The 2024 edition of the Razer Blade 18 gaming laptop was announced a few days ago at CES 2024 and photos of the beast are circulating online (here, here And here), which shows that the annual renewal of the popular DTR laptop (desktop PC replacement) is substantial.
While the primary market is (and will remain) gamers, there’s no denying that the complete package will appeal to creatives and even beyond, for a number of reasons; a mobile workstation that rules all mobile workstations?
Unlike quite a few 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, it wouldn’t look at all out of place at a management team meeting in an anonymous boardroom in London. The lack of a dedicated keyboard, long hinge and brushed metal finish make it look more like a 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro, albeit weighing almost twice as much.
Then there’s the Thunderbolt 5 (TB5) connector, which can deliver 120 Gbps bandwidth, and is more useful for content creators than gamers. Razer’s own marketing literature refers to “faster data backup/archiving and faster export and rendering” thanks to twice the amount of bandwidth for external SSD, external GPU and other creative tools. I saw a number of docking stations (e.g. J5 Create) and portable SSD (e.g. OWC) at CES 2024 that support TB5; expects this number to increase this year.
Workstation class specifications
Thunderbolt 5 also supports refresh rates 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: still haven’t seen any mainstream 8K monitor has been on sale for the past few years, so I won’t hold my breath for a 16K monitor).
If the specs of the smaller Razer Blade 16 are the same for its bigger brother, expect a 14th generation Intel Core i9 CPU (14900HX) and a desktop-grade Nvidia RTX 4090 with a TDP of 175W. Based on Geekbench benchmark CPU test resultsI expect the 14900HX – which Intel calls the fastest mobile CPU in the world – to be competitive with AMD’s crème-de-la-cream (within a similar power range).
And in a thinly veiled nod to content creators and professionals, it’s almost certain that – based on the current specs of its 2024 16-inch brothers – the new Razer 18 comes with up to 8 TB SSD and 96 GB RAM, a very significant boost over the 2023 version, which could only muster 32 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD, enough for gamers but not for professionals. However, expect to pay more than $5,000 (about £4,000, AU$7,500) for these two upgrades alone, effectively doubling the price of the base configuration.
It’s not the perfect mobile workstation though, let’s not kid ourselves. It doesn’t offer Windows 11 Pro as standard, but comes with just a 12-month warranty, with no option for longer periods or on-site warranty. There’s no numeric keypad, a must for professionals, there’s no fingerprint reader or support for vPro, Intel’s management platform.
Still, I’d like to put it in our closet best laptop for engineering students or best laptop for video editing buying guides when it goes on sale later this year.