Razer Blade: Cutting through the competition

SINGAPORE — Razer today (Jul 29) announced that the world’s thinnest gaming laptop the 14-inch Razer Blade will go on sale here on Thursday.

Speaking to TODAY, CEO Tan Min-Liang said the innovative machine was founded on passion. “A lot of people are saying the PC (personal computer) is in decline. But that’s pretty much predicated by the PC makers themselves. In their bid to get things cheaper, they fired their design teams and they went to China, Taiwan to manufacture everything.

“And the Taiwanese manufacturers said ‘okay, we can build anything you want. Tell us what to build.’ So ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers) such as HP, Dell, etc said we want you to build something inexpensive; let’s drive down costs so we can drive up the volume, stuff like that, and, on that front, innovation suffered,” said Mr Tan.

Research companies IDC and Gartner had reported a continuing downward trend of PC sales earlier this month.

“As gamers, we wanted to get our own gaming laptops a couple of years ago but realised that laptops came in two flavours: Either really thick and heavy but powerful or, on the other spectrum, really thin, sexy and beautiful laptops with an ultra-low voltage CPU.

“That’s not what we wanted. So we set out at that point in time, this was in 2007, to build our own gaming laptop.”

Luck was on their side, as Mr Tan recounted. As PC makers were firing design teams, Razer was snapping them up. “It was a great year for us. We started hiring some of the top engineering teams: We acquired the team from OQO, which built the world’s smallest form-factor PCs so they were really great with thermos (heat management within devices). We were just hiring these guys like crazy.

“And we told them we don’t want to build something that is mass market. It’s not about selling millions of units. What we wanted was something that pushed the limits of innovation.”

The result is the 14-inch Razer Blade (S$2,799) — and its 17-inch brother, the Razer Blade Pro (S$3,599).

At only 16.8mm thin, which is about the diameter of the new 5-cent coin, the Blade boasts similar features as full fledged gaming laptops. It is powered by Intel’s 4th Gen processor, with a Nvidia GeForce GTX graphics card, built-in stereo speakers, a 14-inch, high definition, 1600 X 900 resolution screen and Razer’s Anti-Ghosting keyboard, among other features. It weighs 1.876kg and runs on Windows 8. Also impressive is the tiny power brick that is about one-third the size of those bundled with gaming laptops.

The machines were very well-received, said Mr Tan. “We launched the first Razer Blade Pro — the 17-inch — in January last year and we sold out three months of inventory in 45 minutes. It was really shocking.

“So we have scaled back the launches. We were going to launch globally but now we’ve only got it in North America. We’ve just launched it in China at the end of June and we’re introducing it to Singapore now because we have a great presence here.

“The Razer Blade is an incredibly thin gaming laptop, it is as powerful as full-fled gaming laptop, and we’ve designed it just for gaming. It’s pretty much got everything — the ultimate gaming laptop,” he added.

CULT STATUS

Founded in San Diego by Mr Tan, who is Singaporean, and President Robert Krakoff, the company prides itself on its passion for games.

“Razer’s a bit of an interesting company. We’re not really a business per se. When we first started, everybody was saying the mouse business is dying but because we were gamers ourselves said, ‘screw it, we’re just going to build something we like. I think that same attitude — it’s a bit free-wheeling, a bit swashbuckling — led to innovation. We just wanted to build things that we like ourselves.”

The company’s passion is shared by its clients. “Gamers tend to be passionate people. And because they’re passionate, they tend to be more progressive. And because they’re more progressive, they want the latest technology, they want the best. They’re different from the normal consumer who is happy with a 20-dollar mouse that lasts five years.

“The gamer wants to have a competitive edge — the good ones — and they want the latest and greatest, which is us,” said Mr Tan.

Like their clients, Razer has a no-compromise rule. This a labour of love for us, explained Mr Tan. “We could have cut corners and made a budget laptop but that has never been the design goal of Razer. We come up with a few products but we’re obsessive about building the best.

“We don’t want to compromise on anything, and we don’t compromise on price so it tends to be a little bit pricier but then we’ve got a brand where fans would tattoo our logos on themselves. We’ve got at least 500 gamers worldwide that have tattooed Razer logos on themselves. There are only two (consumer tech) brands that have that, by the way, one of them is Apple, one of them is us.

“It is a religion for us, to put it lightly. It’s the cult of Razer, so to speak. It’s a responsibility that we have to always push the limits.”