The Razer Blade 18: A Gaming Laptop that Checks All the Right Boxes

For those who don't use a touchpad for gaming as much, it's great to know that you can still get all the benefits of a good gaming laptop without sacrificing everyday usability. The Razer Blade 18 has got this in spades, with its customizable backlighting options that allow you to paint your design on keys by key in any different color you want or set it to run through a rainbow of colors. This is just one example of how the Blade 18's features are designed to make gaming and everyday use more enjoyable.

One area where the Razer Blade 18 really shines is its port selection. Unlike many other gaming laptops, which often leave you wanting for ports, the Blade 18 has a comprehensive set of connections that will keep you well-equipped no matter what you're using it for. You've got USB-A and USBC ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and an Ethernet port - all the essentials for connecting to your monitor, headphones, or other peripherals.

Of course, there are some downsides to this massive 18-inch laptop. One of my pet peeves is that it doesn't have a breakout media key cluster, with separate buttons for volume up and down, mute, and mic mute. However, Razer's Synapse software allows you to customize the keyboard layout, so if you don't like the default function keys, you can switch them out for whatever you prefer.

Another feature that sets the Blade 18 apart from its competitors is its display. The screen itself is an 18-inch QHD panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio - not quite as tall as some of the newer gaming laptops on the market, but still plenty big enough to enjoy your games and videos in comfort. What's truly impressive, though, is that it's also a dual-mode display that can switch between 240Hz at full HD and 120Hz at UHD (4K) - giving you the best of both worlds for gaming and content creation.

Performance-wise, the Blade 18 was a real standout in my testing. I ran the new Dead Space remake on ultra settings with maximum resolution, and was consistently getting over 80 frames per second - even when navigating the crowded corridors of the spaceship. This level of performance is well within reach of most gamers' expectations, making it an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their gaming experience.

Finally, one feature that's sure to appeal to power users and content creators alike is the Blade 18's upgradable RAM and storage. With a little bit of effort, you can swap out these components yourself - which is always a welcome change from the often- restrictive laptop upgrades found elsewhere.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enone of the big trends for PC gaming in 2023 is 18 inch gaming laptops there are at least four or five coming this year and I've just gotten a chance to test and review the very first one it is the Razer Blade 18 from Razer and when you look at it you go wow this is an amazing gigantic 18 inch screen I've never seen anything like this before and then I thought wait maybe I have seen something like this before it turns out we have tried 18-inch laptops in the past I look back in the old archives and I found that I reviewed a Dell Alienware 18 an 18-inch gaming laptop way back in 2013 and that might have been the first and last 18 inch gaming laptop of that era and it's taken us 10 years to get around to it again which is a shame because it's actually a great idea and I certainly hope it has more legs this time a lot of the gaming laptops that I see are 15 inch screens some 16s there's still a few 17s around but frankly if you want a game on something you know with a bigger more immersive display a 15 inch isn't really going to do it otherwise you have to find a living room with a TV and a console or hook your computer up to the TV or get a monitor and set that up on your desk and that's another big hassle and can maybe eat up too much space so the fact that you can have a really big screen like this on a laptop is a great compromise between needing portability and really wanting a big display but the 18 inch screen may not be the most notable thing about the Razer Blade 18 this is also the first laptop we're testing with the mobile versions of nvidia's 4000 series gpus you can get the 4080 or the 4090 in here I've actually got the 4080 in this version and you can get a Core I9 CPU new 13th generation this is actually the least expensive of the two configurations Razer is offering right now because you've got the the 4080 the core I9 you got one terabyte of storage 32 gigs of RAM and it is 37.99 the more expensive version trades up to the 40 90 GPU you get two terabytes of storage and for that it's going to be 44.99 that is an expensive gaming laptop no matter how you slice it that's it I was perfectly happy with this lower end version uh performance was great uh gaming on a bigger screen was great a large touchpad I was like those on a gaming laptop even if you don't use a touchpad for gaming that much it makes it that much more useful for you know everyday stuff it's got all the Razer chroma lighting effects you can literally Paint Your Design on this key by key in any different color you want or set it to you know run through a rainbow of colors just like you can with a lot of other razor products now Razer says this has a desktop level set of ports and connections I don't know if I would go that far it's got you know usba and USBC it's got HDMI it's got an SD card slot it's got ethernet so that actually is a really good collection and certainly better than most other gaming laptops and way better than most non-gaming laptops a couple of my small issues with the Razer Blade 18 some of my favorite gaming laptops breakout media Keys volume up volume down mute mic mute into separate buttons usually along the side here or somewhere else making it really easy to just reach out and hit them by default you've got the traditional function key row here and you have to go like function F2 in order to lower the volume I've always hated that in any laptop especially gaming ones however you can go into the Razer synapse software that's built in and switch that so the volume control and other media controls uh it just becomes the default functions here so at least there's a workaround I still like dedicated Keys better you'll also note that even though this is a gigantic laptop it doesn't have a breakout number pad like some other big laptops do but it's the screen here that's really the star of the show it's an 18 inch display QHD which means 2560 by 1600 in this case because this is a 16 by 10 screen which is becoming more and more common so it's a little bit taller than 16x9 screens which are still found on a lot of laptops and a lot of gaming laptops but slowly they're being swapped out for these guys this is actually just a pretty basic LCD screen it's got a 240Hz refresh rate which is great for gaming but if you want something a little bit fancier there's actually a sister model to this called the Razer Blade 16 that we don't have yet but that has a mini LED display which is only available in that 16 inch model not the 18 inch model which is a real shame because that seems like a real winner of a display it's actually a dual mode display that can switch between 240 hertz at full HD or 120 hertz at UHD basically 4K so it works for gamers and also for Content creators that's a really Advanced display I'd love to see it in something bigger like this I don't think anybody's making a screen like that in this size right now maybe in the future as you would expect performance is fantastic from this thing in addition to our regular benchmark test I also ran the new Dead Space remake I cranked everything up to ultra full resolution I was regularly getting you know at least 80 frames per second and well into the hundreds uh running around the ship and I thought it was a really impressive experience especially because this big screen is so close to your face it's a very visceral experience another thing gamers are really going to like about this and something else it borrows from gaming desktops is that the RAM and the storage are both upgradable you can access those with pretty minimal effort now I've only been playing around with the new Razer Blade 18 for you know less than a week so these are my preliminary impressions of it based on our early testing and my early Hands-On testing but I am cautiously optimistic about this new generation of 18-inch laptops it really fills a need between you know smaller gaming laptops and big monitor gaming and big screen TV living room gaming and I think that especially if you're working from home a lot and your home office is also your gaming setup and you want something that you can use for let's say you know office work and Photoshop and all kinds of other high-end tasks and also game on it with a big screen that's almost like having a small all-in-one on your desk then an 18 inch screen feels like a great idea to me I certainly hope this screen size cash is on and it does not die out as quickly as it did last time now I'm gonna have to wait till I can see some of the other 18-inch gaming laptops coming this year from Asus and a racer and Alienware to really compare these against each other but based on previous experience with all these Brands When comparing similar laptops Head to Head razer's blade line usually comes out at or near the top of the list you can check out the full review of the Razer Blade 18 and all our performance charts at the link belowone of the big trends for PC gaming in 2023 is 18 inch gaming laptops there are at least four or five coming this year and I've just gotten a chance to test and review the very first one it is the Razer Blade 18 from Razer and when you look at it you go wow this is an amazing gigantic 18 inch screen I've never seen anything like this before and then I thought wait maybe I have seen something like this before it turns out we have tried 18-inch laptops in the past I look back in the old archives and I found that I reviewed a Dell Alienware 18 an 18-inch gaming laptop way back in 2013 and that might have been the first and last 18 inch gaming laptop of that era and it's taken us 10 years to get around to it again which is a shame because it's actually a great idea and I certainly hope it has more legs this time a lot of the gaming laptops that I see are 15 inch screens some 16s there's still a few 17s around but frankly if you want a game on something you know with a bigger more immersive display a 15 inch isn't really going to do it otherwise you have to find a living room with a TV and a console or hook your computer up to the TV or get a monitor and set that up on your desk and that's another big hassle and can maybe eat up too much space so the fact that you can have a really big screen like this on a laptop is a great compromise between needing portability and really wanting a big display but the 18 inch screen may not be the most notable thing about the Razer Blade 18 this is also the first laptop we're testing with the mobile versions of nvidia's 4000 series gpus you can get the 4080 or the 4090 in here I've actually got the 4080 in this version and you can get a Core I9 CPU new 13th generation this is actually the least expensive of the two configurations Razer is offering right now because you've got the the 4080 the core I9 you got one terabyte of storage 32 gigs of RAM and it is 37.99 the more expensive version trades up to the 40 90 GPU you get two terabytes of storage and for that it's going to be 44.99 that is an expensive gaming laptop no matter how you slice it that's it I was perfectly happy with this lower end version uh performance was great uh gaming on a bigger screen was great a large touchpad I was like those on a gaming laptop even if you don't use a touchpad for gaming that much it makes it that much more useful for you know everyday stuff it's got all the Razer chroma lighting effects you can literally Paint Your Design on this key by key in any different color you want or set it to you know run through a rainbow of colors just like you can with a lot of other razor products now Razer says this has a desktop level set of ports and connections I don't know if I would go that far it's got you know usba and USBC it's got HDMI it's got an SD card slot it's got ethernet so that actually is a really good collection and certainly better than most other gaming laptops and way better than most non-gaming laptops a couple of my small issues with the Razer Blade 18 some of my favorite gaming laptops breakout media Keys volume up volume down mute mic mute into separate buttons usually along the side here or somewhere else making it really easy to just reach out and hit them by default you've got the traditional function key row here and you have to go like function F2 in order to lower the volume I've always hated that in any laptop especially gaming ones however you can go into the Razer synapse software that's built in and switch that so the volume control and other media controls uh it just becomes the default functions here so at least there's a workaround I still like dedicated Keys better you'll also note that even though this is a gigantic laptop it doesn't have a breakout number pad like some other big laptops do but it's the screen here that's really the star of the show it's an 18 inch display QHD which means 2560 by 1600 in this case because this is a 16 by 10 screen which is becoming more and more common so it's a little bit taller than 16x9 screens which are still found on a lot of laptops and a lot of gaming laptops but slowly they're being swapped out for these guys this is actually just a pretty basic LCD screen it's got a 240Hz refresh rate which is great for gaming but if you want something a little bit fancier there's actually a sister model to this called the Razer Blade 16 that we don't have yet but that has a mini LED display which is only available in that 16 inch model not the 18 inch model which is a real shame because that seems like a real winner of a display it's actually a dual mode display that can switch between 240 hertz at full HD or 120 hertz at UHD basically 4K so it works for gamers and also for Content creators that's a really Advanced display I'd love to see it in something bigger like this I don't think anybody's making a screen like that in this size right now maybe in the future as you would expect performance is fantastic from this thing in addition to our regular benchmark test I also ran the new Dead Space remake I cranked everything up to ultra full resolution I was regularly getting you know at least 80 frames per second and well into the hundreds uh running around the ship and I thought it was a really impressive experience especially because this big screen is so close to your face it's a very visceral experience another thing gamers are really going to like about this and something else it borrows from gaming desktops is that the RAM and the storage are both upgradable you can access those with pretty minimal effort now I've only been playing around with the new Razer Blade 18 for you know less than a week so these are my preliminary impressions of it based on our early testing and my early Hands-On testing but I am cautiously optimistic about this new generation of 18-inch laptops it really fills a need between you know smaller gaming laptops and big monitor gaming and big screen TV living room gaming and I think that especially if you're working from home a lot and your home office is also your gaming setup and you want something that you can use for let's say you know office work and Photoshop and all kinds of other high-end tasks and also game on it with a big screen that's almost like having a small all-in-one on your desk then an 18 inch screen feels like a great idea to me I certainly hope this screen size cash is on and it does not die out as quickly as it did last time now I'm gonna have to wait till I can see some of the other 18-inch gaming laptops coming this year from Asus and a racer and Alienware to really compare these against each other but based on previous experience with all these Brands When comparing similar laptops Head to Head razer's blade line usually comes out at or near the top of the list you can check out the full review of the Razer Blade 18 and all our performance charts at the link below\n"