Razer Blade is one bad-ass gaming laptop

So this is what Razer was talking about when they teased us earlier with that “PC Gaming Is Not Dead” campaign — the Razer Blade portable gaming laptop.

It’s a very interesting laptop, not because it packs the best specs around, but because they made it for the avid gamer in mind — a fast processor, a great graphics card, large HD display and that cool Switchblade User Interface they showed us before — yet making efforts to squeeze it all in a relatively thin and light laptop (i.e., for a 17-inch category).

Razer Blade
17.3″ full HD LED display @ 1920×1080
Intel Core i7-2640M processor 2.8GHz
Dual-core, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
Intel Mobile Express Series 6 PCH “Cougar Point” chipset
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 memory
Intel HD Graphics 3000
NVidia GT-555M with 2GB GDDR5
Optimus Technology
HD webcam
320GB 7200rpm SATA HDD
HDMI port
1 x USB 3.0 port
2 x USB 2.0 ports
GigaBit LAN
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 3.0
60Wh battery

Notice that Razer didn’t bother to put in a 1TB HDD but instead used a faster 7200rpm SATA disk. Also note that they didn’t use a quad-core Intel processor but chose the fastest dual-core Intel Core i7 in the market. These decisions point to the idea that they wanted an optimized yet portable gaming rig — that’s 0.88″ thin (thinner than most netbooks) and under 6.97lbs.

Those dedicated gaming keys and the trackpad are all part of the Razer Switchblade UI where the keys adapt on-the-fly, depending on the game you play. The design of the black, aluminum body looks like an HP Envy or a Macbook Pro.

The Razer Blade will have a retail price of USD$2799.99 when it is released in the US be 4th quarter of this year.