The Razer Blade 14 has long been one of my favorite gaming laptops, especially when we’re talking about extremely compact, yet powerful options. For 2023, Razer has now announced an upgrade to the machine, bringing not only the latest RTX 40-series graphics, but also up to the anticipated new AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS processor.
I call it “ambitious” because it was an attempt to reduce the size of the popular Razer Blade formula down to something even smaller: a true “stealth” gaming laptop, and a great vehicle for AMD’s Ryzen platform.
The new processor and graphics options are claimed to bring more performance, of course, and we’ve already seen how good these new RTX 40-series graphics are. On the CPU side of things, though, the Ryzen 9 7940HS has a lot of hype behind it too. It’s another one of AMD’s 35-watt parts, built for efficiency in designs such as this — yet still with plenty of horsepower under the hood too. These Zen 4-based chips are rather hard to come by so far, only having been announced in the competing Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 so far.
Interestingly, the Razer Blade 14 now stops at an RTX 4070 in terms of GPUs. In previous generations, for example, the laptop offered configurations with up to an RTX 3080 Ti. For now, it looks like Razer is saving the RTX 4080 and 4090 for the larger laptops in its lineup. It’s worth noting that Asus has started offering the ROG Zephyrus G14 in an RTX 4090 configuration too.
Other than the spec update, other changes to the Razer Blade 14 this year include a slightly bigger battery (now 68.1-watt hour), upgradable memory (up to 64GB), and options for a faster refresh rate screen (now a 1600p 240Hz panel). It’s slightly thicker and larger this time around too, now weighing 4.05 pounds and measuring 0.71 inches thick.
The new Razer Blade 14 starts at $2,400, a significant bump up from the $1,800 starting price of last year’s model, which continues to be sold at that price.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.