Razer announces new cutting-edge Blade laptops

SINGAPORE — Gaming on the go is about to get more powerful with Razer’s updated range of Blade laptops, which come with freshly announced Nvidia graphic processing units. The changes in the new Razer Blade and Razer Blade Pro models were made in a statement to the press yesterday (March 12).

The smaller of the two devices, the Razer Blade, will now feature what Razer touts to be the world’s highest-resolution monitor for a 14-inch laptop. The laptop will come with a 3200x1800 resolution touchscreen monitor, both firsts for the Razer Blade range. The screen uses an IGZO/IPS (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide/In-Plane Switching) panel that is touted to have a 250 per cent increase in contrast ratio over its predecessor. The graphical power of the new Blade will now be driven by the latest nVidia GeForce GTX 870M with 3GB DDR5 RAM, which is touted to have 65 per cent better frame rates than the previous GeForce GTX 765M.

Other core components in the Razer Blade, such as the CPU and RAM, remain largely the same, and those worried that the upgraded card and screen will increase the size of the Blade need not worry: The laptop’s dimensions remain largely the same, with the height increasing by 1mm to 17.8mm, and the weight increasing 150g to 2.03kg.

Meanwhile, the larger Razer Blade Pro will also come with a graphics processor upgrade, this time with the GeForce GTX 860M, and the laptop’s RAM will be doubled to 16GB. Beyond that, the Blade Pro’s Switchblade User Interface (SBUI) will also come with new software upgrades, such as a Windows 8 Charms app that provides easy access to Windows Desktop functions. In keeping with the aim to make the Razer Blade Pro a device for both gamers and creatives, Razer is also collaborating with well-known music producer Afrojack with an app for the SBUI that Razers says will help producers make “better studio-quality music”. This SBUI upgrade will also be available for other Switchblade devices, such as older Razer Blade Pros and Deathstalker Ultimate keyboards.

The new Razer Blade and the new Razer Blade Pro are both available for pre-order now. They will retail at S$3,199 and S$3,399 respectively, and will ship end-April and late-March respectively.