Razer is updating its line of gaming laptops with a new model that measures just 0.7 inches thick, weighs about 4.5 pounds, and packs a 14 inch, 3200 x 1800 pixel touchscreen display.

It takes a lot of power to crank out 3D graphics to a display with that many pixels, so the new Razer Blade laptop features NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 870M graphics card.

Unfortunately all that power doesn’t come cheap: Prices for the new Razer Blade start at $2220.

Razer Blade

The notebook features an Intel Core i7-4702HQ quad-core processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of solid state storage. You can also opt for 256GB or 512GB of you want more space.

The Razer Blade has 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a 2MP webcam, and a 70Whr battery. It runs Windows 8.1 and measures 13.5″ x 9.3″ x 0.7″.

It’s the display and graphics card that really help set this model apart from earlier Razer Blade laptops. The GTX 870M graphics card features 3GB of dedicated video memory, support for NVIDIA’s new Battery Boost technology, and up to 70 percent higher frame rates than earlier NVIDIA chips.

The Razer Blade display is an IGZO/IPS screen with 262 pixels per inch and a 250 percent higher contrast ratio than the screens on earlier Razer Blade models.

Razer says the new Razer Blade should be able to get about 6 hours of battery life under normal use, and about 2-3 hours of battery life while gaming (which sounds pretty awful unless you’ve ever done some serious gaming on a laptop, in which case it sounds pretty great).

Razer is also offering a new Razer Blade Pro gaming laptop with a 17 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M graphics. It’s a bit less portable though, measuring 0.9 inches thick and weighing 6.6 pounds.

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16 replies on “Razer Blade gaming ultrabook has a 14 inch QHD+ display, NVIDIA GTX 870M graphics”

  1. Its funny, first everybody rightfully complained about the crappy display panel on last year’s model.

    So, Razer listens and goes out of its way to find a solution: It has to be IPS/LPS quality, but also fast enough for those rabid FPS players.

    Sharp’s IGZO technology delivers both, but they only make very high resolution displays. So, Razer doesn’t really have a choice here in order to fix the last model’s issues.

    And 3200×1800 perfectly divides by 4 into 1600×900, the same, well chosen resolution of last year’s model, to not overstress the GPU. Combining 4 pixels into 1 pixel yields a perfect display, identical to a native 1600×900 display, with no scaling artifacts.

    So I think understanding would put an end to these complaints.

    The only things I’d still like improved on the 2014 Razer Blade would be:

    1) for less heat, larger fans and a slightly angled fan inlet/outlet in front of the display hinge, like Apple. You’re totally copying Apple anyway, might as well go all the way.

    2) an SD or MicroSD card reader

    3) slightly concave key surfaces (Lenovo manages concave surfaces on their very flat keyboards too, so can you 😉

    Everything else, I love.

    Its not just great for gaming, but its a general pleasure to do anything on it.

  2. Still not worth the money given the 8gb of ram limitation, I need 16 for my software development, I’d love to have a black metal “macbook pro” esque. Gaming laptop vs my somewhat bulky y580 now but at least it supports 16gigs of ram and its no slouch with the i7 3610qm either..

    1. Agreed there, I’m kind of torn between a 13.3″ clevo with an 860M, a dell xps 15 refresh with an 850M probably, or this but 8GB of RAM stops this dead, also at least an xps 15 gets a bigger user replaceable battery to help justify its cost.

      1. Right, 8gb ram limited, only 1 harddrive my y580 has msata and sata so i have a 750gb hybrid and a 256gb ssd together along with 16gigs of ram and a decent gtx660m and it was still after i maxed it out on upgrades about $600 cheaper than this is releasing at, the haswell cpu isn’t much better than ivy bridge and most haswell’s run at lower clocks which negates the gains you would see if they were running the same clocks. I would love something like this blade but the screen should be a more reasonable 2560×1440 and have at least two msata slots and allow you to upgrade to 16gigs of ram and maybe then I would purchase one right now I just dont see the justification in “downgrading” everything except my gpu

        1. Yeah, Lenovo’s gaming laptops are pretty sweet and certainly not as expensive.
          But they are heavy plastic affairs, maybe not as bad as Alienware units, but I just prefer the portability of the Blade and the feel of aluminum over plastic on my travels..

          If you don’t need to travel, a desktop will beat any laptop, of course.

  3. What! You mean they finally made up their mind to give the Razer 14 a decent display?

    Or more like going overboard with the resolution for a gaming lappy? Fine, better over the top than crappy. Can always run it at half resolution in 1600×900, which will work perfectly for 99% of games.

    Maybe the other issues got fixed too, and a Maxwell based GPU is certainly going to keep down temperature and noise. Barring any as yet unknown major flubs, consider me signed up.

    1. Running at half res will look blurry and out of focus on such a large display, probably need to run full AA to make it look decent

      1. Blurry and out of focus is the display result when the pixel ratio is non-integer. 1600×900 is simple 4x scaling, there is no approximation going on to make the display blurry.

        1. Understood, maybe blurry wasn’t the best way to put it but it won’t look sharp and in focus like it would at native res, lcd panels are pretty terrible at scaling imo

          1. depends on the panel.
            Sharp’s IGZO panels appear to be excellent at scaling to 1080p, as they are excellent at overall display quality.

            This panel is definitely one of the highlights of this lappy.

      2. You have to understand how this works: I have it and no scaling is used when you combine 4 pixels into one to go from 3200×1800 to 1600×900. And calling a 14 incher “such a large display” is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard…

        1600×900 looks EXACTLY like a native 1600×900 display, just that each pixel consists of 4 actual pixels, but there is no scaling and no softness involved whatsoever.

        Scaled to 1080p, (where scaling is necessary) even the desktop looks fine and any softness in games is very slight, proving that the laptop has a decent scaler.

        There was no need to task the GPU with extra levels of AA

    2. 870M isn’t maxwell based, it’s kepler rebadged, highest end maxwell is an 860M (but an 870M will beat it… it’ll just draw aaaaaalll the power)

      1. 870M vs 860M
        2,529 GFLOPS vs 1,306 GFLOPS

        higher texture rate 80.5 GTexel/s vs 40.8 GTexel/s

        More memory 3,072 MB vs 2,048 MB

        higher pixel rate 26.3 GPixel/s vs 16.3 GPixel/s

        192 bit vs 128 bit
        860M vs 870M
        Lower TDP 75W vs 100W 25% lower TDP

        1. thanks for that.
          ~ double the performance for 25% more power draw.
          Hard to complain about that.

          There seem to be serious limits to Maxwell’s ability to pump out pixels while drawing less power.

          Advertising stinks as ever…

      2. yeah, found out about that sham a while back… Nvidia’s rebadging scams of old chips are tiring. I bought a Razer Blade 14 anyways. The new display is awesome, regardless if you run in 3200×1800 or at 1/4 res in 1600×900. The anti ghosting keyboard is very nice, no flex at all, pleasant to type on! A slightly concave surface for the keys would be still better though.

        Noise is low, even if you stress it, the sound is not annoying. It does get quite hot at the rear though, when playing. A cooling pad will probably extend its life, if you live in a hot / tropical area.

        Overall, I have no plans to give it back 🙂
        (in spite of the old architecture in the 870m) I guess only 2015 will see a Maxwell architecture 870m :/

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