Many people have ditched the powerhouse desktop PC in favor of the portability and convenience offered by a laptop. Where gaming is concerned though, mobile options powerful enough to deliver the kind of smooth visual experience necessary for today's immersive games tend to be on the bulky and heavy side. High performance gaming hardware specialist Razer is aiming to change all that with the release of the Blade gaming laptop. Just 0.88 inches thin and weighing under seven pounds, Razer's new gaming monster packs a second generation Core i7 processor, high performance NVIDIA graphics and a full HD 17.3-inch display into its full aluminum chassis.
Although it's true that gaming consoles have crept into many homes and resigned the dedicated PC workhorse to gather dust in the corner, most serious gamers prefer the latter. Gamers looking to take to the road, however, are often faced with trading off performance or portability. Razer hopes to sole this by problem by squeezing a host of powerful high-end components into a laptop that weighs just 6.97 pounds (3.16 kg) and is 0.88-inch (22.35 mm) thin - the Blade gaming laptop.
The laptop features a second generation Intel Core i7 2640M Processor running at 2.8GHz (3.5 GHz with Turbo Boost) on an Intel Mobile Express Series 6 PCH "Cougar Point" chipset, supported by 8GB of DDR3 memory. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M GPU comes with NVIDIA Optimus Technology which keeps a watchful eye over battery performance by swapping to less power-hungry integrated graphics when gaming performance is not needed and bringing on some GeForce power when it is needed. There's also 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 video memory capable of handling those all-important fast frame rates and supporting DirectX 11.
Visuals are rendered on a spacious 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution LED backlit display, underneath which sits a full-size keyboard sporting a brand new gaming-oriented "Switchblade User Interface" to the right. This is comprised of a multi-touch LCD display that can also display in-game information and ten fully customizable, dynamic, adaptive physical game command keys.
There's a not-too-miserly 320GB 7200rpm SATA HDD for storage, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 wireless networking, a USB 3.0 port in addition to a couple of the USB 2.0 variety, a built-in high definition webcam and a 60Wh battery.
The Razer Blade will be available in the U.S. by the end of the year at a cost of US$2800.
