The new 'aggressively priced' Razer Blade 16 is slimmer, sleeker, AMD Strix Point-equipped, and may just be the Asus G16 competitor I've been hoping for

pcgamer.com:

We're entering a new era of gaming laptops, folks—and last year, it was Asus leading the charge. The ROG Zephyrus G16 scorched its way to the top of our best gaming laptop guide in 2024, thanks to its ultra-slim design, fabulous OLED screen, and excellent table manners.

However, I've just spent some time with the new Razer Blade 16 at CES 2025, and I couldn't help but be impressed. Razer has long been known for making sleek, desirable gaming machines—but in recent years, we've found them to be a little on the chonky side compared to the competition.

However, the 2025 Blade 16 is anything but. It's 30% smaller by volume than the previous Blade, and a fair bit slimmer overall too. That's thanks to a small underside bump which allows room for airflow over hot components but doesn't feel like a tacked-on addition to an otherwise svelte machine.

It's integrated into the bottom of the deck which means that the laptop feels deceptively thin overall while still hopefully giving a hefty GPU enough room to breathe. The result looks a little clunky in photos, but in person, it's much less noticeable.

Overall the Blade 16 is a trimmed down, crisp-edged, ultra-premium looking and feeling machine, and substantially better proportioned and sleeker than the previous model. I span one around in my hands, and thought hard about whether it passes the «desirability test.» Is it an object I want, something I'd lay down my own cash for? In short, yes. Very much so.

And that's before we get to the hardware inside. In a move that must feel like one in the eye for Intel—given its pretty disastrous 2024—Razer has decided to equip the Blade lineup with AMD's Strix Point mobile CPUs, with the top model featuring the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. That's a 12-core 24-thread monster, and thanks to the Radeon 890M iGPU onboard, the top Blade should be capable of some decent gaming performance away from the wall socket, too.

GPUs? Well, «next-gen Nvidia» models are all I've been told, so that's pretty