Razer debuted new 16-thumb and 18 inch sizes of its blade laptop lineup at CES 2023, but the company wasn’t sure if its 15-inch model would remain in the lineup. Well, now we know it will. With the latest from Nvidia RTX 4070, 4060 and 4050 Mobile GPUsRazer has launched a new version of the 15-inch model equipped with up to an RTX 4070, as well as models of the Blade 16 and Blade 18 with RTX 4060 and 4070 GPUs.
They’re all available starting at $2,500 (£2,500, AU$4,599) for the Blade 15 with an Intel Core i7-13800H display, 240Hz 1440p, RTX 4060, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. The 16-inch range now starts at $2,700 (£2,700, AU$4,999) with a Core i9-13950HX, 240Hz 1600p display – this is Razer’s new 16:10 aspect ratio offering – a RTX 4060, 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD. And the 18-inch starts at $2,900 (£2,900, AU$5,399) with the same configuration, but obviously a bigger screen.
Like many companies, Razer is sticking with the 15-inch model, at least for a while, but for just $200 less. And that makes a lot of sense once you factor in the weight: the 16-inch weighs a full pound (half a kilogram) more at 5.4lbs/2.5kg versus 4.4lbs/2kg for the smaller model. That’s a lot of extra weight for a slightly larger screen and an i9 HX-series processor, although there’s a lot of cooling hardware required which is probably to blame.
The 16-inch is also 5mm thicker, which is a significant bump (around 30%). Absent size and weight considerations, it’s probably worth the extra $200 for the higher resolution screen and notably faster processor.
