New Razer Edge handheld taps growing thirst for dedicated devices

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It’s been either ten years or a few months since the Razer Edge hit the market with its tablet-like device designed around PC gaming on the go.

For those who track Razer and its innovative surprises at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the name Razer Edge likely reminds them of the 2013 device that paired a high-end 10-inch Windows 8 tablet with a snap-on GamePad controller.

For those who missed that first device, which CNET described as a “Swiss Army gaming tablet,” the Razer Edge they’re thinking of is probably the one released ten years later, in January of this year. It too is a tablet with snap-on controller, but beyond the name and high-level description, the two have very little in common.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t connected.

“Our view towards mobile gaming has always been to review the market, understand where we can bring innovation and premium step-ups from where the industry is,” said Joey Hanna, senior product evangelist at Razer. “When we find that opportunity we will take it.”

In the case of the both versions of the Razer Edge, that opportunity came in the form of what Razer saw as an underserved mobile gaming community.

“Amongst the gaming community they are kind of second-class citizens,” Hanna said. “At Razer we take the absolute opposite approach, where we take these people who have been deprioritized by the industry and let’s not make any compromises on hardware, let’s not make any compromises on performance, let’s push it to the absolute maximum and tailor it for the mobile gamers.”

That was the idea that drove the 2013 Razer Edge and that’s also what the company is doing with this new Edge, a device that Hanna calls a homage to the original.

This time around the Razer Edge takes the shape of an oversized smartphone, or shrunk down tablet. The device is a black slab with a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen, driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 chipset, and either 6GB (Wifi version) or 8GB of memory (5G version). 

To put that into context, that means the Razer Edge has a slightly larger screen than the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the largest of Apple’s current phones.

I can’t say enough about this liquid fast touchscreen. This is an AMOLED display with 2400×1080 FHD resolution that can deliver a 144Hz refresh rate. To put that in context: The Steam Deck has a 60Hz refresh rate and the recently revealed ROG Ally by Asus that’s currently blowing people’s minds goes up to 120Hz.

The real magic of the Razer Edge, though, comes when it pairs that liquid fast touchscreen — featuring a 144Hz refresh rate — with the snap-on Kishi V2 Pro controller. The controller features two thumbsticks, a directional pad, as well an array of six triggers, bumpers and buttons aligned on the top edge. It also includes HyperSense haptics that can inject vibration into almost all games. 

This is a platform designed from the ground up for gaming. It may look like a phone, but it’s purpose built around a single sort of experience.

Gaming on the device takes on three forms. The most robust sorts of games you can play on the Razer Edge will be through Cloud gaming services like Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox Gamepass; or through Remote Play using Steam Link, Xbox Remote Play and PS5 Remote. But you can also play any Android native games with the Google Play Store, which doesn’t just open the door to mobile games, but a broad array of retro-game emulators.

All of these services can be tied to the Razer Edge’s built-in Razer Nexus app, which serves as a springboard to the different services and games you most often use. The app also lets you remap the Kishi’s multifunction buttons, update firmware and even integrates live streaming to Facebook and YouTube.

In practice, the service — which is tied to a button on the Kishi — underscores the Razer Edge’s focus on gaming, allowing you to quickly hop onto a Cloud Gaming service, or launch your favorite emulator. 

Focusing purely on Cloud Gaming, the Razer Edge puts competitors to shame with hands-down better resolution and faster refresh rates, and easily the best handfeel.

I was initially turned off by the fact that the Kishi isn’t permanently connected to the tablet, but the first time I decided to travel somewhere with the Razer Edge, I understood the decision. Being able to pop off the controller, slide the screen (6.6 inches long) in my pocket and the Kishi in my bag made travel far easier than with something like the Logitech G Cloud (10 inches long), the Steam Deck (11.75 inches long) or even the ROG Ally (11 inches long.)

While gaming on the go can be challenging for people who rely on the ability to access the cloud of a particular service, I found the 5G version of the Razer Edge to solve that issue for most placed I traveled. And for air travel, I always have the opportunity to install a treasure trove of emulated classics on a snappy device. 

It’s not surprising that Razer’s latest take on a handheld gaming system is so slick and responsive. The company’s two Razer phones both offered top-in-class screens for gaming on the go. And the Kishi has been an impressive phone add-on for years. 

Hanna pushed back on the idea that Razer has turned away from phones since its release of the Razer Phone 2 in 2018.

“I would say we’re focused on the priorities on the roadmap that we feel are bringing the right innovation to the right products at the time,” he said. “So I wouldn’t want to say we’ve definitively moved off phones all together. I think if there’s an opportunity that we see in the future, to bring the right innovation back into the space and we’re confident in doing it, we will take that option.”

But right now, the company is following a different sort of trend it’s noticed in the market: creating dedicated devices that serve specific needs with a razor focus.

“We do believe in the dedicated gaming handheld and we’re seeing tremendous market response to having a dedicated device just psychologically differentiated from the phone to have dedicated battery and separate your communication and things like that,” he said. “We’re finding that people do like to have that dedicated device and they don’t necessarily need one size fits all for their phone.”

Where a decade ago most consumers might have been content with a smartphone that wasn’t great at any one thing, but managed to do everything they wanted adequately well, today’s consumers are starting to dig back into single-use products.

Devices like Sony’s Walkman high-res digital music player, Panasonic’s Lumix point-and-click camera, and the Nintendo Switch or Valve’s Steam Deck are finding increasing attention from a growing number of prosumers more interested in quality than convenience. 

“That is exactly the trend at large,” Hanna said. “With mobile gaming these guys absolutely need it. Like, they can do so much better than what’s on a phone, and they’ll really appreciate it. There’s a huge community that will appreciate it. And that’s the same thing for photography. There’s a huge community that would appreciate an affordable camera that is way better than a phone and you know that they will carry that extra device.”