Razer launches a more budget-oriented Blade 15 gaming laptop with some big caveats

Razer may be offering the world’s most compact 15-inch gaming laptops, but most of the variants are not exactly budget-friendly, even when specced with slower dGPUs. In an effort to make its solution more affordable throughout the Holiday season, Razer is now announcing the Razer Blade 15 Base Edition priced at only $1,499.99. However, the enticing price comes with some unfortunate compromises.

The Core i7-10750H CPU from Intel is plenty fast for a budget model, and, while the included 16 GB of DDR4-2933 RAM might be a bit slower than the industry standard 3200, it certainly is not one of the compromises we were talking about. Now, Razer is including only a 120 Hz 1080p 15.6-inch panel instead of the 144 Hz or higher refresh rate ones. We could argue that this is not really a compromise seeing that the model only features the GTX 1660 Ti dGPU. This graphics card is not really able to crunch too many frames in more demanding games, anyway. Razer could have also included a larger capacity SSD Instead of the 256 GB of NVMe solution; at least users can add another NVMe drive themselves.

Here is a list with all the notable downgrades:

• Battery capacity slightly reduced from 65 Wh to 60.8 Wh
• No Thunderbolt 3 connector, only 2x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 and HDMI 2.0b
• No Ethernet
• No Wi-Fi 6, only Wi-Fi 5 + Bluetooth 5.0

These more affordable models can be pre-ordered now from the official site, and estimated shipping date is set for December 25. The strange thing is Razer is currently selling the better models that come with 144 Hz screens, Thunderbolt 3 connector, Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and slightly bigger battery for the same $1,499.99 (limited promo sale).

Buy the Razer Blade 15 Base Edition on Walmart