Razer unveils new Blade 16 and 18 gaming notebooks with upgraded displays

They may not look any different with unibody aluminium chassis and ultra-thin bezels, but the 2024 Razer Blade 16 and 18 gaming notebooks pack a wallop. 

The new Blade 16: Impressive new panel options,14th Gen Intel Core mobile processors

The star is the Blade 16, which is equipped with the world's first 240Hz OLED display. The panel, co-developed with Samsung, has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, a response time of just 0.2ms, a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, and meets VESA's DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 standards.

Thanks to its fast performance, it is also the world's first notebook to meet VESA's ClearMR 11000 standards. ClearMR is a measure of clear pixels to blurry pixels, and the ratings run from ClearMR 3000 up to ClearMR 13000, with a higher number indicating better image quality and less blurriness. 

The existing Blade 16 comes in a total of three display options. You can get it with a mini-LED panel that runs at 4K at 120Hz or full-HD+ at 240Hz. Alternatively, you could get it with a more standard 240Hz QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600 pixels) LED panel.

In addition to the 240Hz OLED QHD+ resolution display option in 2024, the new Blade 16 will also be available with a new Dual Mode Mini-LED display option. This allows users the flexibility to natively switch between 4K at 120Hz and FHD+ at 240Hz based on their usage needs - such as straddling between creative workflows and a busy round of gaming.

Powering the new display will, of course, be GeForce RTX 40 series GPU options to leverage AI-powered DLSS 3 for impressive visuals without the traditional processing overhead that goes all the way up to an RTX 4090 (175W total graphics power). The laptop will, of course, also be running on Intel's very latest mobile processors. While it's not Meteor Lake-based, the Razer Blade 16 will be among the first to feature Intel's 14th Gen Core mobile processors, up to a Core i9-14900HX that offers unlocked overclocking and 24 processing cores to tackle some serious content creation and simulation workloads.

 

The new Blade 18: Higher resolution screen, Thunderbolt 5

Meanwhile, the Blade 18's new display trades refresh rate for resolution. The new model will feature a higher resolution 4K LED display, but a lower refresh rate of 165Hz. The current Blade 18 has a 240Hz QHD+ display. The Blade 18 will also be the first Razer laptop to feature Thunderbolt5 connectivity to hook multiple high-resolution gaming monitors, high-speed flash-based external storage that allows you to edit video footage directly on it, and other bandwidth-intensive usage needs.

Both the Blade 16 and 18 displays will support NVIDIA G-Sync, and all displays will be individually calibrated and Calman Verified.

For those looking towards a more compact new Razer Blade gaming notebook, the Blade 14 too received an internal overhaul featuring a new Ryzen 9 8945HS processor that was recently launched by AMD, Wi-Fi 7, QHD+ 240Hz Calman verified display and up to RTX 4070 class of GPUs (up to 140W TGP).

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