Razer's 14-inch Blade laptop gets updated with Kaby Lake CPUs, starting at $1.8K in US; 4K UHD touchscreen option will be available in Q2
Context & Ripple Effects
Razer's 14-inch Blade has been on an annual Intel-refresh cadence since the company debuted its big-screen sibling — the 17.3-inch Skylake machine with a mechanical keyboard — just months earlier, so this Kaby Lake bump is the portable half of the same playbook: new Intel silicon, same chassis, price held near the high end.
The longer arc matters more than the spec bump itself: when Razer relaunched the Blade 14 in 2021 it moved to AMD's Ryzen 9 5900HX at $1,799, and the 2023 refresh pushed the starting price to $2,400 — meaning this 2017 Intel-era model at $1,800 marks both the start of the line's premium pricing and the vendor loyalty it would later abandon.
First-order effects
- US buyers shopping a compact gaming laptop this quarter get a Kaby Lake-refreshed Blade 14 at $1,800, with the 4K UHD touchscreen tier deferred to Q2 rather than shipping day one.
Second-order effects
- The Q2 timing of the 4K panel gives Razer two selling windows per generation, letting it re-merchandise the same chassis mid-year instead of discounting the launch configuration.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Intel refreshes through the late 2010s, then the 2021 switch to AMD Ryzen — premium gaming laptops move to dual-sourcing CPUs, with vendors rotating between Intel and AMD each generation based on which silicon wins the performance-per-watt race.
The trend: Premium thin-and-light gaming laptops are ratcheting upward in price across generations while their makers treat Intel and AMD as interchangeable suppliers rather than fixed partners.