The 2013 Razer Blade was fantastic. A finally great execution on a concept that’s been appealing as hell from the very start, a Windows gaming laptop with the premium feel of a MacBook. Now it’s back again, and it’s even better.
Everything we loved about Blades past is still here: a stellar keyboard, a beautiful rock-solid body, discrete graphics guts for gaming. But the highlight this time around is the screen, the stunningly beautiful 3200×1600 IPS touchscreen that graces the 14-inch model.
Unlike the 2013 Razer Blade’s screen — which was OK-to-good — this year’s version achieves flagship feature status. It capitalises on IGZO display tech to help pack the 262 PPI display into a panel that’s nearly thin enough to be an actual blade. And it’s a touchscreen because, yes, it is 2014 and this is a Windows 8 machine. But whether you’re into that or not, you can’t deny that the seamless flat surface is a thing of beauty.
Inside, the Blade sports Nvidia’s new GTX 870M as its discrete graphics powerhouse. It’s a brand-new but still Kepler-based workhorse that’s almost the peak of Nvidia’s mobile offerings, with only the (also new) 880M above it. Suffice it to say, the Blade should be able to handle even the newest of games at high (if not max) quality and resolutions that suit its crazy high-res screen. We saw some Sleep Dogs running on it, settings cranked way up, and it looked and ran beautifully. Thanks no doubt in part to its other guts as well, which include Intel’s Haswell Core i7 processor, 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a 128GB SSD. But the 2014 Blade has gained about 200g and a millimetre of thickness to squeeze it all in.
The Blade’s 17-inch big brother — the Blade Pro — is also getting a refresh, including a new Nvidia GTX 860M graphics card, 16GB of RAM, a 4th generation Core i7 processor and Windows 8, but little else.
The 17-inch Blade Pro starts at $3399.95, while the 14-inch Blade 2014 has the unsurprisingly high starting price of $3199.95. Both are available for preorder now in Australia. We’ll go more in-depth with how much it lives up to that price once we’ve had some time to spend with a unit, but let’s just say we’re excited; one of the best is getting even better.