This weekend at PAX Razer unveiled some large bits of information on their foray into the laptop system market by showing off their upcoming laptop, the Razer Blade. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan was on hand to give us the lowdown on this innovative new product.
Min-Liang Tan stressed the fact that innovation in the PC world was dying and that Razer and their Snakepit development team were bringing it back. He described the Blade as the “world’s first true gamming laptop.” With the Blade they wanted to introduce a system with true portability, superior performance and a revolutionary user interface.
The gaming laptop redefined
The specs for the Blade are quite impressive, coming in at just 6.9lb and .88” thick, it is a truly portable machine. The power supply was also reduced in size and weight. Comparing to some of the other gamming systems out there that are in excess of 2” thick and from 9.5-15lb this is a big improvement for the gamer on the go. It doesn’t really skimp on the performance side either running an Intel Core i7 at 2.8GHz, 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, a discrete NVIDIA GT 555m GPU with 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory and a 17.3” 1080p display. One piece of the Blade that doesn’t seem on par with some of the other pieces is that it runs a 7200RPM 320GB HDD. An SSD drive would seem like a more likely component with all of the other specs. Razer also opted out of putting in an optical drive to conserve size and weight, but with the PC gaming space turning more and more to digital distribution this doesn’t seem like it will be much of an issue for anyone.
The Switchblade UI
Razer also decided to include a new user interface with the Blade. They brought over some of the aspects of the Switchblade UI from their successful product from CES. The Switchblade UI on the Blade incorporates 10 programmable buttons that you can customize with apps/macros/in game abilities, all backlit with whatever custom images you want. Below these 10 buttons is a touch screen similar to those on today’s smart phones. This second screen will serve as the touchpad mouse and also a place to have game information displayed as well as using it for things like YouTube while in game.
All of these components sure make for a wonderful machine, though I still have a few reservations about it. For one the price point, $2,799, is very steep especially without including a solid state hard drive. The Blade is also not customizable, only one model will be available with set specs. My other really big question is the placement of the Switchblade UI keys. They are located above the touchpad on the right side of the keyboard. The way they are placed now you would either have to take your hand off the touchpad or mouse to use them or else bring your left hand across from the keyboard. This can leave you with dead time on movements or being able to change targets quickly. Of course, once we are able to get our hands on the device it may work well without problems, only time will tell.
I do think this product is definitely a step in the right direction for the PC which has been filled with lots of the same for a long time. I hope some of the other manufacturers take a queue from Razer on this one and pump some life back into the PC market.
