You remember the Razer Blade, that gaming laptop with an additional screen right next to the keyboard? The main complaint early adopters had about that unique laptop, released almost exactly a year ago, was that it wasn't powerful enough.
It's not underpowered anymore. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan told me his company worked closely with Intel, and will be rocking an as-yet-unnamed third-generation quad-core i7 processor in the Razer Blade. Min said, "The chip is so new, it hasn't even been officially announced. It's the fastest Ivy Bridge processor available. I can't say the model number due to an Intel embargo."
Razer wanted to make this thin-and-light laptop (0.88 inches thick, 6.6 lb. all-aluminum chassis) as powerful as its "luggable" competitors from Asus, Dell and others -- all much thicker than the aptly named Razer Blade.
Min says his designers took the old Razer Blade into an acoustic chamber and tuned its fans to be super-quiet. "We redesigned the internal thermal solution, using custom fans and innovative heatpipes," said Min. Good idea, because a noisy, whining fan is a showstopper for me.
Most important to gamers, the graphics have been upgraded from Nvidia GT to Nvidia GTX class (GTX 660M, a newer version of the GTX 650M in Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display), which Min says will be twice as fast as that Nvidia GT predecessor from last year's model. The company's also used a hybrid drive for this laptop, consisting of a 64GB solid-state drive as well as a 500GB spinning hard disk. The benefit? You get two times the storage space, yet three times the speed of a traditional drive.
Best of all,
there's no price hit for that added mojo. This Razer Blade will cost
less than its predecessor -- even with its enhanced performance, it's
priced at $2,499, compared with the $2,799 of the older, slower
forebear. It'll be available for preorder starting September 2 (hey,
that's today!), and ships 30 days later.
[from Razer]
[from Razer]
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