Razer's Blade 15 Is The First 240Hz OLED Laptop But Its Specs Aren't The Most Shocking Numbers
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Razer currently has five gaming laptops in its Blade line-up that come armed with a silky-smooth 240Hz display, but all of them go with an IPS panel. One can also get an OLED screen gaming machine from Razer, but the screen refresh rate is capped at a standard 60Hz. That'ss about to change. Razer has announced plans to add a new Blade 15 model to its portfolio, that offers an OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate.
The screen resolution is capped at QHD, which is not too shabby for a 15.6-inch screen diagonal. Razer offers laptops packing 4K OLED panels as well, but they don't offer any of the high refresh rate wizardry. The new Blade 15 will come equipped with Intel's 12th-gen Core i9-12900H processor that packs a total of 14 cores and offers a boost frequency of 5 GHz. There's no word if Razer will eventually offer this machine in an AMD flavor. The Intel chip inside the upcoming Blade 15 will sit alongside 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti handles the gaming needs. This isn't the most powerful graphics option on a Razer offering, as the company already sells Blade-series laptops armed with the more powerful RTX 3080 Ti GPU. The design, on the other hand, remains unchanged, sporting an all-black blocky profile and the usual set of ports available on the existing Blade 15 configurations.
You must really want that 240Hz OLED panel
The new-and-improved Razer Blade 15 sounds like a promising gaming machine, combining a ton of raw firepower and an eye-candy OLED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate, but there are two caveats. First, and probably most significantly, it's not going to be cheap. All that hardware goodness will vaporize $3,499.99 from the buyer's wallet. On the positive side, it would still be the most affordable Razer laptop with a 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900H processor inside. It is also worth noting here that the screen brightness is capped at 400 nits. In comparison, the mini-LED display on the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro can go all the way up to 1,600 nits.
The second limitation is market availability. According to The Verge, the new Razer Blade 15 gaming laptop rocking a 240Hz OLED panel is only slated to go on sale in the last quarter of 2022. That's a long wait for potential buyers, and a risky bet for the company, as it gives rivals an ample amount of time to one-up Razer at its display game. In the meanwhile, gaming laptop enthusiasts deeply invested in refresh rate bragging rights — but willing to compromise on panel type — can get machines with even faster 300Hz or 360Hz screens, such as the updated Acer Nitro 5, the Dell Alienware X17 R2, and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 among others.