Razer is going red: Blade 14 is back from the dead with 100 W TGP GeForce RTX 3080 graphics and a 7 nm AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX Zen 3 CPU

When Razer launched its refreshed 15.6-inch Blade 15 in 2017, the company said the model would replace the older 14-inch Blade 14 as the new narrow-bezel Blade 15 design would allow the system to be nearly as small and portable as the original 14-inch model. For 2021, Razer will be revisiting the Blade 14 with updated specifications and looks derived from the latest Blade 15 and Blade Stealth designs.

Launching this month at Razerzone.com, the 2021 Blade 14 will be notable for carrying an AMD CPU instead of the usual Intel CPU on other Razer Blade laptops. Not only that, but the laptop will have one of the fastest CPUs available in the AMD Zen 3 Cezanne family. We've already shown that the latest AMD CPUs can be as fast or faster than any 10th gen Comet Lake-H CPU and so the Blade 14 should easily outperform most other gaming laptops available regardless of screen size.

For cooling, Razer will be implementing a vapor chamber with dual fans much like on the Blade 15 series. Liquid metal cooling, however, will be absent in contrast to Asus' recent commitment to applying liquid metal cooling on all of its ROG laptops moving forward. It'll be interesting to see how the thermals will play out on the Blade 14 given its thinness and high power demands.

Graphics can be configured from the RTX 3060 up to the RTX 3080 at 100 W TGP each. Thicker laptops like the Alienware m15 R4 often come with the same GPU options albeit at higher TGP ratings for slightly more performance. We suspect that size constraints played a part in limiting the TGP options on the Blade 14.

Something else to keep in mind is that the Blade 14 will carry no Thunderbolt ports and so it will not be compatible with the Razer Core external GPU docking station. This is in contrast to the Asus Flow X13 which also uses an AMD Zen 3 CPU but with a proprietary docking port for connecting to an eGPU.

Despite the lack of Thunderbolt, the system will at least integrate more port options than most other 14-inch laptops. Users will get full-size HDMI and multiple USB-A and USB-C ports with support for up to three external monitors simultaneously.

Razer is currently accepting orders starting at $1799 USD for the RTX 3060 144 Hz FHD SKU up to $2799 for the RTX 3080 165 QHD SKU. All configurations come with the same 1 TB NVMe SSD, 16 GB of soldered RAM, and Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU.