The portability of laptop displays means they often make compromises on speed, color, or sharpness. For those who want a screen with the deepest contrast and darkest blacks without sacrificing speed, Razer hopes to find the answer.
The upcoming Razer Blade 15 configuration, announced on Tuesday, will be the first laptop to feature a 240Hz refresh rate on an OLED panel. This makes OLED a better option for people like gamers who prioritize fast motion processing. Such speeds have not yet been reached by either OLED monitors with their high price, or OLED TVs. However, in other OLED designs, such as in the viewfinder of this camera, it reaches 240Hz.
The upcoming Blade 15’s 15.6-inch screen claims a 1ms gray-to-gray (GtG) response time, which is good for a gaming laptop these days, as well as 100 percent coverage of the wider DCI. -P3 color space. As expected from an OLED panel, it’s not very bright. For example, with a claimed 400 nits, laptop displays are best used outdoors on a sunny day.
To achieve a high refresh rate, the display has a resolution of 2560×1440, while you will find plenty of ultra-light non-gaming laptops with 4K OLED displays. Razer is making a 4K OLED version of the Blade 15 that is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate for $200 less at the time of this writing. However, 1440p has become a golden spot for gamers who are looking for a sharper image without requiring the same processing power as 4K.
Beyond the panel, the Blade 15 has an RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU, an Intel Core i9-12900H, up to 32GB of DDR5-4800 memory, and a 1TB SSD, as well as an empty M.2 slot. There’s also a good selection of ports with two USB-C ports, including one Thunderbolt 4, a USB-A port, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader.
Razer’s announcement didn’t claim battery life for the OLED clamshell, but with an OLED display, high refresh rates, and the machine’s gaming heritage, don’t expect longevity. The laptop uses Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus feature, which, among other things, switches between the discrete GPU and the processor’s integrated graphics as needed to conserve battery life.
When all is said and done, you are looking at an incredibly expensive $3,500 machine when it comes out in the fourth quarter. “First”is not cheap.
The Razer laptop should finally allow users to enjoy OLED’s rich contrast, detailed shadows, and nuanced highlights without visual artifacts like stuttering, holding back the experience when your GPU maintains high frame rates. The Razer Blade 15 laptops also come with G-Sync, Nvidia’s variant of Adaptive-Sync, to combat screen tearing. But if you want the smoothest video processing, there are laptops (including alternative Razer Blade 15 configurations) that can run at 360Hz and feature more powerful GPUs than Razer’s upcoming high-speed OLED system.
In its announcement, Razer singled out AAA games, which typically boast impressive visuals, as the best use of an OLED panel. But if it’s an equally graphically demanding esports game, you won’t be using 240fps to make the most of your screen refresh rate, especially at 1440p. If you’re a multi-genre gamer, you’ll find it easier to take advantage of the screen’s many attributes.
Razer also noted that photo and video editing and movie watching are good use cases for the fast OLED display. But if OLED makes you turn the Blade 15 into an HDR car, think again. The Blade 15 does not support HDR10, which is required for HDR on Windows.
But if you want your SDR display to have the best possible contrast, while still looking sharp during fast-paced action, and maintaining fairly high frame rates, Razer finally offers that option.