RAZER BLADE 2018
Razer is back with a new Blade laptop, and it’s the company’s best looking machine yet. The 2018 Razer Blade is milled from a single block of aluminum, and the result is a sleek, dusky beauty that you can use for both work and play.
The Blade represents a shift in Razer’s design language, and it takes on a more angular and blocky look that is reminiscent of the
Razer Phone.
However, Razer says that this sharper (literally) look is also a result of the exigencies of a more compact design. The more squared-off corners allow Razer to push components further to the edge of the chassis, making additional room for things like a larger battery and a more spacious component layout.
Image quality on the Blade’s Full HD IPS display is top-notch. Colors really popped for me, and the slim bezels created a more expansive and immersive experience that has been sorely lacking on Razer laptops before this one. Viewing angles were also excellent, as expected of an IPS panel, while the matte nish helps to dull reflections.
However, I found myself running it at 100 per cent brightness most of the time, so it feels like it could be a bit brighter.
The screen’s top bezel is also markedly thicker than those at the left and right, but it does mean that there’s still room for a webcam there. In the quest for ever slimmer bezels, many manufacturers have had to compromise and relocate the webcam to the bottom bezel, which gives rise to some seriously unflattering camera angles.
If you ask me, a marginally thicker top bezel is a small price to play for a more functional design. Another thing I really like is the larger than average Windows Precision Touchpad.
At 130 x 80 mm, it provides more usable space and improves the overall experience. The glass-topped touchpad is super smooth, precise, and responsive, with good feedback for the integrated left- and right-click buttons. The RGB backlit keyboard is powered by Razer’s Chroma software, and the lighting is bright and even and very pretty to look at. The Chroma configurator provides extensive perkey customization options, and you’ll have a eld day tweaking it to suit your preferences.
As with all slim designs, cooling is a concern, and Razer says the Blade utilizes vapor chamber technology to keep the laptop cool instead of more conventional heat pipes. It uses this for both the CPU and GPU, the vacuum-sealed vaporized liquid helps dissipate heat from the other components as well.
In addition, it employs a special nanoparticle layer between the keyboard and the internal components to block heat transfer to areas that the user touches most often, such as the palm rests.