The Razer Blade 16 is finally here, following in the footsteps of Apple after the Cupertino company shifted its MacBook Pro design to a 16-inch model. This lets the high-end gaming laptop continue to claim the “MacBook of gaming laptops” title for another year, but even if Razer hadn’t upped the computer’s screen size, it would be a hard comparison to shake. Just like Apple’s high-end laptops, this is a gorgeous machine with an aluminum unibody design and a trackpad that’s way bigger than it needs to be.
But while Apple’s pro-level laptops are limited to what the M2 Pro and M2 Max can do, the Razer Blade 16 is equipped with the best processors and graphics cards from Intel and Nvidia, respectively. For the unit I got in for review, that means an Intel Core i9-13950HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090. But unlike something like the MSI Titan GT77 HX, the focus is on portability rather than raw power, so you’re not getting quite the same level of performance with the Razer Blade 16.
If you’re in the market for a portable gaming laptop that can easily handle most games at 4K without batting an eyelid, the Razer Blade 16 definitely gets the job done. And the bonus is that you won’t look like a gamer when you whip this laptop out at the coffee shop – aside from its copious RGB lighting, of course.
Razer’s new high-end luxury gaming laptop that proves you can have a powerful gaming laptop in a sleek package.
Razer’s new high-end luxury gaming laptop that proves you can have a powerful gaming laptop in a sleek package.
The Razer Blade 16 is an expensive gaming laptop. The Razer Blade in general has been one of the most expensive gaming laptops on the market for a long time, but the new model takes it to another level. This laptop starts at an eye-watering $2,699, and that model comes equipped with an Intel Core i9-13950HX and an Nvidia RTX 4060.
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You can upgrade the laptop from there, though every single model comes with the same high-end processor. The price goes all the way up to $4,299, which will get you an RTX 4090, 32GB and two(!!) 1TB SSDs. That’s the model I got in for review, and I can confirm that it’s absolutely overkill for most people.
The happy middle-ground will probably be the model with 16GB of RAM and an RTX 4070, which clocks in at $2,999. That’s still an extremely expensive gaming laptop, but the display is really what you’re paying for here, and there’s nothing else on the market like it.
What’s funny is that even though Razer has had to put up with being compared with one of the most expensive laptops on the market for years now, its flagship Blade laptop is now more expensive to start than the MacBook Pro 16, which starts for $200 less at $2,499. So, maybe now the MacBook Pro is the Razer Blade of professional laptops.
The Razer Blade 16 is gorgeous. There’s no other way around that. Every single year that Razer puts out a new laptop, it improves upon the already fantastic design to make an even more luxurious gaming laptop, and the Blade 16 does exactly that again.
You’re getting the same aluminum unibody chassis, punctuated by more ports than anyone would expect out of a laptop of this size. You get three USB-A ports, an HDMI connection, 2 USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, an SD card reader and a dedicated charging port. This isn’t the thinnest laptop out there, but it’s still way thinner than a gaming laptop with these specs has any right to be, making the port selection more impressive than it would be on other gaming laptops.
The Razer Blade 16 measures in at just 0.87 inches thick, and weighs in at 5.4 pounds. That’s not quite ultrabook-level dimensions, but even after carrying this thing around in my backpack for weeks, I can attest that it feels pretty similar to a specced-out MacBook in my backpack. The only difference is that this can capably run The Witcher 3 after its next-gen update without any issues.
The only thing that really weighs it down from there (literally) is the huge power brick. That’s kind of a necessary evil with all the power-hungry components in this laptop, but if you’re carrying around the charger, it adds a few pounds to the weight. And, trust me, you’re going to be carrying around the charger if you’re going to be working on this thing for any extended period of time.
The mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is an absolute beast of a graphics card. It doesn’t quite reach the same levels as the desktop version, of course, but this level of GPU performance in a laptop is a big deal.
There are going to be gaming laptops out there that outperform the Razer Blade 16 with a similar graphics card. The MSI Titan GT77, for instance, has much more space for cooling and runs the RTX 4090 at a higher wattage than the Razer Blade 16 does. So, if you’re after raw performance, you’re probably better off getting a bulkier gaming laptop.
But if you’re looking for something that balances portability with gaming performance, you’re in for a treat here. There isn’t a single game in the Gizmodo test suite that the Razer Blade 16 wasn’t able to run way above 60 fps, usually while also running at 4K. The lowest performance was in Metro Exodus, but even that managed 68 fps at 4K, and even when I enabled ray tracing without DLSS, it was able to get around 49 fps. Enable DLSS, and that number goes all the way up to 79 fps.
Far Cry 5 shows just how much of a 4K powerhouse this gaming laptop is, with the laptop managing 94 fps at the native resolution of 3,840 x 2,400. Even in games that aren’t part of our usual test suite, this is one of the gaming laptops to beat. I took the Razer Blade 16 with me to MagicCon Philly, and basically spent an evening playing the Witcher 3 next-gen update at 1600p. At that resolution, and with all the eye candy turned way up, I was able to get a solid 80 fps.
That’s less than the 2400p native resolution, but the Witcher 3 next-gen update is notoriously hard to run and I notoriously don’t compromise on visual quality for nothing. The Razer Blade 16 enables my bullshit pickiness with PC game graphics, and I love it for that.
Even beyond gaming performance, the Razer Blade 16 is a beast of a laptop. The laptop manages a Geekbench 5 score of 19,820 in multi-core and 1,975 in single-core. That’s less than the fully unlocked MSI Titan, but again, the cooling allows the MSI laptop to push the CPU harder than the Razer Blade 16.
In Blender, the Razer Blade 16 is able to push through the BMW demo in just 1 minute and 27 seconds, which actually beats out the Titan in the same test. It does fall behind the Titan in Handbrake, but not by much, processing the same video file in 2 minutes and 50 seconds, just 6 seconds slower than MSI’s flagship.
The sleek design of the Razer Blade 16 makes it less obnoxious in the office, and if you need a high-power workstation as a creative professional, I’d be hard pressed to find something more fitting for your needs – at least without forking over the cash for an actual professional workstation like .
The Razer Blade 16 has a fairly average chiclet keyboard, backed with some juicy RGB lighting. I was able to keep my unimpressive 89 WPM typing speed with no errors, so you don’t have to worry about repeat key presses or anything.
One thing that has come up in my time with the Razer Blade 15 is the large trackpad. It’s nice having a huge space for Windows 11 gestures as such, but the palm rejection really should be better for a trackpad that takes up so much of the chassis.
While working on this device, I’ve regularly accidentally triggered the touchpad, losing my place in documents or even clicking into an entirely different tab or window. You can get over this by using a gaming mouse and disabling the trackpad, but you really shouldn’t have to do that when you’re spending this much on a gaming laptop.
One of the Razer Blade 16’s biggest selling points, and probably a huge reason behind the high price, is the display. You’re getting a 16-inch mini-LED display with a ‘dual refresh rate.’ Basically what this means is that, at the native resolution of 3,840 x 2,400, you’re getting a 120Hz refresh rate. But if you lower the resolution to 1,920 x 1,200, you can up the refresh rate to 240Hz. This is great news for esports gamers that might want to use the laptop’s horsepower to drive high framerates in games like Valorant or Overwatch.
The only catch is that, to switch between these two modes, you can’t simply navigate to the Windows 11 Display Settings page and change the resolution there. Instead, you need to go into Razer Synapse, look under its display tab, and change the “Native Display Mode” to your desired resolution and refresh rate. Then, you need to restart the system.
It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it would have been nice if you could have switched between the two resolutions on the fly when you’re playing different games. Maybe in a future release.
The display itself is gorgeous, however. The mini-LED technology that drives it allows for incredible color accuracy with some of the deepest blacks I’ve ever seen in a laptop display. It gets pretty bright, too, measuring in with a peak brightness of 473 nits. That’s not quite as high as something like the MacBook Pro, but it’s more than you’ll find on most gaming laptops.
If the luxe chassis design isn’t enough to sell you on the high price tag, the display might just be the thing that convinces you to drop thousands of dollars on the Razer Blade 16. Especially for creative professionals that’ll want the power of the RTX 4090 behind Source: Gizmodo