Razer Blade 18 Review: An 18-Inch Gaming Laptop That Does The Most As the seven pound Razer Blade 18 sat on my desk, its all black unibody case and enormous 18 inch screen towering before me like the monolith from 2001, I could not help but think, Who the hell needs such a big ass computer. I am sure they are out there, the gamers with deep pockets and little regard for portability, the video editors who demand as much screen space as possible. But on the whole, the market for the Blade 18 is pretty small, especially when Razers Blade 14 and 16 strike a far better balance of price, performance and weight. What the Razer Blade 18 promises, if you choose to accept its gargantuan proportions, is unbridled power and screen real estate. It is running Intels new Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, a 24 core beast with a maximum speed of 5.4GHz. Its 18 inch screen can reach up to 240Hz at slightly over 4K and 440Hz when downscaled to 1080p plus. And of course, you can equip it with NVIDIA’s fastest mobile GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090. Given everything under the hood, it is honestly impressive it weighs just seven pounds, alongside a 2.1 pound power adapter. In comparison, the similarly premium 18 inch Alienware Area 51 comes in at 9.5 pounds with a 2.2 pound power adapter. When we last reviewed the Razer Blade 18 a few years ago, my colleague bristled at the laptops size, battery life and high cost, which could reach upwards of 5000 dollars when fully decked out. All of those points are absolutely fair, but this time around it is easier to see what Razer is trying to do with the Blade 18. It is simply doing the most for the people who demand it. And it is doing so with the excellent build quality we have come to expect from Razer, albeit with a high 2799 dollar starting price. If you are still trying to wrap your head around why an 18 inch laptop even exists, the Razer Blade 18 is not for you. And honestly, the concept is not even that farfetched. Given the move towards thinner display bezels and other refinements, laptop makers have been able to squeeze in larger screens inside of their typical case sizes. The Razer Blade 16 was a bit heavier than the Blade 15 when it launched, but now Razer has slimmed its case down considerably. The Blade 18 similarly serves as an upgrade to the old Blade 17, and what an upgrade it is. My review unit, which was equipped with that new Intel chip, an RTX 5090, 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD tackled Cyberpunk 2077 with all of its settings cranked without a sweat. At its native resolution, which again is a bit higher than 4K, it reached 131 fps with 4X frame generation. That is roughly half as fast as the desktop RTX 5090 running in 4K with the same settings, but do not forget, that GPU alone typically runs between 2000 to 3000 dollars these days. Razer charges an additional 1400 dollars to upgrade the Blade 18 from an RTX 5070 Ti to the 5090. And for the record, the total cost for our fully decked out testing unit was 4599 dollars. Beyond frame rates, Cyberpunk 2077 simply looked great on the Blade 18s 240Hz IPS LED display. It is not as bright as the MiniLED screens Razer offers on the Blade 16, and it does not offer the insane contrast levels of an OLED screen, but it does the job well. For the price, though, it would have been nice to see more modern screen technology. Like the Blade 16, the 18 also offers a dual mode display, which is how it reaches those higher 440Hz refresh rates in 1080p plus. It worked as advertised in Overwatch 2, where I played several matches well above 300fps with high quality settings. The additional visible frames are particularly helpful during fast paced moments, where you may have the blink of an eye to take out an opponent before they headshot you. I had no doubt the Blade 18 would be fast, but I also noticed that it felt genuinely more immersive than the Blade 16 because of its more expansive display. As I leaned in during Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite and Overwatch sessions, it almost felt like I was in front of a desktop setup. That is ultimately what you are paying for with this machine. When I opened up audio files in Audacity, I also noticed that the additional screen space simply made it easier to sift through my timelines. When it comes to direct benchmarks, the Core Ultra 9 chip is not much better than Intels 13th gen hardware in single threaded tasks, and it is sometimes best by AMD’s latest batch of hardware. Intel has made significant progress in multi threaded tests like Geekbench 6, though, and that sort of performance makes the Blade 18 ideal for tasks like video rendering and complex games. The Blade 18 also ran remarkably cool. During a 3DMark stress test, which involved running one demo 20 times in a row, the CPU stayed at 70 degrees Celsius most of the time, with occasional spikes to 85C. During the CPU heavy Cinebench tests, Intels chip jumped to 80C on average with some jumps to 90C. The GPU, meanwhile, held a steady 70C and never wavered during 3DMark benchmarks. The fans sure can get loud, though, as you would expect for a system that is relatively thin and needs to pump out a ton of heat. Razer has been building sturdy and attractive gaming laptops for well over a decade now, so it is not a huge surprise that the Blade 18 feels incredibly solid and premium. Its keyboard has a great depth to it that feels just as good playing shooters as it does while typing, and its trackpad is wonderfully smooth and accurate. It does get a bit overzealous when detecting multi touch gestures, though. Port wise, the Blade 18 also packs in everything you would want, including three USB Type A 3.2 connections, one Thunderbolt 5 USB C port, a Thunderbolt 4 USB C port, 2.5Gb Ethernet and a full sized SD card slot. Personally, if I had to choose between Razers current lineup, I would go with the Blade 16 so that I could actually carry it around and occasionally use it as a productivity machine. Not so with the Blade 18, its short two hour and 17 minute battery life in PCMark 10s battery benchmark means you will always need to lug around its beefy power adapter. After an hour of writing this review, its battery life also dropped from fully charged to 38 percent. But really, nobody is buying this thing just to deal with spreadsheets and emails. You want ultimate power and an enormous screen. Then battery life will suffer. To paraphrase The Lord of the Rings, one does not simply choose to live with an 18 inch gaming laptop, not without considering all of the conveniences you are leaving behind. For the sickos who would dare tread that path, the Blade 18 is a solidly built powerhouse that weighs significantly less than rivals like the 18 inch Alienware Area 51. Just be prepared to pay Razers high price to own one.
