Razer Blade 15 inches 2018: the thin laptop that is packing a blow
With its 15.6-inch screen and its coarse form, the 2018 model of the Razer & # 39; s Blade laptop is designed for look imposing
But what is good about the new form factor is that it makes good use of the space that is available to it, with an edge-to-edge screen that minimizes the two side frames to avoid unnecessary volume.
The same goes for the touch panel, which extends almost from the bottom of the laptop to the keyboard, which is a matter of rubber chiclet dome that stops just to the left and right of the laptop's chassis to make way to a pair of speakers.
-in fact, the Blade 2018 is packing a lot in an ordered chassis. Read on as we dive a little deeper into the specifications of the laptop.
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Razer Blade 2018 price and release date
There are five major models of the Razer Blade 2018, ranging from £ 1699 to £ 2549.
We will delve into how these five differ in a moment, but at first glance they range from the base model of £ 1699, which has a 1080p 60Hz screen, a GTX 1060 GPU, and 256GB of storage, up to the model of £ 2549 which comes with a 4K screen, GTX 1070 and 512GB of storage.
The new Razer Blade is expected to be available in the United Kingdom in mid-June.
Razer Bade 2018 design and features
Compared to previous Razer laptops, the 2018 Blade has a much less rounded and more square design.
When you place it next to the company's recent smartphone effort, the Razer phone, the aesthetics of design starts to make a lot of sense. The curves are out, and the straight lines are combined with the RGB lighting.
But what is contained within those straight lines is important, and the Razer Blade 2018 is packing a lot inside this thick case.
There are three different screens for example, from a panel of 1080p to 60Hz, to a panel of 144Hz with the same resolution, and finally reaching a 4K screen (which inevitably sacrifices high refresh rates in favor of its resolution bestial).
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Then, in terms of storage, you can choose between 256 GB and 512 GB, both based on a single M.2 stick.
You have the option of two different graphics cards: the Nvidia GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 (both designed by Max-Q, which means they are optimized for thinness and lightness). Both CPU and RAM are consistent throughout the range, with an Intel i7 6-core 6-core and 16GB RAM, respectively.
These are specifications that put the Blade purely in game territory instead of productivity, but if it's going to be making games, then it's going to do well.
The core of making games well is a cooling design based on steam chambers with a pair of fans on its bottom, which according to Razer will offer 30% more thermal design power (TDP), which means that The system should be able to run at full speed without having to accelerate to prevent its components from burning.
The lower part of the sheet, showing the double fan design
Obviously, however, we will have to wait until we get the laptop for a full review before we can properly evaluate these claims.
In terms of ports, here is a fairly standard selection. There's a Thunderbolt (type C), USB 3, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort on the right along with a Kensington lock, and on the left side of the chassis you have a pair of USB 3 type A ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a connector of patented power.
When we asked Razer why it fit a proprietary connector instead of adopting USB-C, it simply said that the maximum power consumption of the USB-C would not be enough to power the notebook, which consumes between 200W and 230W of power.
Yes, it is a patented connector, but USB-C simply does not have the power that Razer needs
There is a small amount of pre-installed software planned for the laptop, but from what we could see, everything is quite useful. Razer's Synapse software can be used to set up hotkeys, activate "game mode" (which disables common Windows shortcuts while playing) and configure the laptop between four different performance modes.
The keyboard is also fully compatible with Chroma, so you can configure exactly the type of RGB light as in the rest of the Razer peripherals.
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First Impressions
The Razer Stealth 2018 meets most of our boxes for a modern premium laptop. It is elegantly designed, does not waste space, and is packaging exactly the kind of hardware we expect to see on a laptop in 2018 (excuse me, AMD).
But the real test will come with prolonged use, when we'll finally see if the cooling solution is as good in practice as it looks on paper.