer model that cuts the middleman. The savings are passed on to the consumers. It will be interesting to compare objective data about performance/price when we get a test unit.

Desktop graphics performance with Razer Core

It is only when the Blade Stealth is connected to the Razer Core that it can reveal its full potential. Razer Core is a box that contains a full-size, Desktop graphics card. Razer doesn’t guarantee that ALL cards will fit (there are huge ones), it says that most of the powerful ones will work (up to 375W GPUs). The Core is connected to the wall electric socket, and it will supply graphics, power and four additional USB 3.0 ports to the Razer Blade Stealth (yes, it’s a dock too) — all of this via a single USB-C cable.

As you can guess, it’s possible to connect external monitors to the Core graphics card in case you want a multi-monitor setup.

I like the idea of having this combo. That is useful to gamers, but also to creative professionals who may want to come back to their mobile station and compress videos at incredible speeds, using a full-size GPU to do the job. I wish that there was a 16GB RAM option, but overall, I can’t wait to see it in action.

Both Razer Blade Stealth and Razer Core will ship “in January”, according to Razer representatives.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers
Tags: CES, CES 2016, GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), Laptops, Razer