At CES 2011, over a year ago, Razer showed off an incredible concept beneath glass. The peripheral manufacturer had produced a tiny clamshell PC with LCD keys that could change their function and appearance to match any application or game. The Razer Switchblade, as it is called, never made it out of its acrylic cage, but somehow, in the course of just seven months, it morphed into a 17-inch gaming laptop called the Razer Blade.

The Blade's spec sheet isn't incredible for a dedicated gaming laptop — there's a dual-core Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and Nvidia GeForce GT555M graphics on tap — but there are three things that set the Blade apart. First, Razer stuffed that hardware into an sturdy aluminum chassis just 0.88 inches thick, and 6.4 pounds. Second, the Switchblade DNA is alive and well. Like the company's Star Wars: The Old Republic keyboard, there's a set of ten clear keycaps atop an LCD screen, and a second multitouch LCD screen underneath, which run apps, fire off macros, and serve as the primary touchpad for the machine. Last and perhaps most importantly, the Razer Blade is priced at $2,799.

Did Razer build a machine worth that much money on its very first try? Read on.