The New Razer Blade Is A MacBook Pro For Windows Gamers

Razer’s Blade has always been one of our go-to laptops for its compromise between size, weight, build quality and performance. The latest iteration of the 14-inch Blade is out in Australia now, and it’s even more useful thanks to a shiny new Nvidia GTX 1060 mobile graphics chip under the hood.

Nvidia’s latest laptops graphics use the same components as desktop cards, so the GTX 1060 — a mid-range GPU largely capable of 1080p/60fps gameplay on most modern titles with graphics set to reasonably high levels — is an impressive inclusion in a laptop as skinny as the 17.9mm Blade. It’ll match up nicely to the Blade’s matte 1080p 14-inch display, although it might not be so smooth playing games at native res on the step-up model’s glossy 3200x1800pixel QHD+ screen.

Otherwise, the 14-inch Blade — which fills the mainstream gaming-friendly niche between the entry-level Blade Stealth and the Blade Pro — has the standard performance/gaming laptop credentials we’ve come to expect from a machine built in the second half of 2016: you get Intel’s gutsy sixth-gen Core i7-6700HQ quad-core CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a choice of PCIe M.2 SSDs, and a bunch of different I/O including Thunderbolt 3. And just look at it: if you like the new Macbook Pro but don’t like macOS, this is the laptop for you.

Interestingly, though, that Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port isn’t used for power like the lesser Blade Stealth — it couldn’t handle the Blade’s 165-Watt adapter, so a regular power connector is the necessary alternative. You could hook it up to Razer’s Core external graphics amplifier, if it were available in Australia.

Three variants of the Blade are already on sale through Razer’s website: an entry-level 256GB machine with that 1080p screen is in stock now for $2599.95, as is a $2999.95 512GB model, and a 1TB version is apparently coming soon. There should be QHD+ Blades on the way too. [Razer]


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