Razer is the ‘MacBook’ for gaming laptops. That’s what ‘they’ say. ‘They’ most likely being Razer workers diving deep into peoples’ goals to plant the idea on the core of their very being, but in addition loads of different folks to be honest. They actually are beautiful units. Though very similar to Apple, Razer hasn’t been afraid to cost over the chances for one. The so-called ‘Razer Tax’ has whacked a strong four-digit premium on its laptops versus different equally specced machines, although that’s coming down somewhat with the incoming technology.
The new Razer Blade 16 might be priced at $2,800, with an RTX 5070 Ti, or $3,200 with an RTX 5080. That looks as if some huge cash, and it’s, however evaluate the latter with the RTX 4080 mannequin we reviewed final yr and it is $400 cheaper. That 2024 model was $3,600, for principally the identical sorta stuff, and the RTX 4070 mannequin was $3,000, which is greater than the Ti model this time round.
That’s with largely comparable specs in different methods. The new Blade 16, in both RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 flavours, comes with a QHD+ 240 Hz OLED display screen, 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of reminiscence. These additionally include AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 365. The RTX 5090 model bumps that as much as a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, with 2 TB of storage, for $4,200, although I’m not significantly satisfied by that configuration simply but.
Razer hasn’t budged from its premium pricing technique in a very long time, solely including extra on. So why now?
This undoubtedly feels just like the doing of the ROG Zephyrus to me. It’s a premium laptop computer design from a rival firm and one which’s completely in a position to go toe-to-toe with the Razer on feeling and looking beautiful. It is not fairly the excessive efficiency machine as Razer’s possibility—Asus massively restricts the facility of its Zephyrus machines—however that is largely all proper with me contemplating they’re usually discovered far cheaper than Razer’s competing mannequin. Now it is as much as Asus to maintain the stress on with aggressive pricing for the RTX 50-series, which have not been introduced simply but.
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We knew this value adjustment was coming. Back at CES, after I bought to see the Blade 16 in particular person for the primary time, we have been instructed it was “aggressively priced”. It’s additionally fairly aggressively slimmed down, with the detachable reminiscence DIMMs lower to make method for slimmer soldered reminiscence. It’s 30% smaller by quantity consequently, and darn did it really feel that method after I was holding it in my palms. That was certainly one of my complaints with the earlier yr’s Blades: they have been chunky as heck.
So, is the world therapeutic now that Razer has dropped its costs a contact? No, not solely. Though it is good to see some competitors within the high-end laptop computer market shaking up costs, even somewhat. Things do change; not all the things stays the identical.
