Razer has announced that after a three-year hiatus, it has brought back its powerhouse 14-inch laptop that packs raw computing capability and display performance into an extremely thin chassis. It is also the first Razer Blade ever to feature an AMD processor, the 8-core Ryzen 9 5900HX.
Razer touts the Razer Blade 14 as a “14-inch powerhouse” of a laptop that combines that AMD processor with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 laptop GPU and maximum 1440p Quad HD 165Hz display into a thin body that measures just 0.66 x 8.66 x 12.59 inches. Razer says this is the world’s smallest 14-inch gaming laptop currently available.
And while the Razer Blade 14 is marketed primarily as a gaming device — hence its announcement at E3 and the fact it offers “one of a king” per-key Razer Chroma RGB backlighting — it has several features that make it a compelling buy for photographers and videographers as well.
The Razer Blade 14 marks the “revival” of the laptop line through a new partnership with AMD, which the company says culminates in a powerful laptop that takes advantage of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX 8-core, 16-thread processor that has a max boost clock of up to 4.6GHz to “quickly dispatch dense workloads.” Razer specifically says that it will be able to reduce latency when it comes to gaming, but also notes that it will be able to tackle demanding professional workloads extremely quickly. The company also claims that it can perform at a top-tier level while still offering up to 12 hours of battery life.
The laptop can be outfitted with a choice of options from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series laptop GPUs: 3060, 3070, and 3080.
While raw computing power is important for quickly processing photos and videos, the quality of the display is arguably more important. To that end, the Blade 14 offers what Razer is calling the fastest 14-inch displays on the market, which offers the choice between a Full HD 144Hz or a Quad HD 165Hz IPS display. Photographers are likely to lean for the higher resolution display, but Razer promises the Full HD model will hit up to 100 percent of sRGB and the 1440p model can hit up to 100 percent of DCI-P3 and both come from the factory custom calibrated.
The Razer Blade 14 also ships with a 720p webcam, an IR sensor for login, and dual THX Spatial Audio speakers on either side of the keyboard. It also includes two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with lower power delivery (for charging in a pinch) and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A ports for connecting “legacy” items. It also has an HDMI 2.1 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The Razer Blade 14 is available immediately from Razer.com and starts at $1,800 for the base RTX 3060 and Full HD display model and up to $2,800 for the fully-kitted RTX 3080 and Quad HD display version.