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Razer opens preorders for GTX 1060-powered Blade laptop

Razer opens preorders for GTX 1060-powered Blade laptop

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The first deliveries of Razer’s upgraded gaming notebook will be arriving in October

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Razer Blade
Razer

Nvidia’s Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card is coming to the 14-inch Razer Blade gaming laptop. Making the news official alongside an Intel Kaby Lake upgrade for the slimline Blade Stealth, Razer is opening preorders immediately and anticipates delivering on them in October. There is no Intel 7th-gen option for the new Blade spec, owing to the lack of quad-core chips from Intel’s new architecture. Those will come later, and Razer is sure to tap them when they show up, but for now at least, the major spec bump is the new 1060 GPU, which Nvidia and Razer both promise makes the Blade "VR ready."

I pressed Razer on the claim of VR capabilities for its new laptop, owing to the as-yet-uncertain performance of 1060-powered laptops in that category. Razer responded by saying that it’s confident the user experience will be a great one. "Are we scraping the bare minimum spec to get to VR? No." Beyond the Nvidia graphics chip, the new Blade model is equipped with Razer’s standard setup of a 6th-gen (Skylake) Core i7 CPU and 16GB of RAM, though the top storage option has now been doubled to a 1TB PCIe solid state drive. Also standard is the multimillion-color Razer Chroma keyboard backlight.

razer blade pricing chart

Razer is adding a cheaper Full HD IPS matte display option, which takes the Blade’s starting price down to $1,799. Given the battery-saving advantages of a lower-res display without touch — the standard Blade panel is a Quad HD+ touchscreen — and the lower reflectivity without a glossy cover, I’d choose this option every time.

The updated Razer Blade can be preordered today for delivery in October, which is when wider retail availability is expected as well.