If Nvidia is releasing new gaming notebook graphics cards in droves, Razer is sure to ship a new lineup of Blade notebooks as well, alongside a big announcement at CES 2021 by the Green Team, Razer, It announced a total of eight new Blade notebooks: three new base models with RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 GPUs, and five new advanced models with RTX 3070 or the highest-specification 16GB RTX 3080 card.

On the surface, however, little appears to have changed. This is something Razer was keen to point out in its pre-CES briefing: the design of the Blade gaming notebooks is so good that nothing has had to change over the past three generations.

Given that it can still claim the title of "smallest 15-inch RTX gaming laptop," it should come as no surprise that the Guinness Book of World Records has yet to list it, for some reason.

But the fact that it is moving to the more powerful Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs and can still maintain the same sub-17mm form factor means that the new Razer Blades is as attractive as ever. It's matte black trim, as close to a gaming MacBook as you can get.

In other words, it may be a fairly conservative update; Nvidia has worked hard to ensure that the RTX 30 series GPUs do not require more cooling than the 20 series GPUs, or at least can be configured to accommodate within the constraints of the slim Blade chassis It appears that.

After all, all Blade laptops, from the base model to the 17-inch Blade Pro, use last-generation Intel 10th generation chips. The bottom line is the 6-core Core i7 10750H, while the Advanced and Pro notebooks have the 8-core Core i7 10875H. At least Razer hasn't announced any ultra-portable gaming notebooks with the new Intel Tiger Lake H35 chip. I expect that the Blade Stealth 13's CPU might be replaced by it, but that is not certain.

A full-fat Tiger Lake-H CPU with 8 cores and 5+ GHz clock speeds will be available mid-year, so expect another Blade refresh at that time.

What is interesting, however, is what is happening to the Blade's screen. High refresh rate 1440p displays are now available on both Base, Advanced, and Pro options, finally bringing QHD panels to gaming laptops.

Of course, if you are still content to game at 1080p, you can get a 360Hz panel, but the Advanced model still offers a rather spectacular 240Hz QHD panel to pair with the new Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs to be paired with the new Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs. It can also offer the best gaming performance at a sharper resolution.

The Razer Blade base model also offers a QHD option to pair with the top-of-the-line RTX 3070 machine, but this is only a 165Hz panel. These are all IPS-a-like displays, so they offer great color accuracy and excellent viewing angles, and may be only slightly shaded at black levels.

Pre-orders are open now, and the actual new Blade notebooks will hit retail store shelves on January 26. This will likely be for the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 versions, with the RTX 3060-based machines following in the second week of February.

Ultimately, I can forgive Razer's conservative approach to this early 2021 Blade refresh. Basically, I want it.