Colie Wertz, with the MSI GE66 Raider Dragonshield Edition. | MSI
It was not too long ago that most gaming laptops were bulky, garish desktop replacements full of flashy RGB nonsense. The first Razer Blade, released in 2011, was almost seven pounds and it was considered sleek for the time.
The last few years have seen many popular laptops converging on similar design trends. Bezels are shrinking, screens are growing, and chassis are getting thinner and lighter. But few tech product categories have seen such a radical transformation as gaming laptops in the past few years. The introduction of Nvidia’s Max-Q platform in 2017 allowed gaming laptops to run AAA titles in thinner form factors than we’d ever seen before — and AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series has upped the ante even more. With shrinking chassis have…