Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan recently confirmed that its premium gaming laptop, the Razer Blade, would be available for pre-order within a few days, and will ship in time for Christmas. That interview was first reported last Friday, so it’s a safe assumption that the Blade should be released some time this week.
The gaming laptop has seen a lot of publicity following its launch, which was initially announced via a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal that bemoaned the myth of the dying PC gamer. Initial impressions of the laptop have been favourable, but the price tag – $2800 – is expected to be too high for many gamers.
For that $2800, you get a good blend of solid, top-specification components and a few unique features.
It all starts with the 17.3” LED display, which runs at a HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Inside, you’ll find a heaping helping of gaming glory, with a Quad Core 2.8 GHz Core i7 processor, 8 GB of DDR3 memory and a Nvidia GT 555M graphics card with 2 GB of dedicated graphics memory. That’s on par with a mid-range desktop PC, so pretty good for a laptop.
One area in which the Razer Blade has improved since launch has been the replacement of the original 320 GB hard drive with a SSD (Solid State Drive) at 256 GB, which should do a lot to improve load and boot times of software and the Windows 7 OS.
The Blade’s unique feature is a touch-sensitive surface called the Switch Blade on the right hand side of the keyboard, which can act either as a multi-touch touchpad when a mouse isn’t required, or as a custom gaming display when a mouse is in use. There are also ten custom keys above this, which should make it rather good for MMORPGs and other titles that demand a high number of key bindings.
All in all though, the Razer Blade may just have too high a price. With only a similarly equipped MacBook Pro being as expensive, Razer will have to prove that their laptop retains its top-tier performance and looks. Staying on top is a dangerous game, and I could easily see Dell or another more well known laptop manufacturer position a gaming laptop just below the Blade, offering the same or better components at a lower price.
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This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of sim free phones, the XMini speaker and the Kindle leather cover black.