Razer tones down 17-inch Blade Pro and shaves $1,700 off the starting price

Can you spot any differences between the two Razer Blade Pro laptops in the image above? One of them is equipped with a 4K resolution display powered by a GeForce GTX 1080, and the other is a new configuration option that pairs a Full HD 1080p panel with a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

By offering a lower end configuration, Razer is able to slash the cost of entry nearly in half to $2,300 (£2,400), down from $4,000. That is still comparatively pricey to other laptops in the market with a GeForce GTX 1060 underneath the hood. Nevertheless, it opens the Razer Blade Pro up to a wider audience.

The 17.3-inch matte display on this new configuration is an IPS panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, versus the IGZO display that is used on the higher end SKU. There is no mention of G-Sync support like there is with the $4,000 setup. That said, a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is a capable GPU for gaming at 1080p, though a GeForce GTX 1070 might have been a better fit considering the panel's high refresh rate.

Razer considers the Blade Pro a desktop replacement. Compute grunt work is handled by a Core i7-7700HQ processor (4C/8T) clocked at 2.8GHz to 3.8GHz. it also comes standard with 16GB (8GBx2) of DDR4-2400 RAM (expandable to 32GB) and a 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD paired up with a 2TB HDD.

The size of the new Blade Pro is the same as before (22.5mm x 424mm x 281mm), though interestingly Razer somehow managed to reduce the weight from 3.49kg to 3.07kg.

Connectivity is also unchanged. Both laptops have three USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt 3 port, HDMI 2.0 output, SDXC card reader, Killer DoubleShot Pro networking (Killer E2400 GbE LAN), and Killer Wireless-AC 1535 (802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.1). Unlike the more expensive 4K Blade Pro, the Full HD variant is compatible with the Razer Core external GPU dock.

The new Razer Blade SKU will be available in the third quarter.

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).