Last week, Razer took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, boldly claiming that PC Gaming Is Not Dead. Today they unveiled the Razer Blade gaming laptop, which has been designed from the ground up to be a truly portable, lightweight machine that is specifically designed for gamers. The killer feature besides the weight and bold design is their Switchblade user interface: A fully configurable LCD touchpad where the numpad would be; a player can customize spells, sliders, macros, or silly animations of Nyan cat if they were so disposed.

The announcement caused quite a discussion in the Icrontic staff newsroom. Instead of rehashing the press release, I’ll just post the discussion here to fuel the conversation:

Nick M. That’s much bigger than the CES demo. 1920×1080 with a GeForce GT 555M? Pass.

Phillip J. … seriously?

Nick M. Which part?

Phillip J. GT555M? What the hell, Razer?

Nick M. Probably all they could fit into it.

Phillip J. No way.

Nick M. ….and keep it cool. Though it is a 2GB part. The thing is less than an inch tall. It probably did come down to cooling.

Phillip J. Radeon 5870M uses less power and outperforms it. According to everything I can find, pairing a GT555M with 1920×1080 means “turn graphics WAY down or suffer.” DiRT 2 struggled to be playable at 1600×900.

Nick M. Their CPU choice is questionable too. They put a dual core CPU in.

Phillip J. … seriously?!

Nick M. Yep. Core i7 2640M, dual core 2.8GHz (3.5GHz turbo). Betcha it runs $2000+

Phillip J. 35W TDP; all quads are 45W TDP. they spent WAY too much time in development. And I’ll guarantee you that’s a $2500-3000 laptop.

Nick M. I wouldn’t go that high. I’ll guess $2199

Phillip J. Machined aluminum chassis, LCD keys _AND_ LCD display, and THAT much R&D time?

Nick M. oh, missed the LCD keys. Yeah, you’re probably right

Phillip J. Plus a 17″ LED backlit LCD. I’m guessing.. $2699.

(time passes)

Nick M. We were both wrong.

Phillip J. I almost said $2799 but I figured they’d go for $2699 to avoid the 2.75G number.

Tom A. hah. i just saw this and was so pumped to pop in here and say…

Phillip J. I couldn’t possibly write this thing up with a straight face.. this is going to be a one-off and a cautionary tale.

Robert H. But guys…

Nick M. It is a unique machine.

Robert H. PC gaming’s not dead.

Tom A. “PC GAMING ISNT DEAD, IT’S JUST A KNOCKOFF $3000 MACBOOK WITH A GIMMICK KEYBOARD”.

Phillip J. Dear Razer; NOW you know why HP and everyone else just CALLS CLEVO, SAGER, ET CETERA! Because THIS IS EXPENSIVE!

Nick M. I’m intrigued by the touchpad and LCD keyboard.

Tom A. It’s cool tech but it’s outdated before it ships.

Phillip J. I wouldn’t call it a knockoff. Especially since this thing’s got at LEAST 18 months of development in it. I’m guessing it was a 24-month development cycle just by how dated the hardware is. And it’s way too close to the edge; they don’t have 10W of headroom for a quad-core CPU? Seriously?

Nick M. Can’t figure out whether I like the touchpad placement. It’ll certainly stay out of the way when typing.

Tom A. Let’s take the keyboard/touchmess out of this and look at the aesthetics.

Phillip J. The aesthetics are the same as everyone else. Take a look at an HP Envy17.

Tom A. The tenkey thing is lacking too. In 2001 or 2002 I bought a Nostromo Speedpad.

Robert H. Ah, good ol’ Nostromo.

Phillip J. Which also happens to offer drastically better specs in all regards, except weight, at a much, much lower price.

Tom A. And immediately upon using it, I felt the need for another row of keys.

Phillip J. My n52te says “BELKIN” on it. 😛 The battery is exceptionally weak too; only 60Wh?

Tom A. That relic is collecting dust at my parents house somewhere, but the point is if they expect the user to have his right hand on the mouse and the left over their tenkey setup there is a huge lack in control.

Phillip J. And they bought an entire ODM and scrapped how many designs first? Tom, the problem with the n52te is that it missed everything the n50 got right. Like fast profile switching with good pre-built profiles.

Tom A. I cant wait for my friend at iSuppli to get a hold of one of these.

Phillip J. Who needs iSuppli?

Tom A. I’m curious to see what’s inside / estimated cost. Mostly of the tenkey/touchpad part.

Phillip J. CPU is $346, don’t know the GT555M because NVIDIA’s notoriously protective of pricing, but let’s call it.. $100 all said and done there. Yeah, the LCD is … interesting. Also wonder what the licensing costs are, since I think they’d have to license patents from Art Lebedev.

Tom A. I assume Razer has been quite profitable in the last 10 years. I wonder how much will be lost when this crashes and burns.

Phillip J. They bought an entire ODM including manufacturing, and then upgraded the manufacturing. So they bought PCB, chassis, machining, et cetera. Plus staff, real estate in Taiwan, and R&D. They’re already deep in the hole. It’s going to be tens of millions at the least.

Tom A. It’s not like the ODM can’t be contracted out to produce something else when the time comes but still… that is crazy.

Phillip J. First foray into a totally original design of all components with at least three priors scrapped? Easily $5M of R&D costs down the hole there. Then you top it off with a product that’s got razor thin margins (pun unintentional) to begin with; typically <10%.

Tom A. It was a pretty fucking fantastic pun. Is MXM even around anymore?

Phillip J. Yeah, MXM still lives. But that laptop isn’t MXM either.

Tom A. Not that this ultra-thin product would even support it.

Phillip J. Well the bigger problem is this: it looks like they have zero thermal headroom.

Tom A. What part of laptops being designed around thermals that people don’t understand. Exactly.

Phillip J. TDP budget for a DC vs. QC i7 is 35W and 45W respectively. If they don’t have 10W of headroom? The chassis has no future usability.

Tom A. The bottom line is there isn’t a big enough market now for this kind of specialized product. Unless Johnny Gamer is bleeding money, he has an enthusiast-level system at home, and if he’s a road warrior he is buying a $1000 laptop with a mid-range graphics adapter every X years.