Antonio G. Di Benedetto is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021. 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.…