Razer has announced the latest refresh to its class-leading Blade 15 laptops. The new laptops feature the first-ever 8-core processor in a Razer laptop, Nvidia RTX Super GPU’s and even a 300Hz display. Looking at the new Blade 15, you’d be forgiven that nothing’s changed. But you would be dismissing one of the biggest and most crucial fan requests – the arrow key placement.
While the Blades have garnered universal acclaim for their MacBooks rivalling design, one huge ergonomic pain has been the arrow keys. The old Blades had the Up arrow key sitting right in between the ? and Right Shift key.
“We’ve added numerous cutting-edge features and user improvements that were requested directly from the community to make the Blade 15 more than just a great laptop for gamers, but a great laptop for everyone,” said Brad Wildes, Senior Vice President of Razer’s Systems Business Unit.
Keyboard finally fixed
The keyboard layout was a point of vexation for users and reviewers alike because of the many typing errors that occurred when trying to hit the shift key. Razer has fixed this by using a newer half-height arrow key cluster that sits directly underneath a longer right shift key. Now when you are typing, you won’t keep knocking the cursor up a line while trying to hit the shift key.
The Blade 15 keyboard also has n-key rollover and anti-ghosting technology for improved typing accuracy. The keys are also backlit, of course. Razer Synapse 3 helps you control the 16.8 million colours and lighting effects.
8-core processors for the road
The new Blade 15 packs Intel’s shiny new 10th Gen processors including the 8-core i7-10875H. The new processors are, as you’d expect, much faster than their predecessors with clock speeds reaching a lap-searing 5.1Ghz. Content creators who love the slim, light build of the Blade 15 for on-the-go video editing and design will appreciate the boosted performance.
The new Intel processors add more than just speed though. Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 Gig+ wireless offers Blade 15 buyers up to 2.4Gbps network transfer speeds. I know gamers and streamers will welcome the faster bandwidth. Additionally, the DDR4 RAM in the Blade 15 gets a speed boost, operating at 3000Mhz frequency.
Super-charged graphics
The Blade 15 now receives Nvidia’s brand new mobile GPU’s, the RTX 2070 Super Max-Q and RTX 2080 Super Max-Q. Razer says buyers can expect up to 25% performance boost over the standard RTX 2070/2080 Max-Q. This is significant since the older GPU’s were already incredible mobile performers. The 8Gb’s of high-bandwidth DDR6 memory and more of those fancy ray-tracing cores mean those real-time ray-traced shadows in Metro Exodus won’t bring your laptop to its knees.
With the motion-sickness inducing high framerates that the 2080 Super Max-Q will spit out, Razer has paired it to a brand new 300Hz refresh display. The 15.6-inch display boasts a colour-accurate 100% sRGB coverage. For pixel gluttons like me, there is also a 4K OLED touch display with 100% coverage of DCI-P3 colour space. Oh, and it also has a 1ms response time so this is definitely the screen for creative pros.
Pricing and availability
There’s no pricing or launch date for the new Razer Blade 15 here in Australia. However, Razer says the Blade 15 will start at $1,599 USD will be available starting May at Razer.com in the United States and Canada.
We can expect sales in Australia and the rest of the world to follow shortly after.
