Good Things Come in Small Packages: The Razer Blade 15 Gaming Laptop

Those of us who use our PCs for gaming want the freedom to play whenever — or wherever — we want. In this imagined future, we squeeze a half-hour of playtime into a busy workday without having to lug our battle stations around wherever we go.

Razer has been hard at work making this ideal a reality over the past few years with its line of Blade laptops. The latest, the Razer Blade 15, is a sleek and highly capable machine that doesn’t sacrifice performance for portability. It’s a perfect complement to the lifestyle of the modern-day gamer.

The Razer Blade is the world’s smallest 15.6-inch laptop — though the skeptical among us would consider that an oxymoron until we see it for ourselves. “Whether you're talking about its thinness or its overall volume, it bests every other kind of similarly spec’d gaming notebook out there,” Kevin Sather, Razer’s director of product marketing, said. To improve upon the previous iteration of the Blade, Razer increased the viewable area by 20 percent by upgrading the screen size from 14 inches to 15.6 inches and by trimming the bezels to an ultra-thin 4.99mm. As a result, the screen-to-body ratio of the laptop is approximately an impressive 80 percent.

The larger screen gave Razer the opportunity to step up the display to a refresh rate of up to 144Hz and to include both full HD and 4K resolution options. The 4K screen even acts as a touchscreen, a boon for users who intend to use the laptop for creative production as well as gaming.

The chassis was also carefully designed to minimize its size while remaining sturdy, lightweight, and easily portable. “I think what amplifies the mobility aspect of the laptop is the materials we use,” Sather said. “It's a CNC aluminum unibody chassis, so it's got a really sturdy build quality to it. There's not a lot of flex to the chassis.”

Redesigning the body of the laptop also allowed Razer’s engineers to take full advantage of the space allotted to the guts of the machine — the powerful, current-gen components and innovative cooling system. The laptop features an 8th-Gen Intel® Core™ i7 6-core processor, which delivers top performance despite the laptop’s size.

In order to manage the heat from these components, Razer’s engineers devised a clever cooling system for the laptop. “We took a really kind of unique approach and used a vapor chamber cooling system,” Sather said. “It's basically a sealed copper component that has distilled water inside. At boil, the water becomes vapor and facilitates the dissipation of heat.”

Razer also addressed customer concerns on previous models by including thoughtful features like an upgraded battery capacity and a switch to slotted memory, allowing users to upgrade their memory should they feel the need to future-proof their device. These considerations demonstrate that Razer understands their audience and pride themselves in being able to support the lifestyle of the contemporary gamer — someone who wants to play on the go without worrying about an unsightly device taking up room in their bag.