Razer has brought some significant improvements to the Razer Blade 16 this year. At CES 2025, Razer has announced that the laptop will be moving to AMD for the first time, adopting the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 as its CPU to pair with Nvidia’s new RTX 50-series GPUs.
But that’s not all. The new Razer Blade 16 makes a number of interesting tweaks to the design. First off, it’s become imaginably thin, shrinking down to just 0.59 inches at its thinnest point. That’s 32% thinner than the previous version of the Razer Blade 16, which is quite a lot of thickness to cut in just one generation. The new Blade 16 achieves this partially with its “thermal hood design,” which allows the front of the laptop to be thinner, while adding some thickness where better airflow is needed. The rubber feet in the back (toward the screen) are slightly taller, giving a slightly raised ergonomic angle.
At its thickest point, it measures in at 0.69 inches thick, not including the rubber feet, of course. That’s not quite as thin as the ROG Zephyrus G16, but it’s the thinnest true gaming laptop Razer has ever made. I set it down side by side with last year’s model, and the difference is pretty significant.
Razer says that despite the reduction in size, thermals will stay on track with last year’s model. The laptop uses a larger vapor chamber inside, the aforementioned thermal hood down, and the more efficient Ryzen HX370 CPU — all playing a part in helping keep this laptop cooled down. Razer says surface temperatures and fan noise will be consistent with previous models. Razer also hopes that the Ryzen chip plus the 90-watt-hour battery will result in slightly better battery life too, though it hasn’t yet given battery life expectations.
Of course, the new Razer Blade 16 will also feature the latest RTX 50-series, up to the RTX 5090 with up to 155 watts of total graphics power.
The other big changes are on the keyboard deck. It gets a Copilot key and two extra programmable macro keys over on the right. The keyboard itself has been redesigned as well, with a longer 1.5mm of travel in the keys and dual-LED backlighting. Yes, that means each key has two lights under it so you can get two different colors per key, which is helpful for the function row or new macros keys that have multiple functions.
There’s even a slightly larger glass trackpad now, which expands to fill most of the height of the palm rests, not unlike what Asus did with its ROG Zephyrus 14 and 16 last year.
Lastly, the Blade 16’s speakers are getting upgraded, moving from a four-speaker setup to six speakers capable of 7.1 virtual surround sound courtesy of THX Spatial Audio. This is similar to what’s featured on the much larger Razer Blade 18 laptop.
As with last year’s model, the Razer Blade 16 comes with an option for a 240Hz OLED display. The mini-LED option, however, will no longer be available.
Overall, it’s really nice to see all these tweaks and added features on the Blade 16 this year. Last year’s model was a bit lacking in new talking points when announced at CES 2024. I had to admit that despite contending for a spot among the best gaming laptops, it was starting to feel a bit stale compared to some of the competition. I definitely can’t say that about this year’s update.
Razer hasn’t announced pricing yet, but the Blade 16 has been quite an expensive gaming laptop in the past. The previous high-end model was priced at $3,000. Razer says the new Blade 16 will be available sometime within the first quarter of 2025.