Razer today announced that its Blade 15 gaming laptop is getting a serious upgrade. The Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model will utilize Nvidia's new RTX 20-series graphics cards and start at $2,299 when it releases on Jan. 29. The announcement was made at the CES trade show in Las Vegas on the heels of Nvidia's own announcement.
The updated laptops come with an Intel Core i7-8750H no matter which configuration you get. The 15.6-inch display will come in either FHD with a 144 Hz refresh rate or 4K with a 60 Hz refresh rate and touch support. For gaming, you can pick from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2070 Max-Q or RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU, and storage comes in either 256 GB or 512 GB M.2 NVMe PCIe. It comes with 16 GB DDR4 RAM with up to 64 GB supported.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-8750H |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, 2070 Max-Q or 2080 Max-Q |
| RAM | 16GB DDR4 2667 MHz |
| Storage | 256 or 512 GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD |
| Display | 15.6-inch IPS, either FHD 144 Hz or 4K Touch 60 Hz |
| Ports | Thunderbolt 3, 3x USB 3.1 Gen 1, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, Headphone jack |
| Battery | 80 Whr |
| Size | `4 x 9.3 x 0.7 inches (355 x 235 x 17.8 mm) |
| Weight | 4.7 pounds |
| Starting Price | $2,299.99 |
For the base price, you get the FHD display, RTX 2060 and 512GB SSD, while the top end model with an FHD display, RTX 2080 Max-Q and 512 GB SSD costs $2,999.99. There are many variations for prices in between with the different displays and storage.
The Blade 15 also has an aesthetic change: the secondary functions are all lit with Chroma, which previously wasn’t the case. On the functionality side, the webcam now has IR to log in with Windows Hello. It looks the same as the existing 10-series Razer Blade, which will continue to be available with a GTX 1060 Max-Q GPU starting at $1,599, and will also show up in a Mercury White edition.
While most will see this as a basic component upgrade, there's one other notable point: the Razer Blade 15 is now a full lineup of its own, with a base dual storage option, a solid mid-range computer and now a high-end beast with the latest graphics. We look forward to seeing how it performs later this month.
