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Razer upgrades 17-inch Blade Pro to Kaby Lake

Razer upgrades 17-inch Blade Pro to Kaby Lake

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The laptop is also THX certified and starts at $3,999

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In the 17-inch monster laptop market, there's often little focus on polish. All that matters is desktop specs in a theoretically "portable" form factor and you're good to go. Razer went another direction with its 17.3-inch Blade Pro laptop, offering a unique mechanical keyboard design, a tiny power brick, and an astonishing four hours of battery in a sub-inch-thick form factor. The 4K G-Sync touchscreen display is another premium part in an already premium laptop.

Now Razer is upgrading last year's model with an overclockable quad-core Kaby Lake processor, faster memory (2667MHz), and THX certification for both the screen and the audio jack. Razer also "upgraded" the price: the laptop now has a $3,999 starting price, compared to $3,699 for the original.

Razer says the laptop should have the same thermal performance as the last generation, even with overclocking and the faster RAM. For graphics it's the same GeForce 1080 — there's no 1080 Ti for laptops, sadly.

The THX certification is interesting: it's the first ever for a "mobile" device. The actual screen and audio jack are the same as the last generation, but they've been tweaked slightly after feedback from THX. THX also tests production models to make sure the actual shipping device matches its spec. That should mean smoother video playback, more accurate color reproduction, and cleaner audio.

The updated Blade Pro should be available in April.