RAMageddon has come for the Blade 18 — and the Blade 16, too.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Razer just announced a new Blade 18 gaming laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus chip. The flagship laptop is available now on Razer’s site, starting at $3,999.99 with an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti and configurable with up to an RTX 5090. That starting config is $500 more than the 2025 model with the same GPU, and it comes a year after the 2025 Blade 18 got a price increase before even going on sale.
The new Blade 18 seems very much like a chip bump from Intel Arrow Lake to Arrow Lake Refresh. It has the same GPU offerings as last year and once again a unique dual-mode 18-inch display. Razer claims the screen is 20 percent brighter this year, and it can still run at either a high resolution 3840 x 2400 with speedy 240Hz or 1920 x 1200 at an ultra-fast 440Hz. That’s a super high refresh rate for a laptop screen, but 1200p across an 18-inch display of course won’t look nearly as crisp as 4K. The 2026 Blade 18 also maintains a plethora of connectivity, including Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an SD card slot, and even ethernet.
