CES 2023 | Gargantuan Razer Blade 18 now official with an 18-inch QHD+ 240 Hz screen, Raptor Lake HX processors and an equally colossal price tag

The Razer Blade 18 isn't exactly a mystery due to one Geekbench listing outing some of its key specs. It joins the likes of the Acer Predator Helios 18 as this generation's ultra-large laptops that can essentially serve as desktop replacements. However, it is by no means cheap and will set gamers back by at least US$2,899. The kind of hardware inside the Blade 18 somewhat justifies the eye-watering price tag.

The Razer Blade 18 has only two CPU choices, the Intel Core i9-13980HX and Core i9-13950HX, both of which are repurposed Raptor Lake desktop dies with 24 cores a pop. Graphics card options are a bit more diverse and include most of the Ada Lovelace mobile stack, including the GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB VRAM, 140 W TGP), RTX 4070 (8 GB VRAM, 140W TGP), RTX 4080 (12 GB VRAM, 175W TGP) and RTX 4090 (16 GB VRAM, 175W TGP). Razer's included vapour chamber cooling should help keep the power-hungry CPU and GPU satiated.

For the screen, the Razer Blade 18 uses an 18-inch QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) IPS LCD panel with a refresh rate of 240 Hz, 3 ms response time, 500 nits peak brightness, Nvidia G-Sync, and 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage. Razer claims each panel is factory calibrated individually for maximum colour accuracy. A Windows Hello-enabled 5MP IR webcam is located at the top of the screen.

All Razer Blade 18 variants come with 32 GB of DDR5 5,600 memory by default, except for the GeForce RTX 4060 version, which cuts it down to 16 GB. It is user upgradable up to 64 GB. Similarly, GeForce RTX 4090 models get 2 TB of solid-state storage, whereas the rest have to make do with 1 TB. Users can upgrade that to 8 TB and even throw in a SATA SSD or mechanical hard drive for even more storage.

The Razer Blade 18's colossal chassis allows for plenty of ports. It includes one Thunderbolt 4.0, one USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, three USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, one 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack, one SD card reader and one 3.5 mm combo audio jack. There are a total of THX-tuned speakers (2x tweeters plus 4x subwoofers).

Razer deviates from the industry standard with its 91 Wh battery, presumably because the extra 8 Wh battery won't matter for a desktop replacement. One can charge it with the included 230 Watts GaN charger or via the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.

Unfortunately, the Razer Blade 18 doesn't include a mechanical keyboard, which is a shame, given its price. Additionally, the speaker placement leaves no space for the numpad on the keyboard. The membrane keyboard includes per-key RGB lighting controllable via Razer Chroma. The laptop's CNC-milled chassis has an illuminated Razer logo at the back. Lastly, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support is also included.