The 2016 Blade looks a lot like its predecessor, which isn’t a bad thing. The notebook’s svelte, all-black 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.70-inch chassis is back, except now Razer has managed to shave the weight down from 4.4 to 4.25 pounds. One of our few complaints with the previous Blade was the inability to customize the keyboard’s green backlighting, something Razer seems to have taken to heart. The new Blade features the company’s signature Chroma lighting, meaning you can set the keys to glow any of 16.8 million colors, as well as set up custom, game-specific color profiles via the Synapse app. MORE: The Best Gaming Laptops Powering all of those pretty colors is an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M GPU and up to a 512GB SSD. That’s enough to run modern games at moderately high graphics, which should look great on the laptop’s 14-inch, 3200 x 1800-pixel touch display. The Blade features three high-speed USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port for external displays, and a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C connection. That latter port will allow you to connect the Blade to Razer’s Core graphics amplifier, which lets you augment your laptop with a full-on desktop graphics card of your choice. The latest Blade hasn’t just dropped a bit of weight, it’s also cheaper than last year’s model. Available for pre-order in March and shipping in April, the Blade will start at $1,999 with 256GB of flash storage and $2,199 for a 512GB version. We’ve long been fans of the Blade’s combination of performance and portability, and we’re excited to see what a lighter design and Chroma lighting bring to the mix. Stay tuned for our hands-on impressions.
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