Razer Blade 17 refresh delivers a graphics boost to the gaming laptops

Summer means it’s mid-year laptop refresh time, and Razer has updated its Blade 17 with a new 11th Gen Intel Core H-series processor and more powerful RTX 3080 graphics, making it one of the most powerful gaming notebooks around. 

Surprisingly, this was done without sacrificing the Razer Blade’s slim design. These impressive specs are housed in a body that is roughly 25% smaller than the previous Blade 17. If it reviews well, it could end up on our best gaming laptops list.

The revamped Blade 17 no longer carries the “Pro” moniker. That’s because its base model includes the Core i7 11800H (with a 2.3 GHz base clock, 4.6 GHz boost) and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card. The Blade 17’s power improves significantly with better specs, the ceiling being the Core i9 11900H — the most powerful Intel processor found in any Razer laptop — boosted to 4.9 GHz and Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card. Essentially, all of the Blade 17 models could be considered “Pro”.

Razer did more than just room for a faster processor and better graphics card. The company also upped the Blade 17’s GPUs graphics power to 130 watts. With that came an improved vapor chamber that’ll help mitigate the heat associated with the extra wattage. Beyond power, Razer incorporated THX Spatial Audio with a quad speaker array for better immersion and an upgradable 17.3-inch display ranging from 1080p with a 360Hz refresh rate to a 4K touch screen with a 120Hz refresh rate.   

Most of the Blade 17’s new features center around gaming. That includes the extra M.2 slots and ability to add a 1TB SSD and up to 32GB of memory. There are other niceties as well, aimed to accommodate work-from-home life and security. 

For instance, the Blade 17’s HD 1080p webcam supports Windows Hello and comes with four dedicated mics, improving the quality of video calls. The upgraded touchpad reduces cursor movement errors. And the Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connection allows the pairing of a second GPU (using a Razer Core X eGPU enclosure) for supported creative apps. 

Razer built the Blade 17 to be one of the best gaming laptops around. Again, this is done with a slim design. Sporting a thin frame (with a new anti-fingerprint resistive coating), the Razer Blade 17 only weighs six pounds. There are only a handful of laptops, such as The Aorus 17G YD and the Alienware m17 R4, that can compete with the Blade 17 in terms of both power and size. 

The Blade 15, for example, was also revamped. The new base model is getting two PCIe 4.0 SSD slots, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and an i7-11800H; it’s the smallest Razer laptop to use an 11th Gen Intel Core H-series processor. 

Both the Blade 17 and Blade 15 can be pre-ordered today via Razer starting at $2,299.99 and $1,799.99 respectively.