The Razer Blade, the $2800 premium gaming laptop from leading PC gaming peripheral maker Razer, will ship just in time for Christmas and be available for pre-order within the next few days. That news comes via Kotaku, who had an interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan late last week.

The gaming laptop has seen a lot of publicity since its launch, with the high price tag on Razer’s initial product drawing unhappy reactions from many gamers. The laptop was first announced in a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal, which did well to stir up attention for the product in social aggregators like Reddit.

For what its worth, you do get one of the best gaming laptops available for the price. There’s a 2.8 GHz dual core i7 processor, a full eight gigabytes of DDR3 memory and a Nvidia GeForce GT 555M. This is all served up on a 17.3” HD screen that dominates the thin frame of the laptop.

As well as top specs, there are also some unique features not found anywhere else. The most notable of these is the Switch Blade UI, which includes 10 tactile hotkeys as well as a touchpad which also doubles as a customisable display, a la the G15 and G19 keyboards, when a mouse is in use.

Razer are certainly walking a difficult path here – whilst Apple have traded on their ability to produce $2800 laptops that people actually buy, they’ve only achieved that through their immaculate brand reputation. A new entrant will face many problems, and if they’re significantly undercut on price by a laptop from a more experienced manufacturer such as Dell or Samsung, this particular venture could end disastrously for Razer.

This article was written by William Judd. William writes for Mobile Fun, the UK’s leading online retailer of sim free phones, the XMini speaker and the Kindle leather cover black.