Is RAZER Making a new handheld PC?
Handheld gaming PCs are becoming a very quickly growing market. It seems the Nintendo Switch and Playstation Vita gave many-a-gamer the dream of true AAA handheld gaming. While Valve did not invent the concept of a handheld gaming pc, the Steam Deck has only seen that dream grow from console gaming to being able to access your Steam library anywhere.
For a long time that market had become overpriced for what it offers while it was dominated by the likes of Ayaneo and GPD, two Chinese tech companies, the introduction of the Steam Deck brought attention to the market which is quickly becoming filled by the likes of ASUS, Zotac, Acer, Lenovo, and many more.
But, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Razer did it before any of them. See, way back in 2013, before handheld gaming PCs were cool, and Nvidia’s Shield tablet was as good as it got for handheld gaming for PC gamers, Razer made a handheld Windows 8 gaming tablet powered by an intel processor, and a NVIDIA 640m, the Razer Edge.
It never seemed like Razer gave up on the idea of a handheld gaming experience powered by their hardware either. They’ve made several iterations of mobile controllers including the Joy-Con like Junglecat, and the clamp controller Razer Kishi line. Additionally, in January of 2023 they released a new version of the Edge, this time however it was an Android device that looked like a big phone and happened to come with their phone controller, the Kishi V2. And that’s because it effectively WAS just a big phone, with a mobile AMOLED display and powered by the alphabet soup Qualcomm Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 processor. Essentially it is the same processor that powers the S23 Ultra, but “optimized” for gaming. This, in real-world performance, means it’s about on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that powers the Samsung S23 Line. Give or take a few benchmark points, and with less widespread adoption of this processor come more compatibility issues with certain games or emulators.
Fast forward to November of 2024. Razer announced on their website that “handheld mode” was coming for Windows devices running Razer cortex, their built-in software suite that gives you access to their spider web of apps for peripherals, RGB, and also game optimization options. Cortex (and Synapse) usually will auto-install when a Razer peripheral is connected to a pc via USB, such as a mouse or keyboard. This begs the question, who uses a Razer mouse or keyboard with their handheld gaming pc often enough to use cortex? I imagine MOST people with a Legion Go, ROG Ally, MSI Claw, or any other handheld pc are just using the built-in software that comes on their device. Asus ROG has armory crate, Lenovo Legion has Lenovo Vantage, the MSI Claw has MSI Center, and every other manufacturer has their own version of a control center app which all do the same thing as Cortex. So who is this for?
And why did I get the following image when I connected to my PC via the Moonlight game streaming app via my Retroid Pocket mini last night?
So if it’s a Windows-based application, it’s not for the current iteration of the edge. If it’s for a handheld gaming pc, it’s not for the Linux-powered Steam Deck, and I can’t see someone choosing to use Cortex over any of the other software already on their machine that does the same thing, this indicates to me that Razer has something cooking. Hopefully this year we get lots of handheld PCs coming to market, and competitively priced. It’s a growing market, and competition brings with it not only growth but can help keep costs from doing the same thing that kept people away in the pre-Steam Deck era: being prohibitively expensive. Knowing Razer, it will look sleek, with lots of RGB and green accents on the buttons or sticks for no real reason, and it will likely cost more than some of the other machines IF I’m right and they are working on this. More competition would only serve to drive innovation in the space, and the more handheld gaming PCs exist, the more developers will use those machines for performance targets. This could also have a net benefit for lower-powered, and older devices, being able to game for longer, at least in theory. Only time will tell.
