Razer’s Blade 18 is getting a $500 price hike and a new Intel chip

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. That’s a super high refresh rate for a laptop screen, but 1200p across an 18-inch display of course won’t look nearly as crisp as 4K. The 2026 Blade 18 also maintains a plethora of connectivity, including Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an SD card slot, and even ethernet.

Razer is no stranger to high prices, but the Blades keep getting more expensive. In addition to the Blade 18’s price hikes, the smaller Intel Panther Lake-based Blade 16 also costs more than when it was announced in March. It started at $3,499.99 with an RTX 5080 and $4,499.99 with an RTX 5090, but those prices on Razer’s site are now $3,999.99 ($500 more) and $4,899.99 ($400 more), respectively.

Razer did not respond to questions from The Verge about the reason for these increases by the time of publication, but the Blades seem to be yet another victim of RAMageddon