Razer's Blade 14 is my go-to recommendation for anyone looking for one good gaming laptop, but as impressive as it is, it trades power for portability. If that's the kind of sacrifice you don't want to make, say hello to the Razerblade 18– this is the powerhouse you are looking for.
Side by side with the Razerblade 14, the Blade 18 looks like a protective big brother. You see the family resemblance, but the larger Blade is more imposing. The 18-inch Mini LED display is so bright it's almost overwhelming in dark rooms, and it produces vibrant colors that rival the Blade 14's already stunning screen.
The Blade 18 starts at $3,100, but the model I tested: $4,500. You get one lot effective for the price. It packs a 14th-generation Intel Core i9 14900HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU (upgradable to the beastly RTX 4090, which I tested), 32GB of RAM, and a 1-terabyte solid-state drive. It's the kind of power that can break through even the most demanding games.
Smooth screen
Razer outdid themselves with the display on the Razer Blade 18. The Mini LED panel has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, with 2,000 local dimming zones, for exceptional contrast between the bright and dark parts of the image. The Razer Blade 14 was already one of the most vibrant laptop screens I'd ever seen, but the Blade 18 makes it look dull in comparison.
Photo: Eric Ravenscraft
But what sets it apart is the 300Hz refresh rate. At their best, most gaming laptops only support 240Hz, which is sufficient for most games, but for fast-paced titles like Overwatch 2you want all the frames you can get, and the Blade 18 is one of the few laptops I've tested that can reliably get that much out of it.
Maintaining such a high frame rate will put a strain on the battery, but Razer's Synapse software has an option to automatically switch the screen to 60Hz when the battery is powered. This dramatically reduces the number of frames your games have to render, saving power, but it leads to less smooth gameplay. You can also press Fn+R to switch between 60 Hz, 240 Hz and 300 Hz while connected to a charger.
Synapse also has a color profile selector that lets you switch between DCI-P3, Adobe RGB, Rec.709, and other profiles to get precise, accurate color. This is especially useful for gamers who are also designers and photo or video editors, where color accuracy is incredibly important to their workflow.
Powerful performance
A great screen doesn't matter much if you don't have the horsepower to support it, but thankfully the Razer Blade 18 is up to the task. The model I tested is equipped with the GeForce RTX 4090 (you can also choose between the RTX4070 or 4080), and it tore through most games. star field, a noticeably less than optimized game, hitting over 60 frames per second in busy areas like New Atlantis on Ultra graphics settings, and maintaining 80 to 90 fps on Medium.
Overwatch 2 However, it's what blew me away. On medium graphics settings I maintained a full 300 fps (while the laptop was connected to power). This is a game where I'm constantly flying around the map in seconds, whipping out my gun to take headshots at an enemy that wasn't in my line of sight a third of a second ago before rushing back to heal my teammates . Three hundred frames per second precisely what I need, and the Razer Blade 18 has the display and the power to give it to me.