He Razer Blade 14 It has long been one of my favorite gaming laptops, especially when it comes to extremely compact yet powerful options. For 2023, Razer has announced an update to the machine, bringing not only the latest RTX 40-series graphics, but also the anticipated new AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor.
I call it “ambitious” because it was an attempt to shrink the popular Razer Blade formula down to something even smaller: a true “stealth” gaming laptop and a great vehicle for AMD’s Ryzen platform.
New processor and graphics options are claimed to bring more performance, of course, and we’ve already seen how good these new RTX 40-series graphics are. On the CPU side though, the Ryzen 9 7940HS also has much hype behind. It’s another one of AMD’s 35-watt pieces, built for efficiency in designs like this, but also with plenty of power under the hood. These Zen 4-based chips are pretty hard to come by so far, only being announced in the competing Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 so far.
Interestingly, the Razer Blade 14 now stops at an RTX 4070 in terms of GPU. In previous generations, for example, the laptop offered configurations with up to an RTX 3080 Ti. For now, it looks like Razer is saving the RTX 4080 and 4090 for the larger laptops in its lineup. It’s worth noting that Asus has also started offering the ROG Zephyrus G14 in an RTX 4090 configuration.
In addition to the spec upgrade, other changes to the Razer Blade 14 this year include a slightly larger battery (now 68.1 watt hours), upgradable memory (up to 64GB), and options for a faster refresh rate display (now a 1600p 240Hz panel). It’s a little thicker and bigger this time around too, now weighing 4.05 pounds and measuring 0.71 inches thick.
The new Razer Blade 14 starts at $2,400, a significant increase from the $1,800 starting price of last year’s model, which continues to sell at that price.
