Razer’s New Blade Pro Laptop Is a Portable Supercomputer That Vapes

If you want a slim machine you can slip inside your messenger bag, tote to the coffee shop, and peck out a few emails on, there are plenty of those. Go ahead and get an iPad and a keyboard cover. Maybe even a MacBook or a Surface Pro if you can handle the extra ounces.

But if you want the kind of high-octane monster that can power a frickin' Oculus headset, weighs as much as a child's bowling ball, and is the laptop version the guitar riff in Ain't Talkin Bout Love, here comes the damn business.

The 2016 version of the Razer Blade Pro laptop is here. And it vapes.

The new Razer Blade Pro does not seem like a real laptop. It seems like an April Fools' gag from Power Computing Magazine circa 2003. While Razer has been making high-performance gaming laptops with shockingly slim frames since 2011, none of them have been as over-the-top loaded as the new Blade Pro. The laptop's tagline is "The desktop in your laptop," and it's an understatement.

It all starts with a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU that overclocks to 3.5GHz, which is easily the most modest thing about the laptop. After all, there are newer and more expensive Core i7 processors available, and everything else about the Razer Blade Pro screams MORE THINGS FASTER THINGS STRONGER THINGS.

This kind of power doesn't come cheap. The Razer Blade Pro starts at $3,700.

For example, it has 32 gigs of 2133MHz DDR4 RAM. Its 17.3-inch IZGO touchscreen is a 4K display that can handle the full Adobe RGB colorspace. On its sides you'll find three USB 3.0 ports, a card reader, and a Thunderbolt/USB-C jack. Its 99-watt-hour battery is the largest-capacity battery that's legally allowed on an airplane. Storage space is flexible: there's a configuration with a 2TB PCIe SSD packed into it. And of course, it's the company's latest machine with "Razer Chroma" mood lighting, which means the keyboard backlight system can be configured as a user-customizable rainbow light show.

Arguably, we haven't even gotten to the really good stuff yet. While the Razer Blade Pro is insanely thin for the amount of power packed into it---it's just 0.88 inches deep---it has a low-profile mechanical keyboard. Razer makes its own switches, and it's used the same low-travel but highly enjoyable switch in the Blade Pro as it did in its excellent mechanical keyboard case for the iPad Pro.