Razer Blade laptop slices PC game footprint
— -- The Blade gaming laptop looks like a notebook computer from the future, but it's arrived at a prime time for PC gamers.
Razer, a video game accessory company, brought the pricey $2,800 product to market late last year, and the laptop earned an Innovations award at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
But last month's debut of Diablo III, the fastest-selling PC game ever, could finally give gamers in the market for a replacement PC the option of one optimized for gaming.
"There's a rapidly growing market for high-quality hardware that targets PC gamers, and Razer is tapping into that," says DFC Intelligence founder David Cole.
Despite its price tag, the Blade has some strong selling points:
•Portability. Manufactured with an aluminum chassis, the Blade weighs less than 6.5 pounds — less than half that of some competing units.
And at 0.88 inches thick, the Blade is half the thickness of other gaming laptops. Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan has said that he expects pro gamers and hard-core enthusiasts alike to gravitate to the Blade because it is easier to carry but can work as a replacement for a desktop computer. It's also cool-looking. With a brushed obsidian finish, the Blade has a minimalist profile that wouldn't look out of place in a futuristic film such as Prometheus. Atop the display, there's a built-in webcam and microphone for video chatting.
•Performance. Inside the Razer is an Intel Core i7 dual core processor and Nvidia graphics processor, so the machine has the power to handle current graphic-rich games such as Diablo III. And the Blade has some built-in features to make playing games easier. An LCD touch-tracking panel can serve as a mouse and mousepad when playing a game, or players can choose to connect a USB mouse.
Just above that are 10 programmable keys that can be set to serve as one-touch favorites. Program them to perform an action in a video game, or set them to call up Facebook or other Web destinations. (I felt lost using the touch-pad and programmed keys in place of the familiar mouse while playing Diablo III. But after 10 minutes or so of forced playing, I intuitively caught on.)
Razer is working with PC game developers to create custom icons that will have game-specific icons and actions tied to the 10 keys, and in-game maps that appear on the LCD touch panel. So far, only Star Wars: The Old Republic is on board.
•Prestige. The Blade's features and functions made PC gaming a pleasure. Diablo III's demon-filled world of dungeons came to life spectacularly on the laptop's 17.3-inch high-definition display.
The game has an old-school, top-down point of view, but it's been rendered lovingly by the Activision Blizzard developers into a richly detailed world that looks like an animated Frazetta painting. The cemeteries and cathedrals were spooky, and enemies such as the spider queen were suitably gross-looking and sounding.
A high-def digital download of the action film Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol looked stunning, too. Web pages and text were super-clear. The sound from the built-in speakers was fine, but hard-core gamers probably will opt for headphones to hear up to 7.1-channel surround soundtracks.
A certain cachet
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