For gamers, Blade laptops from Razer are the ultimate gaming companion. While the first generation of these gaming machines was made to be thick and heavy, Razer is shifting gears. The only thing is instead of getting bigger, its newest Razer Blade Stealth, which it unveiled at CES 2016, is a slim, portable ultrabook.
Over the years, the variety of Blade laptops from Razer has always been a good choice for gamers, but then again, gamers do not always get everything they want. Gaming laptops need the power that a desktop packs to carry the gaming mode well, so more often than not, they cannot be the lightweight and convenient ultrabook that is becoming a popular device these days, especially for those who are always on the go.
Perhaps, Razer was thinking: Why not have both? As such, it came up with the Razer Blade Stealth, and this ultrabook gaming laptop which fans have been clamouring for has now become a reality.
Features And Specs
Gamers would definitely drool over Blade Stealth's features and specs. For one, this gaming laptop is the thinnest and lightest laptop yet – no more worries about achy muscles over carrying 4 pounds of gaming laptops. More than that, this laptop-PC provides gamers with wide-viewing angles, thanks to its 12.5-inch screen with QuadHD resolution (2,560 x 1,440). This means, it is even thinner than HP's Envy 13 and MacBook Air.
One variant boasts a 4K touchscreen and can display the Adobe RGB color gamut at 100 percent, thanks to its IGZO display.
This lovely piece of gaming machine comes packed with sixth-generation Intel Core i7-6500U dual-core processor. It is also equipped with 8 GB of RAM.
Buyers will have the option to grab the QuadHD display variant (128 GB / 256 GB) or Ultra HD display model (256 GB / 512 GB) of ultra-fast PCIe storage. It also includes Intel HD Graphics 520.
What makes the Blade Stealth really sweet for on-the-go gamers is that it's less than an inch thin, just 0.52 inches and weighs 2.75 pounds.
For its peripherals, the Stealth sports the new Thunderbolt USB Type-C which is particularly designed to connect and charge accessories and monitors. Two regular USB ports are also available.
On the other hand, the Blade Stealth is not without compromise. For one, Razer has to cut back on its graphical power to accommodate the laptop's lighter and smaller build. That's just to say that casual games would still be good to go but not if you want to play the latest and the best games which need more graphics power. For this reason, Razer is also selling its Core accessory that is able to support almost every popular PCI Express graphics card, be it from NVIDIA or AMD.
Razer, however, has yet to release more details regarding the Core, for instance, its price tag. As for the release date, Razer says it is expected to arrive in the first half of this year.
Aside from that, the Core also comes with an external accessory that is a desktop graphics enclosure which provides additional USB ports and an Ethernet port.
The Bottom Line
All in all, the new Razer Blade Stealth looks great and promises a lot of good things for gamers. Plus, it's very light and easy to carry compared with other gaming laptops. It has a solid build and its features are of high quality. There's also the fact that its starting price of $999 is really very competitive, considering that most gaming laptops are priced for a few hundred more. The high-end variant, though, has a $1,599 price tag.
Right now, the Razer Blade Stealth is available for orders and shipping and will be available at Razer's retail stores and its online store next month.
