Razer is gunning for MacBook Air's clients, with its latest refresh of its laptop line, and it might not be a coincidence that this happens right before the Penny Arcade Expo.
The company's Blade Stealth ultrabook is one of the centerpieces of the revamp, with one of its biggest issues — low battery life — becoming a thing of the past.
You read that right, Blade Stealth is getting a bigger, better and meaner 53.6 Wh battery.
To put it in perspective, the HP Spectre has a power source of 38 Wh, while the Surface Pro comes with a 37 Wh battery.
The upgrade is noteworthy as the short life of Stealth's battery was one of its main low points. The increased battery life will come with a slight increase in weight, from 2.75 pounds to 2.84 pounds.
The new Stealth sports significantly more processing power, thanks to the latest Core i7-7500U processor (2.7 GHz / 3.5 GHz), which is backed by 16 GB RAM on all models except the base variant. The solid state drive was upped to 1 TB. Keep in mind that Razer's gaming ultrabook plays nice with an external GPU dock, which might just give players an additional reason to purchase the device.
The most affordable (and basic) Blade Stealth model still sells for $999 and holsters a 128 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM. A slightly better variant is worth $1,249, sporting 256 GB storage and double the amount of RAM.
More powerful models come with extra storage and 4K touch screen, which fans can get as well. Sales will debut on Sept. 2, and Razer says that shipping will take place later this month.
Another good news comes from the Razer Core GPU dock, whose latest support update prepares it for full-on cooperation with AMD Radeon 400 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 10 cards. Should you want to purchase the Core Dock with a new Stealth laptop, you have to shell out $399, or $499, respectively.
Keep in mind that the Razer Blade 14-inch laptop is receiving an update, putting the smaller laptop in its fifth edition. The 14-inch gets the 6 GB GDDR5 GeForce GTX 1060. This means that the portable computer will feature not only smooth frame rates, but also VR, which can take a huge toll on all the components of a system.
It might be that Razer is testing the waters and trying to discover if gamers are ready to trade in heavy-duty desktop rigs for mobility and performance.
It should be noted that Stealth remains mainly a work machine. It lacks a discrete GPU, but the new i7 and Intel's HD Graphics 620 should allow it to compete toe to toe against rivals such as the MacBook Air from Apple, the HP Spectre 13 from HP and the XPS 13 from Dell.
Min-Liang Tan, Razer's helm, explains that the advancements in the build of the laptop were twofold.
"[O]ur second generation Ultrabook [is] even more powerful, while improving the battery life significantly. The Razer Blade Stealth is an example of what an Ultrabook can and should be able to do," Tan says.
Are you excited about the opportunities opened up by Razer's upgrades? Let us know in the comments section below.
