An 18-inch gaming laptop that does the most

Like the 7 pounds Razer Blade 18 sitting on my desk, its all-black unibody case and huge 18 inch screen towering before me like the monolith of 2001I couldn’t help but think, “Who the hell needs a computer that big?” I’m sure they exist: gamers with deep pockets and little concern for portability, video editors who demand as much screen real estate as possible. But overall, the market for the Blade 18 is quite small, especially whenRazer Blade 14 And 16 find a much better balance between price, performance and weight.

What the Razer Blade 18 promises, should you choose to accept its gargantuan proportions, is unbridled power and screen space. It uses the new Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, a 24-core beast with a maximum speed of 5.4 GHz. Its 18-inch screen can reach up to 240Hz with just over 4K (3,840 x 2,400 pixels) and 440Hz when downscaled to 1080p+ (1,920 x 1,200). And of course, you can equip it with NVIDIA’s fastest mobile GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090. Considering everything that’s under the hood, it’s honestly impressive how much it weighs just seven pounds, alongside a 2.1-pound power adapter. (By comparison, the equally high-end 18-inch Alienware Area 51 weighs 9.5 pounds with a 2.2-pound power adapter.)

During our last review of the Razer Blade 18 A few years ago, my colleague Sam Rutherford chafed at the laptop’s size, battery life, and high cost (which could reach more than $5,000 when fully equipped). All of these points are absolutely fair, but this time around it’s easier to see what Razer is trying to do with the Blade 18: it’s simply doing the most for the people who demand it. And that’s with the excellent build quality we’ve come to expect from Razer (albeit with a hefty starting price of $2,799).

If you’re still trying to understand why an 18-inch laptop exists, the Razer Blade 18 isn’t for you. And honestly, the concept isn’t even that far-fetched. Given the move toward thinner display bezels and other improvements, laptop manufacturers have been able to fit larger screens inside their usual case sizes. The Razer Blade 16 was a bit heavier than the Blade 15 when it launched, but Razer has now slimmed down its body significantly. The Blade 18 also serves as an upgrade to the older Blade 17 – and what an upgrade it is.

My review unit, which was equipped with this new Intel chip, an RTX 5090, 64 GB of RAM and a 4 TB SSD addressed Cyberpunk 2077 with all its settings adjusted effortlessly. In its native resolution, which is again a bit higher than 4K, it hits 131fps with 4X frame generation (which uses DLSS 4 upscaling to interpolate additional frames). That’s about half as fast as the desktop RTX 5090 running at 4K at the same settings – but remember that the GPU alone typically costs between $2,000 and $3,000 these days. Razer charges an additional $1,400 to upgrade the Blade 18 from an RTX 5070 Ti to the 5090. (And for the record, the total cost of our fully equipped review unit was $4,599.)

Beyond frame rates, Cyberpunk 2077 simply looks great on the Blade 18’s 240Hz IPS LED display. It’s not as bright as the MiniLED displays Razer offers on the Blade 16, and it doesn’t offer the insane contrast levels of an OLED display, but it does the job well. For the price, however, it would have been nice to see more modern screen technology. Like the Blade 16, the 18 also offers a dual-mode display, allowing it to hit those higher refresh rates of 440Hz at 1080p+.

It worked as advertised in Monitoring 2where I played several matches well above 300fps on high quality settings. The extra visible frames are especially useful during quick moments, where you can have a snap to take out an opponent before they shoot you in the head.

I had no doubt that the Blade 18 would be fast, but I also noticed that it was genuinely more immersive than the Blade 16 due to its larger screen. As I leaned over Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite And Monitoring sessions, it almost felt like I was in front of a desktop setup. That’s ultimately what you’re paying for with this machine. When I opened audio files in Audacity, I also noticed that the extra screen real estate just made it easier to navigate my timelines.

When it comes to direct performance testing, the Core Ultra 9 chip isn’t much better than Intel’s 13th-gen hardware in single-threaded tasks, and it’s sometimes better thanks to AMD’s latest batch of hardware. Intel has, however, made significant progress in multithreaded testing like Geekbench 6, and that kind of performance makes the Blade 18 ideal for tasks like video rendering and complex gaming.

The Blade 18 also performed remarkably well: during a 3DMark stress test, which involved running a demo 20 times in a row, the processor stayed at 70 degrees Celsius most of the time, with occasional spikes up to 85 degrees Celsius. In CPU-intensive Cinebench tests, Intel’s chip ran to 80°C on average with a few jumps to 90°C. The GPU, meanwhile, maintained a constant temperature of 70°C and never faltered during 3DMark testing. The fans can get noisy, though, as you might expect for a system that’s relatively thin and has to pump out a ton of heat.

Razer has been making rugged, good-looking gaming laptops for over a decade now, so it’s no big surprise that the Blade 18 is incredibly solid and premium. Its keyboard has a great depth that allows you to play shooter games as well as typing, and its trackpad is wonderfully smooth and precise. (However, it gets a little overzealous when detecting multi-touch gestures.) Port-wise, the Blade 18 also has everything you want, including three USB Type-A 3.2 connections, a Thunderbolt 5 USB-C port, a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port, 2.5 GB Ethernet, and a full-size SD card slot.

Personally, if I had to choose between Razer’s current lineup, I’d go with the Blade 16 so I can carry it around and use it occasionally as a productivity machine. That’s not the case with the Blade 18: its short battery life of two hours and 17 minutes (in the PCMark 10 battery test) means you’ll still need to lug around its powerful AC adapter. After an hour of writing this review, the battery life also went from fully charged to 38%. But in reality, no one buys this thing just to manage spreadsheets and emails. Want ultimate power and a huge screen? Battery life will then suffer.

To paraphrase Lord of the RingsYou don’t just choose to live with an 18-inch gaming laptop, not without considering all the conveniences you’re leaving behind. For those sick who dare to go this route, the Blade 18 is a solid powerhouse that weighs significantly less than rivals like the 18-inch Alienware Area 51. Just be prepared to pay Razer’s premium price to own one.