Introduction

While gaming laptops have always tended towards chunkiness, in recent years they've been getting larger as well, 16 and 18 inch devices are quite popular, associated with halo tier rigs for the discerning gamer and creator. While these machines certainly became more powerful and refined over the years, we're now seeing 4-kilo devices become surprisingly common, even sporting external liquid cooling apparatus in the most extreme cases. The average laptop is meant for portability and ease of use, trying to haul a four-kilo 18-inch monster with massive—and sometimes multiple—heavy power adapters somewhat defeats that purpose. But even these desktop replacement monsters still take less space than most conventional desktop PCs.



Razer laptops have a pedigree of introducing cutting edge form factors, with a tradition of wrapping serious hardware in a svelte chassis, utilizing top tier displays, and being one of the first laptop manufacturers to use large vapor chambers. Unlike many Apple devices, which have similar aesthetics, Razer incorporates a wide selection of fast ports and connectivity with their machines, emphasizing practicality alongside style. With the 2025 version of the Blade 16, Razer aims to further prove that a notebook meant for hardcore gaming and content creation can be very portable, even when it's rocking a GB203 based RTX 5090 under the hood. This device looks great on paper, and it's even more impressive when you see it in action. Sporting a sleek CNC machined anodized aluminium, sub-18 mm profile and weighing just over 2 kg, it's genuinely portable, without compromising on durability or feelings of solidness. Despite these ambitious design goals, the cooling has been incorporated well enough that the RTX 5090 sustains around 150 W during gaming. I don't know about you guys, but this sounds tempting to me!

Razer paired the NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs with AMD Zen 5 Strix Point HX-series processors. You can choose between the Ryzen AI 9 365 or its more powerful sibling, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370—both have 4 Zen 5 and some Zen 5c cores, but the HX 370 has two additional Zen 5c cores and slightly higher frequencies—for a 4+6 or 4+8 setup. Thankfully, since the Zen 5c cores, while capable, are generally better suited for background tasks, six versus eight isn't a big deal, actual gaming performance will be very similar for the two chips on offer, which both use their full fat Zen 5 cores for gaming and foreground tasks, with the area efficient Zen 5c cores picking up the slack if needed. Unfortunately, and with that said, the HX 370 option is only available when paired with the RTX 5090, a combo that adds a jaw-dropping $2100 to the base price. That's not exactly the best marketing strategy that I have ever seen, it seems these locked combos are for the convenience of Razer, offering fewer SKUs to support, rather than to provide customers with the best selection of choices.

Speaking of which, most of the upgrades are costly and tied to other options, Razer seems to be taking a page out of the Apple playbook, despite this platform not sharing the technical limitations that cause various versions of the M-series SoCs, for instance, to physically max out at various levels of unified memory. There is no such limitation with the x86 CPUs and LPDDR5X memory here. For instance, the base model comes with just 16 GB of soldered LPDDR5X RAM, meaning you can't even get an RTX 5060-based Blade 16 with 32 GB of memory, arguably the entry level for DDR5 gaming machines in 2025. If you need a machine with that amount of memory, you'll have to pay an additional $400 for an RTX 5070 + 32 GB combo. Furthermore, if you're looking for 64 GB, those configurations are only available with the RTX 5080 and 5090. Considering these soldered memory options cannot be upgraded at a later date, locking prospective buyers to 16 GB configurations reminiscent of the DDR4 era is pretty shameful.

With a ClearMR 11000 and DisplayHDR True Black 500 rating, both certified by VESA, the Calman Verified display is beautiful! It's a 16-inch 16:10 OLED with a 2560x1600 resolution, giving more vertical resolution real estate than standard 16:9 panels. Gaming on this 240 Hz panel is a joy since the color reproduction is excellent, HDR scenes are rendered in a stunning fashion, and it has a 0.2 ms response time, giving a feeling of instantaneous clarity in fast-paced scenes—more so than IPS or mini-LED panels of the same refresh rate could offer.

The port selection is more than generous, featuring three 10 Gbps Type-A and two USB4 Type-C ports which support 100 W PD and DP 1.4, plus a fast UHS-II microSD card reader. NVIDIA G-Sync is also available on either the internal display or outputted through the HDMI 2.1 port. It's manually toggleable with a MUX switch in the BIOS, or you can enable Optimus/Advanced Optimus switching between integrated and discrete graphics. It's a bit of a mystery for me why this option stays hidden in the BIOS, and you don't have direct access to it. Thankfully, Razer also offers a guide on how to enable NVIDIA Advanced Optimus in the NVIDIA Control panel, which has improved logic for when to use the integrated or the discrete GPU, automatically, so users don't have to restart and manually switch every time.

Besides a sleek profile, low weight and good battery life, this Razer Blade 16 delivers all the premium features you'd expect from a top-tier gaming machine, such as a robust metal build, efficient vapor chamber cooling combined with phase change TIM, high-end hardware, and a stunning display. Let's see how the Blade does in our suite of testing!

Specifications