The New Razer Blade 2018: Beauty and Power

The Razer Blade has had a unique style for the past five years, but this 2018 Edition takes things to the next level. The display size goes from 14” to 15.6”, yet the overall size of the laptop is a little bit smaller. Razer calls it the smallest 15.6” gaming laptop, a claim that seems legitimate.

The new form factor is made possible by the thin-bezel display (~4.9mm). Bezels are partly responsible for how wide and long a laptop is and reducing them on the left, and right sides is critical to reducing the computer size. Here, Razer has been able to shrink the volume by ~3% while increasing the display diagonal by 1.6”.

The 1080p IPS LCD panel can climb up to 144 Hz for ultra smooth gaming. There’s a 4K option too, but the refresh rate won’t go as high (~60Hz?).

The industrial design uses many key elements that make the Razer Blade series recognizable: CNC aluminum, gunmetal color, very clean lines. However, the 2018 edition looks most definitely more modern and edgy.

The keyboard features RGB Chroma-powered backlights, with one LED light per key (16.8M colors per key). As usual, the user can control the color patterns using the Razer Synapse utility. The keyboard is centered, with speakers on either side of it: a classic but proven way to lay things out on the 15.6” laptop.

Real beauty comes from the inside they say, and the internal components of the Razer Blade 2018 are powerful: Intel Core i7-8750H, 16GB of RAM, NVIDIA GTX 1060 or 1070 and 256 or 512GB of SSD storage. The size/performance ratio should be off the charts.

"THE SIZE/PERFORMANCE RATIO SHOULD BE OFF THE CHARTS"

To cram such powerful components in a relatively small volume, Razer has redesigned a vapor-chamber based cooling solution. This type of cooling transfers heat much better than a regular heatsink, and it has been used on desktop computers for a long time. In a laptop, it is much more difficult to build because it needs to be so thin.

Finally, the battery capacity of this new Razer is 80 Wh (watt-hours), which is very good for a computer in this segment. The base configuration starts at $1899, and the fully loaded one (4K,GTX 1070, 512GB) goes for $2899.

Razer Core X Thunderbolt 3 eGPU chassis

If having an NVIDIA GTX 1070 isn’t enough, Razer has also announced Core X, a new external GPU (eGPU) chassis that uses a standard power supply. It is larger (168 x 374 x 230mm) than the original Razer Core launched in 2016, but it is also more affordable  ($299 vs. $499).

Thanks to the extra room and the included 650W power-supply, the Core X can work with more graphics cards. It connects to a computer using Thunderbolt 3 and will charge a laptop at the same time. Razer is taking pre-orders right away.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers, Gaming
Tags: Gaming Laptops, Laptops, Razer, Razer Blade 2018