ZDNET Highlights
- The Razer Blade 14 (2025) is now on sale starting at $2,000.
- This is a gorgeous laptop that redefines portability for gaming machines.
- However, the ultraportable form factor results in trade-offs when it comes to performance and upgradability.
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The Blade has been Razer’s flagship gaming laptop for 16 years, but its thin, sleek design blade 14 of 2025 (the thinnest Blade model yet) is nothing short of astonishing at first glance.
The new model is 11% thinner and 11% lighter than its predecessor, weighing just 3.5 pounds and 0.6 inches thick, with a sleek, matte black finish that looks and feels premium. This form challenges the brand’s own aesthetic with a device that looks more like a Dell XPS 14 or MacBook Pro than a gaming laptop.
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The physical build is definitely one of the best features of this laptop. Despite its thin and light frame, it feels noticeably durable with minimal flex or screen wobble. I also like the large rubber posts on the bottom of the device that keep it from sliding around and allow for more airflow.
By unleashing this new and improved form factor, Razer is aiming to compete with 14-inch gaming laptops, specifically the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, which reigns supreme as one of the best 14-inch gaming laptops (also one of our favorites).
There are a few differences between these two laptops, however, but the Blade 14 trades a bit of that power for its wider form factor, opening up a use case as a device that’s just as capable on the Steam dashboard as it is in the office.
The 3K, 120Hz OLED display is gorgeous, going right to the edge with ultrathin bezels that are just millimeters thick. Likewise, the trackpad is large (but not ridiculously so), extending as far to the edges as possible, highlighting a precise, expertly crafted physical aesthetic.
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However, there are some trade-offs in this design. The thinner form means less robust cooling and limited hardware, which the Blade 14 chooses in exchange for added portability. You’ve got an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor with Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture in the GeForce RTX 50 series, up to a 5070, and up to 32GB of solid RAM.
Sure, it’s not as powerful a loadout as you can get on a gaming laptop, but that’s not really the point here. Razer scaled things back with the Blade 14 as a capable machine that errs on the side of battery efficiency rather than trying to beef up performance with heavy hardware.
For example, the Blade 14 supports 100W of total graphics power, which goes up to 115W with Dynamic Boost, so technically this laptop has enough power to support a high-end GPU like the RTX 5080. However, Razer probably opted for the 5070 to control heat and power consumption.
To compare, the 14-inch Asus Zephyrus G14 has a 5080, and that thing gets hot. Even with the fans cranking (which aren’t that quiet), the reality of gaming on a 14-incher means taking these factors into account, of which the Blade 14 falls short with this hardware.
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Gaming performance while plugged in is superb, with smooth, lag-free visuals in “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered”, “Diablo IV” and “Cyberpunk 2077”. The latter, at 3K resolution, pushes things to the top end, averaging around 40 fps and with some mild visual stuttering, but nothing that feels problematic. Swapping to the more manageable 1200p resolution improved performance significantly.
In terms of benchmarking, the Blade 14 holds its own against the two powerful 16-inch gaming laptops we’ve tested this year, the MSI Stealth 16 AI and the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, but shows a slight drop in the raw power of the hardware in those (much larger) systems.
The Blade 14 also has good I/O coverage. You’ve got two USB4 Type-C ports with DisplayPort 2.1 and Power Delivery support on either side, two USB-A ports on either side, an HDMI port (on the right), and a microSD card reader.
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On the left side, you also have the proprietary charging port for the 200W power brick. This is the most efficient form of power delivery, but it will charge via USB-C as long as you have the appropriate wattage. Don’t expect plug-in performance if you’re gaming on this with a 65W charger.
The RGB lighting effects on the keyboard don’t disappoint either. The Razer does a great job of maximizing the sharpness and punch of each individual key, with minimal light leakage from the corners of the keys for dramatic effect.
If you like per-key customization, this keyboard has all the effects you could ask for along with razer chroma Application. If you want to dress things up with a more subtle, office-ready aesthetic, you can do that easily.
The keyboard itself sounds nice with silent activation, as long as you don’t really bother. However, I can see some gamers not being completely satisfied with the travel distance, because although it feels premium, it feels more like a MacBook or business laptop than an obvious gaming board. On the contrary, the speakers are fine. They’re better than average, but a little lacking in bass or richness.
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The Razer Synapse app serves as the device’s dashboard to control everything from performance modes and overclocking to at-a-glance metrics like operating temperatures and CPU usage. However, the app itself feels a bit incomplete, and it became unresponsive a few times during my testing. However, it is quite useful for managing settings.
Just note that when you’re on battery, the laptop takes you into Balanced mode – there’s no option to switch to. Obviously, this is the preferred setting when you’re untethered from an outlet, but eliminating the option for short sprints of performance on battery power isn’t my favorite thing.
However, going into Balanced mode helps a lot in maximizing battery life. Lowering the refresh rate to 60Hz and halving the brightness resulted in a little more than nine hours of battery life during our test – pretty good for a gaming laptop.
For continuous gaming on the battery, you can expect two to three hours, which is more or less standard, although less demanding games will undoubtedly push this to four to five hours. The key takeaway here is that the Blade 14 can stay idle in less-demanding sessions or for longer periods of time than most gaming laptops, which tend to be much thirstier.
ZDNET’s shopping advice
razor blade 14 There is a gaming laptop, but it is not limited to that use case. You can take it to the office or pack it in a travel bag, just as easily as you can get those headshots in the latest top-tier gaming titles on Steam.
It’s a gorgeous laptop, and it reminds me personally of a “mature” gamer whose all-day gaming sessions are (mostly) a thing of the past, but still enjoys a regular portfolio of games to log into.
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I would recommend this laptop to people who are looking for a capable gaming laptop, but who aren’t interested in a huge 16- or 18-inch laptop. In that sense, the Blade 14 speaks to the consumer who is comfortable with the trade-offs discussed and appreciates a lightweight form factor.
The Blade 14 comes in several different configurations, with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of solid RAM and either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 or 5070 GPU. The most high-end loadout regularly sells for $2,999, which isn’t exactly cheap and requires a commitment to its specific use case. However, right now, it’s on sale for $2,599 – a price that’s a lot more palatable.
