Razer Warns Gaming Laptops Will Be More Expensive In 2022 Because Well, You Know
Buying a next-gen gaming laptop when the time comes around could cost a bit more than you were anticipating. So suggests Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, who on Twitter gave a heads up that gaming laptops in general will be going up in price next year as the component shortage continues to take its toll on the industry at large.
The global shortage of silicon has already made it difficult to buy the latest hardware, including game consoles like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch OLED. And to some extent, prices have gone up on certain hardware, namely graphics cards for gaming on PC. For the most part, however, the silicon shortage has resulted in desirable items almost always being out of stock rather than higher prices (from first-party sellers, that is).
We have not seen that in the laptop space. While desktop GPUs have been hard to come by, gaming laptops have been rather plentiful in comparison. Nevertheless, Tan says "significant increases" in the cost of components that go inside gaming laptops will be passed on to the consumer next year.
"Just had a long meeting to review our gaming laptops line for next year—looks like there are significant increases in component costs etc and we'll be seeing price increases for next gen gaming laptops across the board (including the
@Razer
Blade) next year," Tan said.
It's a thoughtful heads up, even if the message isn't one we want to hear. That said, we're a touch skeptical of the broader implication of gaming laptops "across the board" going up in price, given what we have seen up to this point. We recently highlighted gaming laptop deals for Cyber Monday, and before that, there were bargains for Black Friday.
That's not to say some laptop lines won't see a price hike. It depends on how they are configured, especially with Intel getting ready to release mobile versions of its Alder Lake stack. Building a gaming laptop around a new CPU architecture, a new chipset, and DDR5 memory could indeed come with a price premium (particularly with DDR5 being in such short supply).
We're not at a point of panic, though, and don't think you should be either. At the same time, we wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on a discounted gaming laptop right now, if in the market for one. Not out of fear for potential price hikes, but because there are some nice bargains out there on capable systems.
