Razer’s Blade Laptops Arrive With Latest, Lower-End Nvidia GPUs

Razer debuted new 16-inch and 18-inch sizes of its Blade laptop line at CES 2023, but the company was mum about whether its 15-inch model would remain in the line. Well, now we know it will. Along with Nvidia’s latest RTX 4070, 4060 and 4050 mobile GPUs, Razer 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, 240Hz 1440p display, RTX 4060, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. The 16-inch line now starts at $2,700 (£2,700, AU$4,999) with a Core i9-13950HX, 240Hz 1600p display — that’s Razer’s new 16:10 aspect ratio offering — an RTX 4060, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. And the 18-inch begins at $2,900 (£2,900, AU$5,399) with the same configuration, but obviously a bigger screen.

Like a lot of companies, Razer is keeping the 15-inch model around, at least for a while, albeit for only $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 vs. 4.4lbs/2kg for the smaller model. That’s a lot of heft added for a slightly larger screen and i9 HX series CPU, though there’s a lot of necessary cooling hardware that’s probably to blame. 

The 16-inch is also 5mm thicker, which is a significant (about 30%) bump. In the absence of the size and weight considerations, it’s probably worth the extra $200 for the higher-resolution screen and notably faster processor.