He Razer Blade 18 2024 Edition The gaming laptop was announced a few days ago at CES 2024 and photos of the beast have been circulating online (here, here and here), showing that the annual refresh of the popular DTR (desktop PC replacement) laptop It is substantial.
While its primary market is (and remains) gamers, there's no denying that the full package will appeal to creatives and even beyond, for several reasons; One mobile workstation to rule all mobile workstations?
Unlike many of its competitors (Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, MSI GT77 Titan, Lenovo Legion 7i Pro) the Razer Blade 18 doesn't look like a gaming laptop at all. In fact, he wouldn't look out of place at all in an executive leadership team meeting in an anonymous London-based boardroom. With the lack of a dedicated keyboard, a long hinge, and a brushed metal finish, it looks more like a 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro, although it weighs almost twice as much.
Then there's the Thunderbolt 5 (TB5) connector, capable of delivering 120Gbps bandwidth and is more useful for content creators than gamers. Razer's own marketing literature refers to “faster data backup/archive and faster export and rendering” thanks to double the bandwidth for external SSD, external GPU, and other creation tools. I've seen several docking stations (e.g. J5 Create) and portable SSDs (e.g. OWC) supporting TB5 at CES 2024; We expect that number to grow this year.
Workstation class specifications
Thunderbolt 5 also supports refresh rates of up to 540Hz at low resolutions, 144Hz on three 4K monitors, up to two 8K monitors, and a single 10K/16K display, the latter likely at 30Hz (ed: I haven't seen a single display yet conventional 8K monitor is still on sale for the last few years, so I won't hold my breath for a 16K one).
If the specs of the smaller Razer Blade 16 are the same as its bigger brother, expect a 14th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU (14900HX) and a desktop Nvidia RTX 4090 with a TDP of 175W. Based on Geekbench Benchmark CPU Test ResultsI expect the 14900HX, which Intel calls the world's fastest mobile CPU, to be competitive with AMD's crème-de-la-crème (within a similar power envelope).
And in a thinly veiled nod to content creators and professionals, it's almost certain that, based on the current specifications of your 2024 16-inch brothers – the new Razer 18 will come with up to 8TB SSD and 96GB of RAM, a very significant boost compared to its 2023 version that could only muster 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD, enough for gamers but not for professionals. However, expect to pay over $5,000 (around £4,000, AU$7,500) for these two upgrades alone, basically doubling the price of the base configuration.
However, it is not the perfect mobile workstation, let's not kid ourselves. It does not offer Windows 11 Pro by default, it comes only with 12 months warranty with no option for longer periods or on-site warranty. There is no numeric keypad, essential for professionals, there is no fingerprint reader or support for vPro, Intel's management platform.
Still, I would gladly put it in our Best laptop for engineering students. either Best laptop for video editing. buying guides when it goes on sale later this year.
