Thursday saw the debut of a new edition to Razer's gaming laptop line, the Razer Blade. Changing from last year's debut model by packing a smaller 14-inch display, the new Razer Blade is thinner than the Macbook Air, with more powerful specs to boot. But can Razer expect anyone but gamers to take notice?
The Razer looks like the MacBook Pro's edgy, punkish younger brother. It's matte-black body with neon green-accents is perfect for gamers; it's the kind of laptop you'd expect to find Neo using. The Razer has that kind of power built into such a small frame. At 0.66 inches on the edge, the body of the Razer Blade is thinner than a dime, and it's the lightest gaming laptop in its class at 4.1 pounds.
In this package comes a fourth generation Intel Haswell processor slated to sip so much less battery power that you'll get hours more use out of your devices, as well as 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M GPU with 2GB of dedicated VRAM. It's also got a 128GB SSD that can (and, for most gamers, probably will) be upgraded to 256GB or 512GB SSD. Other specs include three USB 3.0 ports, a 802.11 a/b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 wireless adaptor, and an HDMI out port.
The Razer's display is 14-inches with 1600x900 resolution, which, while certainly not Retina quality, is still competitive with other laptops, and hands-on reviewers for the Verge and PCWorld said its images were "crisp, vibrant" and the colors "seemed to pop."
But can Razer hope for anything more than its new 14-inch gaming laptop to sell pretty well with wealthy gamers, and nobody else?
The new Razer Blade is priced at $1,800 without the upgraded SSD, and this at a time when the PC market is crashing due to the rise of tablets. Can a niche product like the Blade hope to expand its reach with its smaller size, or will it become just another nice pricey way for dedicated gamers with enough disposable income to show off?
The first thing to note is that gaming PCs do have a small, but reliable, market, so don't expect for the new Razer Blade to fail completely. But putting out what's essentially a powerful netbook — one who's specs rival or outshine most other small laptops, including the MacBook Air — but for specifically gaming, seems to be combining two opposite intentions: expansion of their potential market and specialization within it.
Price is another factor, since a lot of those in general laptop market would rather take a hit on display size, graphic performance, or other great features of the Razer Blade, in order to pay a little less for a lesser netbook—especially if they're getting the same Windows 8 operating system and general daily use out of it at a much lower price.
Finally, there's Razer's core audience to think about. Gamers might be tired of the gigantic, bulky gaming laptops in the market and that might be enough for them to hop on to the Razer Blade instead (sound's painful). But the old Razer Blade (now upgraded and reintroduced as the Razer Blade Pro) has many of the same guts as the new Razer Blade, now including the Haswell processor and new NVIDIA GPU, but with a 17-inch display. It also featured Razer's Switchblade interface, which was a button and touchpad feature completely specific to gaming, and to Razer. The new Razer Blade costs, at base, about $500 less than the Razer Blade Pro, but for gamers willing to shell out that kind of cash, they'll get a bigger screen, a Switchblade UI, and a total package that's not much bigger or heftier than the Blade.
Razer's new lineup is available for pre-order starting June 3, so we'll have to wait and see how well the little 14-inch monster does.