Razer has announced its new lineup of Blade gaming laptops for the coming year, sporting sparkling new screens, new Intel and AMD processors… and one notable absentee. This looks like it might be the end of the line for the Blade 15, the erstwhile best gaming laptop and an object of tech desire for an absolute age.
Yes, it looks like the Blade 15 and the less-popular Blade 17 have been put out to pasture, with only the 14-, 16-, and 18-inch options being given a lick of 2024 paint and some new silicon.
"Our Blade lineup for 2024 is 14, 16, and 18 at this moment," a Razer representative told me ahead of its CES 2024 reveal.
"I say at this moment," he adds, "because who knows, sometimes we do crazy things. There are half-generational updates sometimes with our Blade lineups, sometimes those updates are 0.5 refreshes in colorways, sometimes they're different chassis sizes. But our 2024 lineup at this time is 14, 16, and 18."
So, it's not a never-never thing for the venerable 15-inch Blade, but given that the Blade 16 is almost the same size in terms of its chassis, but with a larger screen on offer, it's hard to see where there's a relevant spot for a Blade 15 anymore.
I'm almost surprised it took this long to kill it off, as the Blade 16 seemed like an easy replacement, but Razer was keen to keep it rolling along in the background for the last generation of mobile silicon. And with a thinner chassis than the larger machines it had a certain charm, but not enough to keep up with the big bois now it's come to a whole new refresh.
Even the base model of the new Blade 16 comes with the new 240Hz OLED panel, sports Intel's new Core i9 14900HX Raptor Lake Refresh processor (same same, but different, I guess), and can be configured with up to an RTX 4090 (mobile version). You do still have the option for the mini-LED screen the previous version came with, including its dubious dual-mode functionality allowing you to run at its native 4K res or hard reset with a not-really-full-HD resolution at 240Hz.
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Other than that it's the same machine as last year on the whole. That's the same with the Blade 14, to be fair, even if it's sporting a new AMD chip in the Ryzen 9 8945HS, I don't think there's a great deal being added to the red team's Ryzen 8000 series laptop chips, in the same way Intel isn't really doing a lot new with its refreshed top-end mobile parts.
There is also going to be a Blade 18 refresh coming later in the year, with that 'world's first' 4K 165Hz 18-inch panel in its lid. Though I think that's waiting for Thunderbolt 5 to be completely finalised before it gets its own launch proper.
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PC Gamer's CES 2024 coverage is being published in association with Asus Republic of Gamers.
