The race to the bottom has wrecked havoc in the PC industry. The only PC maker with decent margins is Apple, and even they aren’t doing anything particularly innovative. Razor, though, wants to buck the trend. After a ballsy marketing campaign, the company has unveiled the Razer Blade. The Razer Blade is what you get when you combine the team behind OQO, add some engineers from Dell, Apple, and others, and tell them to design the thinnest, most stylish gaming laptop – no questions asked. The result is striking.
The Razer Blade is a superthin, very powerful and extremely stylish gaming laptop – with ten programmable keys (each key is a tiny display) and a small LCD multitouch display acting as a touchpad. It also packs some fairly decent specifications, especially when you take into account just how thing this 17.3″ laptop really is. It makes the MacBook Pro look downright bulky.
- 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 2640M Processor
- 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 Memory
- 17.3″ LED Backlit Display (1920×1080)
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M with NVIDIA Optimus Technology
- 2GB Dedicated GDDR5 Video Memory
- Built-in HD Webcam
- Integrated 60Wh Battery
- 320GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
- Wireless Network 802.11 b/g/n Compatible
- 16.81″x10.9″x0.88″; 6.97lbs
I’m absolutely thrilled by the justification given by Razer for designing and building this device. No focus groups, no research, since those would probably indicate there’s no market for this anyway. This was designed from the get-go as something the people at Razor themselves would want to use, as Razer’s Min-Liang Tan, the CEO and creative director, told Ars. “So, in short, there’s no market if you ask the guy in the suit, but we’ve designed something that we have always wanted for ourselves – we don’t care about the market at large – we do care about the PC gamer,” he told Ars, “If we designed based on the ‘market’ you wouldn’t see many of the things that we have launched.”
He has a point. Razer makes some extremely odd mice and keyboards specifically for gamers, which comes with quite the hefty price tag. No sane person would ever buy these things, Razer was told, but people were wrong. There is a market for these kinds of truly PC gamer oriented products, and I can only applaud Razer for having the Krogan balls to design a laptop like this.
Of course, a product like this doesn’t come cheap – it will be available in the fourth quarter of this year for an incredibly hefty $2799. That’s a hell of a lot of money, but considering this laptop, it might actually be worth it. It’s a truly portable gaming laptop with interesting control options, and it looks infinitely better than those ridiculously garish AlienWare “laptops”. On top of that – nobody has anything like this on offer – not even Apple. The MacBook Pro 17″ only goes up to 2.3Ghz i7, but matching out the other specs raises the base MBP 17″ price to a whopping $2949, and you’ll only have 2.3Ghz (edit: D’oh! MBP has a quad-core chip), but you do get a larger hard drive.
Launching a product like this in the current PC market takes a lot of courage, guts, and a healthy dose of positive insanity – and thank god people like the guys and girls at Razer still exist. I don’t have the money for something like this, but I hope many others do – this kind of thing needs to succeed.
<Shrug> An expensive plastic laptop with gimmicky extras we’ll never use. Let’s watch this disappear without a trace…
It’s aluminium unibody, not plastic.
Then I apologise for misreading the article… But I still fail to see what is special for the consumer… I appreciate that it has some fun toys for the tech enthusiast, but laptops are commodity items, you need to really appeal to the general public if you want to make a success of it.
Then I apologise for misreading the article… But I still fail to see what is special for the consumer… I appreciate that it has some fun toys for the tech enthusiast, but laptops are commodity items, you need to really appeal to the general public if you want to make a success of it. [/q]
Yeah, you’re right. Take, for example, Ferraris. I still fail to see what is special for the consumer… I appreciate that it has some fun toys for the car enthusiast, but cards are commodity items, you need to really appeal to the general public if you want to make a success of it. I think Ferrari should close it’s doors and focus on what the average consumer wants. They would be far more successful.
Then I apologise for misreading the article… But I still fail to see what is special for the consumer… I appreciate that it has some fun toys for the tech enthusiast, but laptops are commodity items, you need to really appeal to the general public if you want to make a success of it. [/q] Yeah, you’re right. Take, for example, Ferraris. I still fail to see what is special for the consumer… I appreciate that it has some fun toys for the car enthusiast, but cards are commodity items, you need to really appeal to the general public if you want to make a success of it. I think Ferrari should close it’s doors and focus on what the average consumer wants. They would be far more successful. [/q]
I’m happy to be proven wrong, I’m just a guy sitting at home with not much going on and an opinion…
nah I don’t want to be very harsh, I’m just surprised at the overly negative response to this. Regardless of the price, they did came out with something unique I think. Thing is, we are not the target audience for this – but I can imagine a sizeable rich parent’s kids market who would want this gadget
Especially now that Apple is insanely mainstream and boring. This could be just what the rich hipster ordered – gamer or no.
And once a few of these sell, you can expect Razor to produce cheaper versions – 15″, maybe 13″. That’s a very common strategy for new toys like this.
Since you so loudly stated in a previous thread that you own an iPad, does that make you insanely mainstream and boring as well?
Did I ever claim I wasn’t?
So…when you criticize Apple, you are criticizing yourself?
Interesting.
Edited 2011-08-26 20:15 UTC
What?
I bought an iPad 2 because I wanted the best tablet. The choice was a no-brainer. Other than editor at OSNews, I’m also a simple consumer with limited funds. I never made a secret of the fact that when I go out to buy stuff with my own money, I buy what’s best value. Simple. I have never condemned anyone for buying Apple, since it is unreasonable to expect regular folk to know what kind of an anti-competitive company Apple really is.
I know you are sitting all smug in your chair thinking you scored a point or something, but I’ve always been open about the fact that I do, yes, buy Apple products. I’m nothing if not a massive hypocrite – I’ve said that numerous times on OSNews. Unlike most other bloggers out there, I do not hide my hypocrisy.
That’s why I have such a good insight into how Apple products work, what their failings are, and so on. I do not spout uninformed crap about Apple and its products – I most likely know more about both than all MDN or DaringFireball readers combined – *exactly because* I use their products.
Edited 2011-08-26 20:26 UTC
Do you expect me to congratulate you on your hypocrisy?
I don’t think you know any more or less than folks from MDN or DaringFireball. You’re just a guy with an opinion. Don’t flatter yourself.
Edited 2011-08-26 20:49 UTC
I would love to know what, exactly, crawled up your ass and died. It must be very painful.
I’d love to know the disappointment your parents felt when they realized that you were never leaving their basement.
So, people are what they consume? Cool people own cool toys? Interesting. I guess marketing campaigns are way more effective than I thought.
Well, we’ll see how they do in the marketing department. Despite Apple being pretty much mainstream, they still manage to convince people that it’s sooo special (not to mention magical!) to own an Apple product. I’m not saying Razor needs to be as good as Apple at marketing, but they have to be fairly good to sell.
Rich hipsters don’t run windows.
Actually i think you’re right, my reaction was overly negative… I guess that comes from being an Amiga Fan
The market could do with another desirable device, right now only the MacBook air 11″ has made me reach for my credit card… But I quickly put it away again… I don’t need a new laptop right now
Ferrari will get you laid.
This laptop? Will help you find porn…
Ferrari is a brand that goes beyond the enthusiast market. In itself it’s a well known luxury brand.
However, there probably is a small market for these laptops, but I doubt that that price will make this laptop a long lasting product. Not because they should focus on the consumer market, but because the market is ridiculously small and they can’t charge extremely high prices.
Returning back to Ferrari – they sell a few thousand cars at huge prices. This one’s price can’t be as high as Ferrari would charge and it isn’t.
Edited 2011-08-27 02:58 UTC
Ferrari are a technology development platform for FIAT. They don’t make money out of selling them.
That is a very odd statement… Your complaining that a product aimed specifically at people with the means and desire to buy something that is NOT a commodity item is somehow destined to fail because it isn’t one… The whole point is that it is not commodity! The general public isn’t the target audience…
Regardless, I just hope for their sack that price includes a very healthy margin – they certainly won’t sell a ton of them but I hope they can make enough money to keep going with the concept. It is frankly about time someone tried to build a product that really differentiates them instead of just playing musical components.
Apple does it, but they do it with elegant but minimalist design. This is certainly a a totally different approach. Their market is going to be much much smaller, but it could work I think.
A Ferrari isn’t obsolete within 18 months.
Today’s fast laptop is tomorrows expensive paperweight.
It looks really nice but what would be nicer is if there was a ‘in house’ operating system based on FreeBSD with a number of gaming vendors getting behind that said platform – nice hardware is all very good but it is the software that makes the hardware either perform well or die in its ass.
It is a step in the right direction but the vendor needs something more than just ‘nice looking’, there needs to be the x factor that makes it different from other nice looking PC laptops which is where the software comes into play.
Building a new OS just for games? And why based on FreeBSD in particular?
No, it would be a general purpose operating system but fine tuned and tweaked for their hardware design.
Because it has a stable driver API/ABI for starters, it is BSD licensed which allows one to create proprietary driver modules without having to deal with shims etc. There are lots more reasons I can think of it I’m sure if you’re thinking along the same weave length as I am that it’ll click for you too.
FreeBSD does have the best performance of all the x86-based open-source Unix-like OSes. I just don’t see any generic PC hardware company going to the trouble of making a custom OS in this day and age. On the other hand it’d be pretty cool if whoever buys HP’s PC division decides to offer support for something like Haiku or AROS (don’t think WebOS is suitable for desktop use unless you basically make a touchscreen iMac).
Would be interesting to see open-source support for the Razer Blade’s touchpad. I’m assuming only Windows is supported OOTB, same as those dual-touchscreen laptops.
HP is an interesting case because they already have two in house operating systems that at their core are pretty frigging awesome – Imagine OpenVMS ported to x64 with a nice GUI, good hardware support and HP working with the big names to get their software on the platform. Rock solid core, a sexy GUI and great hardware support – HP could then command maybe $200 more for their mid range computer simply by offering something different. I know if HP were offering HP computers for slightly more but with the sexy OpenVMS I outlined I’d purchase it without hesitation.
They might sell ten, if they’re lucky. It doesn’t matter how awesome it looks, very few people will be able and willing to drop almost 3 grand on a laptop for gaming with a mediocre GPU.
“we don’t care about the market at large – we do care about the PC gamer”
This makes no sense. PC gamers ARE the market at large (or at least they used to be in the golden age 1980s-early 2000s). It seems like instead of wanting to spread PC gaming to the masses, they want to further exclude people and turn it into some sort of elitist club for people with more money than sense.
You have the worst case of … laptop-envy. Seek out help.
Um, what? I don’t even like laptops. I try to avoid using them whenever possible.
See, I knew something was wrong with your head.
HINT: there’s nothing wrong with avoiding using laptops or disliking them. The fact that you commented here, however, is kinda odd. I mean if you’re not interested in laptops whatsoever, even try to avoid them, why the hell are you reading this and commenting here? I’m not interested in cars, for example. They don’t impress me at all, not even luxury cars. I think it would be weird if I went to a message board about cars and started posting “meh, I don’t like it” for each new car news.
Edited 2011-08-27 05:22 UTC
If they advertise and sell worldwide then they might find their customers. There are a lot of wealthy gamers on this planet. They just need to get the word out.
PS. I wouldn’t buy it under no circumstances and I don’t think that there are so many people who can afford this kind of travel luxury is a good thing, but still they might sell.
That is why no one buys $800 video cards… Oh wait…
Unfortunately sometimes I wonder if the masses don’t have more money than sense…
I’ve never ever been WOWed by any laptop. There’s a first for everything I guess. It looks amazing. Works amazingly well – according to engadget. I had to say that – now let the cynical “meh” comments commence.
If they want a gaming rig of highest quality, they must also create a gaming desktop, if they are serious enough to cater the gaming community.
While you can do high-end games on a laptop, it comes with a hefty price tag, while you can do more high-end games on a desktop with a descent price tag.
Am I the only one who looks at the “UI” on this product and sees the Nintendo Game Glove? Looks pretty neat at first, but turns out to be totally non-functional?
My Asus G73sw has very near the same specs (aside from having 5 times as much storage at 1.5T) and I paid under $1700 for it.
Definitely fail. Alienware fail.
Cool, they dumped the optical drive! I like this trend. If someone *has* to have one I think they can buy that USB dongle which fakes itself as an optical drive.
I guess you would need one to install games, unless you get everything on Steam.
Personally, I can’t think of any game on my laptop that I need physical media to install from, and yea, probably 80% of it is on steam, with the last 20% split between Blizzard and GoG.com.
And how about for those games with onerous DRM that requires a physical CD to be in the drive?
Sure you could try using a software CD emulator, but thats what the pirates do and a DRM update could break it.
No matter what nice it is, the fact that it’s an LCD with info on it and has 10 programmable keys. That place is wrong for a touchpad.
One of the nice things of using a laptop is having the touchpad within reach of your fingers without having to raise your hand -like you do when typing- because it’s just there.
Unlike real keys, those programmable keys don’t give tactile information. Positioning the fingers properly requires watching it, and there is no “evidence” that you have successfully pressed a programmable key by the “input” from your hand. On the other side, especially changing gaming functions could make good use of it, given there is a programming interface for it which game developers can use.
For lefthanders maybe? 🙂
I think it’s quite possible for users who often use that additional feature to customize their habits. For example, I’m using a Sun USB keyboard with 2 x 5 keys on the left, and 4 additional ones on the top right. As they are fully programmable, they can be used for coding, for window manager control, for multimedia stuff, for launching programs and so on. The fact that they are “just there” makes them pleasant to use, and allow a very good combination of keyboard and mouse functionality. You can even understand it as “an additional set of mouse buttons”, or depending on program or context, they can have different functions.
This kind of combination of the different input methods are often considered effective by gamers who use keyboard and mouse “in parallel” to control various gaming features. In my opinion, the “LCD keypad” – except its inability to give tactile info – can be a benefit here.
That is a matter of taste, it is definitely not a fact in any way. I literally HATE how the touchpad is always in the way, uncomfortable, and makes it hard to use either it or the keyboard efficiently. Placing the touchpad on the right, out of the way, is definitely the way to go for my tastes.
That video is so painful. There is so much wrong here that my ability to manage and summarize bullshit is being overcome. Okay, they’re just idiot liars with a fruity product.
It can be used to treat testicular cancer.
That is some very nice looking hardware but even my gaming rig at home is built as a dualboot. Razer, can we expect to see hardware well supported by industry standards across OS or some driver code handed over to the Debian folk to be included into Deb and all fork distros (read; *buntu) benefit?
And, for the folks that are going to point out that this is a gaming specialty rig; look at that hardware. You telling me you couldn’t find some use for this lovely clamshell and some custom mappings for those Optimus Maximus keys?
(www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/)
I’m hoping for the same + an amd version…
Shut up and give me your money so I can tell them to shut up and take my money…
First off, thanks for the quick review; I just saw this announced on facebook (via EA/Battlefield 3 link) and OSNews had the quickest low-down on the Razor company’s new laptop – it’s specs, and their raison d’etre for making this laptop. I am an avid PC Gamer for years now, own an Alienware laptop and an Alienware desktop – an ALX-54, which for you doubters as to the true PC gamers motivation for spending way-too-much-money on their gaming systems, here it is 2 years later and with minor tweaks (new SSD drive and more RAM) my system is still in the top 5% of ALL platforms out there – and I must say this Razer Blade is a gamers dream!
Of course in the current economy unfortunately even I am a little put-off by this MAC-priced gem, so I may have to wait until ASUS and Dell jumps on board with their ultra-thin copy-cat knock-offs, no doubt just as powerful but for a much more friendly price!
But if your in the mood for some portable gaming goodness, and your budget allows for a three-grand ding, I’m gonna give this machine a thumbs-up!
Anyhew, thanks OSNews for the great review! Game Over Man!
Some nice ideas but I would not invest a lot of money in a Razer product. I’ve wasted a lot of time dealing with their crappy engineering.
For example, Razer mice can get “bricked” due to firmware bugs. If you are stupid enough to put software inside a mouse, you better make sure the software works! Gamers need reliable hardware, not just good looking hardware.
I think this laptop is really cool and exiting. A bit expensive for my wallet, but once they reach cult status, they will sell like Apples 🙂
“The race to the bottom has wrecked havoc …”
Shouldn’t that be wreaked?
Yup. Just about forgivable for someone for whom English is not a first language though.
Think I’ll keep my ‘decent margins’ to myself and cheer on the “The race to the bottom[that]has wrecked havoc in the PC industry”. Besides, apart from an aluminium body which would be nice the extras seem more of an annoyance;but,even though I’m no gamer I can’t see it being much of a success even to those who are.
Gamers has water-cooling and colored blinkenlights in their cases. They buy mice and keyboards with 5 billion buttons and features.
Why wouldn’t this be a hit? (Aside from the fact that it is actually understated and elegant…)
Edited 2011-08-27 04:44 UTC
“Razer makes some extremely odd mice and keyboards specifically for gamers”
Not really. Their product generally has beautiful clean lines.
http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.169415…
http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.169419…
There is also netbook styled gaming laptop from Razer on the horizon.
http://www.neowin.net/news/razers-switchblade-to-use-intels-latest-…
This laptop kinda reminds me of Macbook Pro. Do you think Apple will sue?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the aluminum casing is patented somehow…
For gaming you don’t need an ultra thin laptop. That factor is a bit out of place here. For example Sager NP7280 sounds more like it:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name…
No OS option here, for open source fans:
http://www.powernotebooks.com/Sager-NP7280-gaming-laptops-notebooks…
Paying even less money, you get better specs (much more bulky form of course).
Edited 2011-08-26 22:29 UTC
right, that was my thought. thinness aids portability, but this thing is a 7lb brick no matter how thin it is: it’s a luggable, not an ultraportable. if i’m going to buy what’s effectively a desktop replacement laptop and take the weight hit in exchange for the big screen and a bit of performance, I’m not really going to sweat an inch of thickness.
Not sure I would plunk down that cash on a Cougar Point (with all of its woes including RTM bugs on the SATA ports) based laptop and an undepowered graphics part.
Panther point products should be shipping soon and a 485M (cheaper) or a 580M (future proof) would be a much better solution.
The new Sony Vaio Z offloading the gpu to the external optical bay drive via Thunderbolt seems like the way to go with desktop replacement/”gamer” laptops to me. Kinda slick.
I haven’t heard a good thing from anyone who owns an “optimus” powered laptop. They always complain about it switching at the worst possible times. Not sure if it’s a reliable complaint though.
Regardless, the engineering that goes into these things is commendable.
“So, in short, there’s no market if you ask the guy in the suit, but we’ve designed something that we have always wanted for ourselves – we don’t care about the market at large – we do care about the PC gamer,”
they learned from the best! this is so Apple like
how much did you get paid to run this ad?
Obviously it’s more likely you just like it and posted the praise honestly. I’m not with you on it though. This thing is priced far too high. Maybe acceptable for a semi upper end (and thin!) laptop, but way too high after that ad they ran about “pc gaming is not dead!” – ( http://reimarufiles.com/2011/08/24/pc-gaming-is-not-dead/ )
It was an embarrassing ad, and this, with its price point, is an embarrassing followup. Yeah, a $2800 laptop will really pull people away from consoles. Great going Razer
I see it has an nvidia gfx card…so it should melt itself down pretty shortly. nvidia not good in laptops too freaking hot. My asus averages 88C it has gotten to 120c, one of my hps became a doorstop because the nvidia chip unsoldered itself lol
I had the exact same reaction. The i7 Macbook pro get so freaking hot under heavy load that it either makes your hand sweat while playing or makes you use an external keyboard. The razer doesn’t seem to have much more fans than the Macbook, so I guess it will be the same story.
I would really like to see a test on how it feels after 2 hours of playing some last-gen game.
Other than that, looks pretty nice. Would love a 15 inches version with a standard touchpad. It’s quite expensive too…
i read a few of the reviews, and watched the full video razer has posted. if anything, its different and I think its actually pretty cool.
if they can keep the quality up, they may sell quite a few….
I’m really glad to see a company trying something that isn’t the same old rehash of what everyone else is doing. If everything is the same, there’s no point in even having different companies!
I like the idea. I’d have to really try the touchpad design to know if I’d buy it. As for the slim design, that’s a plus because part of owning an expensive laptop is for other people to look at it and wish they had one. That is the point of almost every luxury brand. So to be successful it has to look awesome. Also, because it is a portable computer it needs to be actually portable, which means a massive Alienware style design is the wrong idea. A guy at work almost put his back out bringing his 17″ Alienware into the conference room. 🙂
I really do have to agree with you. It’s simply GREAT that a CEO has the balls to ignore market research completely and just whip out something he and his team themselves like.
No, the laptop isn’t going to be a huge hit, but then again, they’re not even aiming it at the general populace. I find it extremely neat, good-looking and all, and if I could afford it I’d buy one in a heartbeat just to support this kind of out-of-the-box thinking. Not to mention that then I’d own a laptop that’ll make all my friends green from envy.
Unfortunately I can’t afford it nor do I date any rich guy who’d buy it for me. :/
There is one (minor) problem that I see with it: I can’t see the usual pair of 3.25mm outlets for audio out and mic in. I wonder how people are going to manage music and vocal chats when most headphones with a mic come with twin jacks at the end of one cable.
It is an hybrid input/output jack, with 4 wires, like the ones you see on most cellphones nowadays. I think there are adapters to plug dual-jack headsets on those, but I can’t guarantee that.
Confirmed : it exists
http://www.theheadsetbuddy.com/PC-Computer-Headset-to-35mm-Smartpho…
Actually, many new headsets are USB based and do their own sound processing, which is not a bad thing unless you already have an expensive sound card.
The classic sign of a mature market is that product differentiation is based on pricing and styling not functionality.
i agree, and I have had this talk with others. the “PC/laptop” market is maturing and stabilizing.
most of the really new “action” will be in tablets and devices. because the stable and mature “PC/laptop” devices will last longer…