I was a bit skeptical when the pink Razer Blade Stealth showed up the Digital Trends office.
Companies have flirted with going pink before, but the result was often more elegant than bold. Apple did it first with its Rose Gold variant of the 12-inch MacBook. But that wasn’t really pink. Later, that same color option came to the iPhone. It too was subtle. Then Dell brought Rose Gold to the XPS 13 in 2017, but it was pink-ish, at best.
If a company wants to do color, it should embrace the idea in a warm bear hug, not timidly dip a toe in vibrant waters with a kinda-sorta option. That’s why I was delighted to open the Razer box and find a seriously pink laptop.
Razer calls it “Quartz Pink.” For once, the name undersells the color. This thing is bright, bold, unapologetic — and that makes it awesome.
Razer has a history of branching out to offer serious gaming hardware to different demographics. The designs of Alienware, ROG, and Predator all seemed built for a teenage gamer. If your tastes fall outside of that, tough luck.
Quartz Pink comes on the tail of another Razer color variant that I’m quite fond of — Mercury White. Like that colorway, Quartz Pink is variant that dares to be different, and gives people the option to stand out from the crowd. It’s the kind of thing that would’ve never happened a few years ago. The PC and gaming communities were too stodgy and conservative to allow it.
That’s why the fact that a pink Razer laptop, complete with a matching set of peripherals, is great to see. It offers a whole new way gamers can express their personality, one that breaks dramatically from the dreary, serious, grim-dark look of many gaming laptops.
Different color, same laptop
Outside the color, the Quartz Pink Razer Blade Stealth is just like the black option. It’s sleek, fast, and comes with a high quality set of inputs. It’s not a gaming laptop, exactly. It’s more like a standard thin-and-light laptop that can double as a gaming machine on the side. Fortnite and Rocket League are playable, but not with settings maxed.
Now, the Quartz Pink doesn’t change my opinion of the “graphics option” of the Razer Blade Stealth in general. I think that laptop still has some kinks to work out. Most notably, it’s poor battery life and pumped up price tag. Five or six hours just isn’t enough. If for that reason alone, I wish this colorway was offered in the base version of the Stealth too.
Fortunately, the Quartz Pink edition doesn’t add an additional costs to the overall price, but $1,600 is still a handsome price to pay.
Yeah, they’re just color options. They aren’t going to change the world, but I am happy to see more diversity in PCs. Offerings like the Quartz Pink are an acknowledgement that gamers don’t just fit one stereotype. A flashy pink laptop might be what you’ve always wanted. Now, you can actually own it.
