2019 Razer Blade Pro will be 21 percent lighter and 11 percent thinner than last year's model

Razer will finally have an answer to the narrow-bezel 17.3-inch MSI GS75, Lenovo Legion Y740, and Asus ROG GL704 series with the upcoming 2019 Blade 17. The new chassis design succeeds the 2017 Blade Pro and is best described as a 15.6-inch Blade 15 but expanded for a 17.3-inch display. The Blade Stealth, Blade 15, and Blade 17 families now all share a similar design language as a result.

Visually, the Blade 17 differs from the Blade Pro in several ways. Aside from the obviously narrower bezels, the redesign drops the mechanical keys, volume wheel, and auxiliary keys of the Blade Pro for a regular Blade 15 layout instead. The trackpad has been moved to its more standard positioning in favor of larger speaker grilles. Razer says many of these changes were made in order to keep the design as thin as it already is.

Internally, the dual M.2 2280 slots and vapor chamber cooling solution return albeit in a much lighter overall package compared to the weighty 3.49 kg 2017 Blade Pro Advanced Model. There will be no "Blade 17 Base Model" for now even though the Blade 15 family consists of Base Model and Advanced Model SKUs.

GPU options range from the RTX 2060 up to the RTX 2080 Max-Q. Users who were expecting a full-fledged RTX 2080 may be a bit disappointed by this revelation especially since the last generation Blade Pro omitted Max-Q options. Nonetheless, Razer says its Max-Q solution will perform near the "upper echelon" of the Max-Q TDP range. We've already seen laptops with poor RTX 2080 Max-Q implementation and so it will be interesting to see how the new Blade Pro will compare.

No Core i9 options will be made available. According to Razer, the performance benefits of Core i9 over Core i7 are not significant enough to offer separate Core i9 SKUs. We can certainly agree with this reasoning based on our own experiences with over a dozen Coffee Lake-H Core i9 laptops. 

In terms of connectivity, the gigabit RJ-45 has been updated to 2.5 Gbps similar to the Alienware Area-51m. 802.11ax or WiFi 6 comes standard and the SD card reader will now support UHS-III cards for theoretical transfer rates of up to 624 MB/s. In comparison, most current card readers are limited to 180 MB/s or slower.

Razer will be shipping the same slim 230 W AC adapter across all Intel gen 9 Blade 15 and Blade 17 SKUs for interchangeability.

Our table below summarizes the major specification differences between the Blade 17 and Blade Pro. Expect the Blade 17 to launch in the coming weeks for a starting price of $2500.