Razer Edge is yet another handheld gaming console that we have seen this year but unlike most, it is from a renowned company like Razer.
At 2022 RazerCon event, Razer brought forward quite a few things unique products that caught our attention but the Razer Edge did sway us away.
To address the elephant in the room, this will not and cannot compete against Valve’s Steam Deck. As the high-end portable PC market is already saturated with multiple offerings such as Valve’s Steam Deck, OneXPlayer’s 6800U, and many others that are following the current trend of bringing PC-level gaming to the go.
As we have seen, the Razer Edge is a tablet powered by Android that is in the shape of a handheld console. Therefore, the Razer Edge is more of a glorified gaming phone which can run Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nividia GeForce Now, and Epic launcher natively. While it runs a weaker operating system compared to the Steam Deck, it is demonstrating that it can handle mainstream gaming clients, and subsequently, the games. However, it is important to note that there is no mention of it running the Steam Client which can be a deciding factor for most gamers.
In terms of specs, it is no slouch. At its core, it is rocking a Snapdragon G3x chip which was developed for mobile gaming from the get-go. If you’re worried about the Hertz, you have 3GHz to satisfy all your needs. The visual output shouldn’t be a concern either as it has an Adreno GPU to churn out frames for the 144Hz 2400×1800 6.9″ AMOLED screen. However, one shouldn’t expect that it’ll be running all games at the native res or framerate. While it is packed with a 5000mAh battery, the screen-on-time will depend on the power efficiency of the chip as it does support 5G which can drain the battery.
To reiterate, this isn’t a dedicated gaming console but instead a gaming-centric tablet that comes with Razer’s Kishi V2 pro, which should further reaffirm Razer’s vision for this product.
Similar to most other tablets, the Razer Edge will be available in both 5G and Wi-Fi variants. It is important to note that the $400 price tag is for the Wi-Fi only version, so expect a far more premium tag if you want internet on the go.
If this device piques your interest, you can pre-order it right now for only a fiver.
In the meantime, you can learn about Nvidia’s decision to remove their LHR.
You sir, are an idiot if you think this can’t compete with a Steam Deck or other mobile gaming devices.
The deck has a lot of major issues:
-They opted for an older/inferior RDNA chip instead of upgrading to the newer chiplet design (they’re using a very low-end version of what the current consoles use.)
-Missed their window: due to their own insert-excuses-here and COVID. It took them a long time to get the device in the hands of both users and developers.
-They have a terrible track record of abandoning hardware/systems outright.
We were onboard with their massively flopped Steam Machine and it’s because they didnt lock down a hardware configuration (their profit was certainly on lock though). Steam offered zero support while forcing licensing fees onto to system builders and developers. If steam wanted another system they were on their own this time around (and it shows because none of us gave two poops).
The new Razer is rocking a modified high-end snapdragon X3 (we got the devkits sent to us Last year courtesy of Qualcomm.)
The Razer has:
-8 gigs of LPDDR5 (this is the only area Steam has an advantage, but the ssd expandable to 2TB can be leveraged for additional ram — neither device is using high end discrete ram for GPU, so the speed gains are null between the two and the amount available is moot because it can be offset).
-3 TERAFLOPS FP32 GPU POWER (literally 69% more raw GPU performance). Recall the difference between the PS4 and the Xbox One. 1.8 Tflops vs 1.3 Tflops — it was enough where some games had to run natively 720P on the box and 960/1080p on the PlayStation.
-128GB SSD Standard (no boosted cost.)
-TRUE 8 Core chiplet processor (steam’s 4 core 8 thread starting to look a bit old here; the performance difference between the processors is staggering).
-It’s capable of up to 4K output whereas the device itself is targeting a minimum FHD 60 FPS gaming experience — it even has a 2400 x 1080 144hz OLED screen (much higher native resolution/refresh than the Steam Dick I mean deck.)
-their OLED has 10bit color with HDR support. This is damn near a requirement these days. Not because a true HDR scene can be provided in a game (layered images being rendered 6 to 8 times to show light/dark variation), but because of the amount of color/contrast being offered with the spec.
So the Steam Deck has on offer: sub 30 fps gameplay, 1.6 Teraflops GPU, 4 core CPU, an IPS display (the most awful contrast/dark color/black performance ever), oh and it doesn’t even have 10bit HDR support.
The Razer can be configured/formatted to run Linux via dualboot if you want that sort of thing.. but why? All the major streaming/downloading apps will be on Android soon (most of that support is already there) and will allow both Cloud and Dedicated play (dedicated meaning you will be able to download the games and run them natively).
There’s a reason Microsoft and others jumped onboard to support the Razer whereas Steam has well, just steam.. it’s a good time to have a native android device to play games because devs have shown a major increased interest in cashing in on mobile/console because of the woes that come with developing for PC (sooo many unique hardware configurations makes it nearly impossible to streamline releases) and we’re one of them.
Just don’t go spouting off nonsense regardless of your bias. I think they both serve their intended markets and with the release of the Edge hopefully Steam will wake up and offer a unit with an OLEd/better GPU or reduce their price to Switch levels (where it belongs).