Razer laptops pack a lot of power in a sleek design that would look good next to a MacBook Pro, without the tangled snakes of the Razer logo. Now Razer is powering its high-end Razer Blade Pro 17 with a 4K display that runs at 120Hz.
We've seen Razer provide laptops with high resolutions and high refresh rates, but this is the first time the company has combined these two methods. In fact, it appears to be the first laptop to be equipped with a screen capable of supporting 4K resolution at 120Hz.
Asus had already announced such a laptop earlier this year at Computex, but we didn't see it commercially. This new display was designed for the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX502 and would have been endowed with a brightness of 400 nits and 100% coverage of the Adobe RGB color space.
Interestingly, Razer seems to have hit Asus on the fist, with the same formula. The new Razer Blade Pro 17 display also achieves 400 nits and 100% Adobe RGB coverage.
The new model was launched today at a price of US € 3,699 in the United States and China. The UK launch will follow in the fourth quarter.
4K or 120Hz, but probably not that much for gaming
The updated Razer Blade Pro 17 contains perhaps the best Blade hardware available, with the same Intel Core i7-9750H processor and the same Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics as other high-end models, but that's not going to be so far. 4K games.
High resolutions place an incredible demand on gaming hardware. 4K technology is still a steep incline, even for a six-core processor coupled with one of the more powerful graphics processors (GPUs). Boosting 4K resolution at 120 frames per second (fps), which would be necessary to take full advantage of the 120Hz refresh rate, is even more difficult.
During our review of the RTX 2080 desktop, we found it difficult to even deliver a consistent 60fps resolution at 4K. Also, mobile versions of GPUs typically don't perform as well as their desktop counterparts.
This puts the Razer Blade Pro 17 in a position where it will likely be able to offer creators sharp images and a smooth experience, but where gamers will have to choose between sharpness and finesse. Some less demanding games can hit 120 frames per second at 4K, but successful titles almost certainly won't.
However, the new screen will give players a chance. They can lower the resolution to get the desired frame rate in competitive games or compose it for games where images are more important than pace.