Design
The Blade is like a leopard – they’re both beautiful and don’t need to change a thing. The laptop retains its sexy ebony CNC aluminum chassis which weighs 4.25 pounds and is a mere 0.7-inches thick. The enchanting multicolored and highly customizable Chroma keyboard also makes a return, just begging gamers to record loads of macros. MORE: The Best Gaming Laptops
Specs
The biggest news here comes by way of Nvidia. The Blade is making the jump from last generation’s Maxwell to the company’s 10-series chip: the GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM. That means that it might be time to make an investment in either the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, since the 10-series GPU are powerful enough to support either system. Theoretically, you could potentially strap it to your back for a more mobile VR experience. In addition, you get a 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB PCI-e or M.2 SSD. Razer offers a choice between a matte 1080p display or a 3200 x 1800 touch panel. Port-wise, the updated Razer Blade has three USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt port, a headset jack, HDMI 2.0 and a power jack. If you’re looking for some oomph beyond the GTX 1060 GPU, you can invest in the optional Razer Core graphics amp which connects via the Thunderbolt port. Keep in mind that the graphics amp is a bring-your-own-desktop-GPU deal, so using the Core won’t be cheap.
Overview
The Razer Blade continues to be the gold standard in gaming portability. Thanks to the addition of Nvidia’s 10-series GPU, what was once a powerful gaming laptop is now a mobile virtual reality powerhouse. However, I’ll reserve my final judgment until we get the laptop in house for testing.
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