Razer Blade Stealth (late 2016) Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

I might finally buy a Razer laptop.

I could never quite do it before. They were always a little too expensive for my tastes, ran too hot, and the battery life was often poor.

The specs/price breakdown for the new Razer Blade Stealth, in the US.

Razer

But the 12.5-inch Razer Blade Stealth starts at just $999 or AU$1,549 (around £750) — an incredible deal for a ridiculously thin, well-built aluminum laptop with a Core i7 processor, 8GB of memory, a beautiful, mesmerizing keyboard and a high-res 2,560×1,440-pixel display.

Particularly now that Razer has addressed the Blade Stealth’s biggest weakness: that battery.

Though we really, really liked the Blade Stealth in our CNET review, battery life was its Achilles’ heel. The upgraded version of the laptop, with a 4K-resolution screen, only lasted 3 hours 12 minutes in our streaming video battery drain test. (We see over 10 hours on a MacBook Air, in case you’re wondering.)

But today, Razer says it’s crammed 15 percent more battery (53.6 vs. 45 watt-hours) into the same 0.52-inch thin, 2.84 pound (13.2mm, 1.29 kg) body, and for the same price.

Oh, and it’s also trading the sixth-gen Intel Core i7-6500U processor for a faster seventh-gen Core i7-7500U chip, which may or may not improve battery life even more. Plus, you can now add up to 16GB of memory and 1TB of solid-state storage (the fast PCIe variety) if you’ve got a little more money to burn.

Another reason to wait for reviews: the $499 Razer Core dock lets you add the power of a desktop graphics card to the Blade Stealth, but Razer hasn’t sent out review units yet.

Sean Hollister/CNET

Mind you, I can’t actually say for sure that the Razer Blade Stealth’s 15 percent larger battery means it’ll last 15 percent longer on a charge, or if that’ll be enough for me with the more battery efficient screen. I’ll be waiting for our full review, and I recommend you do too.

Last September, I told myself I’d buy a MacBook Pro. I’ve been waiting an entire year, but Apple’s new laptops are nowhere to be found. And if you believe the rumors, we may not see them in 2016 at all.

That’s plenty of time for Razer to win me over.

The updated Razer Blade Stealth is on sale today in the US at razerstore.com. No word on availability for the UK and Australia.