Now that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 mobile GPU is finally here, we’re getting a flood of announcements from laptop makers at CES 2021 about updates to their lineups, so the new Razer Blade 15 and Blade 17 laptops with mobile RTX 30-series GPUs was entirely expected, but still exciting nonetheless.
“The new Razer Blade line is the best place for gamers to play the next generation of games,” Brad Wildes, senior VP and general manager, Razer Systems business unit, said in a statement.
“Our new line features the latest graphics technology, giving gamers the most immersive experience available. With the fastest displays on the market and one of our smallest chassis ever, gamers can enjoy ultra-smooth gameplay anywhere and everywhere.”
To go along with the new GPUs, the Blade 15 and Blade 17 will feature new, higher-refresh, higher-resolution displays and what Razer says is the smallest 15-inch form factor of any gaming laptop powered by the new Nvidia Ampere mobile GPUs.
The new 15.6-inch displays will feature 1080p at 360Hz, 1440p at 240Hz, but only 60Hz at 4k. The 17.3-inch displays will feature 1080p at 360Hz, 1440p at 165Hz, and 4k at 120Hz, so if you’re looking to do some 4k gaming, the Blade 17 is definitely the way to go.
The new Razer Blade 15 starts at $1,699 (about £1,325 / AU$2,380) while the Blade 17 will start at $2,299 (about £1,795 / AU$3,220). Both are available for pre-order on Razer’s site right now, with the Blade 15 going on sale with other retailers starting on January 26, while the Blade 17 will be available with other retailers sometime in Q1 2021.
What’s in a GPU?
The new Razer Blade laptops will feature up to an RTX 3080, which as we saw last week in some leaked specs, will use the GA104 GPU rather than the GA102, so the RTX 3080 mobile is more akin to the desktop RTX 3070 rather than the full RTX 3080.
Still, this puts the Razer Blade 15 and Blade 17’s GPU on par or better than the desktop RTX 2080 Ti, so at these price points, there’s very little to complain about here.
With pressure from AMD on the desktop front, it remains to be seen if AMD can put pressure on Nvidia in the gaming laptop space, but we’ll definitely get a better sense as more manufacturers reveal their CES 2021 lineups.
