OLED gaming laptops have been quite the conundrum so far. Picture quality is superior with far better color reproduction and a deeper contrast for that real nice HDR, but refresh rate and screen latency has always been a concern for those looking to be competitive.
But if Razer’s recent teasing is to be believed, then the team may have solved these problems with some massive display upgrades coming to the refreshed Blade 16 and Blade 18 gaming laptops at CES 2024.
Two big world-firsts
So let’s break down the tech specs being teased here, because they are mighty impressive. The Blade 16 in particular gets a 16-inch OLED panel, which has been co-developed with Samsung and packs a 240Hz refresh rate. Its bigger sibling sees a resolution upgrade to 4K, along with a 165Hz refresh rate in its LED display.
Most impressive is how Razer has solved the biggest ick with OLED screens for gaming, as the Blade 16 is both VESA ClearMR 11000-rated for super minimal motion blur and backs a 0.2ms response time — while maintaining that same 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, QHD+ resolution, and all the HDR goodness you’d expect.
The Blade 18 takes a different approach in re-evaluating the trade-off between screen resolution and refresh rate. Current gen sports a QHD+ panel with 240Hz, but this new one will go for a sharper balance of 4K / 165Hz. Both screens are Calman Verified and individually calibrated in the factory to guarantee a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.
Color me excited
These are mightily impressive display upgrades that have been concealed in what many thought were going to be pretty minor refreshes of the Blade 16 and 18. No word on other specs or pricing yet. But given it’s Razer, expect a jump to Intel’s Meteor Lake and AMD’s Hawk-Line CPUs, and a beefy price tag to match these equally beefy screen stats.
Speaking about that anticipated price-tag, I know many people look to it quite like the Apple tax — a premium price for the brand on the lid. But speaking of the Cupertino crew, there’s quite the attempt here to face up to the MacBook Pro and (maybe) beat them.
How? Well let’s review those gaming laptop specs in a different way: a factory-calibrated OLED panel with minimal motion blur, a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, plenty of graphical power and a CNC-milled aluminum design. Sounds quite like a certain creative pro laptop, right?
Of course, competition will be steep — nothing has quite managed to hit the power efficiency, running temperatures or low fan speeds of the likes of the M3 Pro MacBook Pro. But we’ll see how Razer intends to compete with the big A when these are fully announced at CES.
