Razer Blade review: Razer Blade

You can't accuse Razer of playing it safe. The first laptop from the longtime PC gaming accessories maker, the $2,800 Blade is an eye-catching, innovative, expensive gaming PC that looks the part thanks to its thin design, gorgeous 17-inch screen, and the LED-based touch pad and hot-key layout Razer calls its Switchblade UI. The thin design gives the Blade uncommon portability for a gaming laptop, but the Switchblade UI doesn't achieve enough of its potential to justify the Blade's cost in relation to its performance.

6.8

Razer Blade

The Good

The <b>Razer Blade</b> has a thin, sleek design, an excellent 17-inch display, fast bootup times, and unique touch-pad UI with a lot of potential for gamers.

The Bad

The innovative Switchblade UI LED buttons are hard to customize, and the Blade has underpowered graphics for its price.

The Bottom Line

Razer's first laptop, the Razer Blade, is a thin gaming computer with some futuristic design touches, but a high price means you're paying for design -- and for the second-screen signature Switchblade UI interface that doesn't do as much as we hoped it would...yet.

The Blade is a capable-enough gaming laptop, and if you're willing to sacrifice performance for the Blade's seductive looks and the novelty of its interface, you may come to like it. But if you're a PC gamer who puts performance first, you'd be better off with a different laptop.

Razer's bold gaming-laptop debut is undeniably thin: at 0.88 inch, it's practically ultrabook-sized. From all angles, it resembles a matte-black metal 17-inch MacBook Pro fused with the design sensibility of an Alienware laptop. It's nearly the same weight as a 17-inch MacBook Pro, too, at 6.46 pounds.

Open the Blade up, and what will strike you is its minimalism: the green-accented keyboard is backlit in a neon glow, but the Blade generally leaves off the rocketship/carnival/car grille absurdities that tend to grace most gaming laptops. That minimalism won't appeal to everyone; the Blade achieves its thinness in part by not including an optical drive, and the only ports line the left side of the laptop.

Still, even if you're annoyed by having to snake the USB cable around the back, it's hard to deny that the Blade is a real design achievement for Razer. No other gaming laptop I know offers this degree of portability. It's a design that puts pressure on other vendors.