Razer has been rather busy of late. While the company is best known for its various gaming peripherals, it is putting some serious resources into dedicated gaming hardware like the Edge tablet, which we went hands on with at CES. Now, it has just announced a new version of its Blade laptop, which it is calling the "world's thinnest" gaming Ultrabook.
Before we jump into the technical specs of the laptop, the first thing we need to take note of is the size. It comes with an impressively minuscule depth of 0.66 inches (17 mm). It's also 13.6 inches wide, and 9.3 inches high (345 x 235 mm). It also weighs in a modest 4.1 lbs (1.9 kg).
The Blade comes with an 14-inch LED display that supports up to a 1600 x 900 resolution. The screen is supported by the 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M graphics card, which should be able to handle even the most graphically-demanding new releases. It includes HDMI, so users can hook it up to a larger display if they so choose.
The new laptop also features 8GB of RAM, a 4th gen Intel Core processor, and a SATA III SSD in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB options.
There are also plenty of standard features like three USB 3.0 ports, built-in wireless, a 70Wh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and a 150W Power Adapter. It comes with Windows 8 installed as well.
Razer will begin taking preorders for the new Blade laptop starting June 3, just ahead of E3. The price starts at US$1,800 and goes up depending on upgrades to the available SSD.
Source: Razer
The only unknown that will be determined in later reviews is: 1. How noisy it is when idle or gaming 2. How adequate the cooling solution is during heavy gaming.
I like the dual fan approach from the Asus G65 15" that sucks air from the front of the laptop, under your palm rests, and out the back, effectively cooling the whole motherboard.