If you want hardcore gaming performance, but need it in a system that's portable, if not completely lightweight, then Razer's new Blade Pro could be just the ticket. Razer is calling it the "desktop in your laptop," and the company has a point.

On the inside, the system packs a quad core Skylake processor, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, 32GB RAM, up to 2TB of NVMe SSD storage in RAID 0, Thunderbolt 3, and a 17.3-inch 4K G-Sync capable screen. That's a machine that isn't giving much up in performance to most desktop PCs, so already justifies Razer's strapline... but it's the next thing they did that really makes this a laptop desktop.

The Blade Pro doesn't have the usual membrane keys found in laptops. It has a full mechanical keyboard, with switches—not rubber domes—beneath each key. OK, it's still a laptop, so it's a low profile mechanical keyboard with reduced key travel and chiclet style buttons. But it's a mechanical keyboard nonetheless (Razer also has a similar mechanical mechanism for its iPad Pro keyboard). And of course, being a Razer laptop, it's not just a mechanical keyboard. It's a mechanical keyboard that can be lit up with any color of the rainbow. Alongside it sits a giant touchpad.

All this hardware is packed into a unit that's actually surprisingly portable. It weighs 7.8lbs (3.5kg), and is about 0.9 inches (23mm) thick. I remember a time not so long ago when regular laptops were fatter (and heavier) than that. My current mechanical keyboard is more than an inch deep, and the closest it has to a powerhouse computer is a USB hub!

There is of course the small matter of the price; it's a little eye-watering. With 512GB of storage, it starts at $3,699/€4,199/£3,499. It goes on sale sometime in November.

Listing image by Razer