Razer came out with a new Blade laptop at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, and all we have to say about it is: yaaas!

Our quick take

Razer enters ultrabook territory with this new beaut

FORAGAINST

First of all... if you're not familiar with Razer's range of Blade laptops, you should know that they are primarily meant for gamers and usually solid, heavy machines. But now the company is changing things up. It's tackling the ultrabook space with a new Blade-branded laptop called Blade Stealth.

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Blade Sleath is made of CNC-milled aluminum and actually quite thin, at 0.52-inches. It only weighs 2.75 pounds, whereas Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air weighs 2.96 pounds. So, it's light and portable, and because it's powered by Intel's latest Core i7 processor, it's a high-end ultrabook.

Blade Stealth comes with either 12.5-inch QHD or UHD touchscreen displays. And along the edges, you'll find two USB ports as well as one Thunderbolt USB Type-C port. But one of the coolest aspects of this device is its keyboard, which is equipped with individually backlit RGB keys.

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During our demo at CES 2016, we were shown how you can press hot keys to enable different coloured effects on Blade Stealth. You can even customise the colours yourself. This might be somewhat gimmicky, but we fell in love. And we can't think of another notebook with such a feature.

Now, here's where this Windows 10 machine falls short: graphics. Blade Stealth offers Intel's HD 520, so you're not going to play performance-heavy titles on it. It's just a laptop for people doing casual, everyday tasks. But, if you got some extra cash, you can turn it into a gaming PC.

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Razer is offering a new Core accessory. It's basically an external desktop graphics enclosure and looks like a mini PC. You just need to insert a PCI Express graphics cards from Nvidia or AMD, then connect the Core to Blade Stealth through the Thunderbolt USB Type-C port, and you're good.

The Core supplies Blade Stealth with power, four extra USB ports, and an ethernet port. So, with this setup, you can get the power of the external graphics card on your everyday ultrabook display and go into full PC-gaming mode. Unfortunately, Razer hasn't priced the Razer Core just yet.

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But you can buy the Razer Ultrabook now, with pricing ranging between $999 and $1,599. You can expect it to begin shipping in January. If you want to see Blade Stealth in stores first, it'll land in Microsoft Stores in February.

Of course it's also available at RazerStore locations and at RazerStore.com.