At the beginning of April, as the US’ hilariously ill-conceived tariff scheme was entering its “bumper cars” phase, visitors to Razer’s website would’ve noticed something amiss for the PC peripheral powerhouse: all of its laptops had vanished from the US site. Razer didn’t say, but media outlets took a fair guess: the tariffs were likely to blame.
Next, it was Fujifilm that was rumored to have suspended orders for the X100VI, GFX100RF, and X-M5. Then, Canon took a turn in the rumor mill for (supposed) plans to cancel massive price drops on several of its DSLR cameras.
Well, Razer seems to have worked something out to make at least one of its laptop models profitable enough for them to reintroduce it back onto the American market. The Blade 16 laptop has returned, but only in a single configuration per screen size.
Razer
Blade 16 (opens in a new window)
Available at Razer
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
no options
There are, at least, still three sizes to choose from: 14″, 16″, and the truly monstrous 18″. Running through the product configurators for each size, most of the dropdown menus are restricted to single selections.
Want a 14″ model without 16GB of RAM or something more than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060? Too bad. How much storage would you like? Oh, you have to spring for 1TB, because that’s the only option.
Hungry for screen space, but don’t need a ton of RAM? Well, that 16″ model comes with 64GB of it. Yeah, I know! There’s no option to squeak by with a milder (and cheaper) amount of RAM. And so it goes. At least you have the selection on that model of doubling the 2TB SSD to two 2TB SSDs.
Because it was so quietly plopped back onto the market, I’ve yet to see the Blade 16 pop back up at the usual third-party retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, save for some wildly overpriced, leftover stock from before the ban, sold by marketplace vendors that I can’t personally vouch for, not having had experience with them.
So for now, Razer’s own website is the only place to get one. Who knows what tomorrow may bring, economically? We could be back to using shillings and dried-up bits of tobacco as currency, for all I know. So if you’re in the market for a Blade 16 and the configuration restrictions aren’t off-putting, you’d better grab one while they’re still for sale.
Razer
Blade 16 (opens in a new window)
Available at Razer
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
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