Razer made quite a splash at this year’s CES when it unveiled its Blade Stealth Ultrabook gaming notebook, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it has not wasted time in making the device available for purchase. You can now buy the slimline, portable gaming machine for as little as $1,000, with orders expected to begin shipping by the end of the month.
It’s certainly worth considering if you’re in the market for a new, lightweight laptop with a lot of oomf. At just 2.75 pounds, this is far lighter than your average gaming Ultrabook and it packs a Core i7-CPU too, so it is very capable when it comes to general computing.
It also has 8GB of LPDDR3 memory and up to 512GB of M.2 SSD storage, though you can pick a 256 or 128GB model for a slightly reduced price tag. There are also options for the display, with choices including a QHD 2,560 x 1,440 display, or a higher-end UHD 3,840 x 2,160 alternative.
The only potential issue here for a gaming laptop is that this system uses Intel 520 HD graphics. The gamers among us are likely turning their noses up and looking away, but hold fire. Razer’s idea with the Blade Stealth is that it’s powerful, but lightweight on the move, and when you fancy doing some gaming you sit down next to your Razer Core and off you go.
The Razer Core is a separate product, which admittedly isn’t available yet, but it will be soon. What the Core does is let you plug in an external graphics card (inside the Core enclosure) into your Blade Stealth using the USB Type-C port, which is capable of monstrous bandwidth. That lets you offload a 3D rendering to the external hardware, keeping the Ultrabook free from the power drain of whatever GPU you choose to put in there, as well as cutting back on weight and size.
The only downside of course is that if you do buy yourself a Blade Stealth it won’t be that gaming-capable when released on January 29. It will be in the future, though, if you pick up a desktop GPU and a Core. Whether this is a success will really depend on the price of that external enclosure.
