At CES 2023, Razer announced the Blade 18 gaming laptops, which are the most significant changes to Razer’s popular, well-designed Blade lineup in a long time, going far beyond processor and GPU spec improvements. With a 16:10 aspect ratio, the screen is taller, and the display “chin” near the bezel is significantly smaller.
Every configuration includes Intel’s high-end 13th Generation Core i9-13950HX 65W CPU as standard, with the option to upgrade to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 mobile graphics.
Razer intends for creators to use 4K mode, which tops out at 120Hz, while the lower FHD resolution doubles it to 240Hz. According to Razer, the peak brightness of this Mini LED screen can reach 1,000 nits when displaying HDR content and 600 nits when displaying SDR content. Razer has not disclosed the cost of this upgrade, but don’t expect it to be cheap.
Except for the GeForce RTX 4060 version, all Razer Blade 18 variants come with 32 GB of DDR5 5,600 memory by default.
Even if the Mini LED upgrade is out of your price range, they’re all IPS panels with a QHD (2560 x 1600) resolution, a 240Hz refresh rate, and 500 nits of peak brightness, which should be sufficient for most use cases. Each supports Nvidia G-Sync variable refresh rate technology, has a response time of 3ms, and supports the entire DCI-P3 colour spectrum.
Blade 18 laptops come standard with 16GB of DDR5-5600MHz RAM and 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage, both of which are user-replaceable. With its two memory slots, you can upgrade to 64GB of memory. With two slots, the Blade 16 can support up to 4TB of storage, while the Blade 18 can support up to 8TB.
The laptop includes a Windows Hello webcam, but Razer is emphasising the QHD 5MP webcam built into the Blade 18. It features one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, one Thunderbolt 4 port (with support for 100W charging), three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and a UHS-II SD card reader.
Both of its USB-C ports can send video out to monitors. Only the TB4 port, however, can output video from the discrete Nvidia GPU, whereas the USB-C port can output video from the integrated graphics. The larger Blade 18 has a few more features, including a 2.5Gbps ethernet port.
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