The new Razer Blade 18 could well be the fastest mobile workstation ever — with Thunderbolt 5, a rumored desktop GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, 8TB SSD, 96GB RAM and a massive 18-inch display

Gamers, professionals and content creators of the world will envy this fascinating laptop

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The2024 edition of the Razer Blade 18gaming laptopwas announced a few days ago atCES 2024and photos of the beast have circulated online (here,hereandhere), showing the annual refresh of the popular DTR (desktop PCreplacement) laptop is a substantial one.

While its primary market is - and remains - gamers, there’s no denying that the complete package will appeal to creatives and even further afield, for a number of reasons; amobile workstationto rule all mobile workstations?

Unlike quite a few of its competitors (Asus ROG Strix Scar 17,MSI GT77 Titan,Lenovo Legion 7i Pro) theRazerBlade 18 doesn’t look like a gaming laptop at all. In fact, it wouldn’t look out of place at all in an executive leadership team meeting in an anonymous London-based boardroom. With its lack of a dedicated keypad, a long hinge and brushed metal finish, it looks more like a16-inch Apple MacBook Proalbeit at almost twice the weight.

Then there’s the Thunderbolt 5 (TB5) connector, capable of delivering a bandwidth of 120 Gbps, and is more useful for content creators than gamers. Razer’s own marketing literature refers to “faster data backup/archiving and quicker export and rendering” thanks to twice the amount of bandwidth for externalSSD, external GPU and other creator tools. I have seen a number ofdocking stations(e.g. J5 Create) andportable SSD(e.g. OWC) that support TB5 at CES 2024; expect that number to grow this year.

Workstation-class specifications

Thunderbolt 5 also supports refresh rates of up to 540 Hz at low resolutions, 144Hz on three4K monitors, up to two8K monitorsand a single 10K/16K display, the latter probably at 30Hz (ed: still haven’t seen a single mainstream8Kmonitor on sale yet for the past few years, so won’t hold my breath for a 16K one).

If the specs of the smallerRazer Blade 16are the same for its bigger brother, expect a 14th generationIntelCore i9 CPU (14900HX) and a desktop-gradeNvidia RTX 4090with a 175W TDP. Based onGeekbench benchmark CPU test results, I expect the 14900HX - which Intel calls the world’s fastest mobile CPU - to be competitive with crème-de-la-crème from AMD (within a similar power envelope).

And in a thinly-veiled nod to content creators and professionals, it almost certain that - based on the current specs of its2024 16-inch brethren- the new Razer 18 will come with up to 8TB SSD and 96GB of RAM, a very significant boost from its 2023 version which could only muster 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD, enough for gamers but not for Pros. Expect to pay north of $5,000 (about £4,000, AU$7,500) just for these two upgrades though, basically doubling the price of the base configuration.

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It’s not the perfect mobile workstation though, let’s not kid ourselves. It doesn’t offerWindows 11 Proby default, comes with 12 months warranty only with no option for longer periods or onsite warranty. There’s no numeric keypad, a must for pros, there’s no fingerprint reader or support for vPro, Intel’s management platform.

Still, I would gladly put it in ourbest laptop for engineering studentsorbest laptop for video editingbuying guides when it goes on sale later this year.

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Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

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