Razer Debuts an Eclectic Mix of Products at Razercon 2023
Lights, clothes and action!
Razer dropped something for everyone at its September Razercon event on Thursday. In addition to a new Fujin line of gaming chairs, Huntsman V3 Pro keyboards, a line of lights branded Aether (what the company's calling "gamer room products") and updated software, the company also showed off its limited edition partnership products -- a Blade 16 gaming laptop designed in conjunction with Lamborghini and a chair, headset and clothing designed with Dolce and Gabbana.
If you like orange, then the $5,000 Lamborghini Blade is your dream laptop. If you like power, it's probably your dream Razer as well; it's equipped with Razer's 16-inch dual-mode, DisplayHDR 1000 Mini LED display (4K at 120Hz or FHD+ at 240Hz), an Intel Core i9-13950HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, 32GB memory and a 4TB SSD. Unsurprisingly, it has an upgraded cooling system and Lamborghini-like custom detailing. Razer will ship 150 of these in the US.
You can get the D&G chair with either Chroma lighting, shown here, or gold coloring.
I have to admit, the Dolce and Gabbana products aren't really my taste. They consist of custom-designed models of the Barracuda headset, Enki Pro chair (which Razer's calling a concept) -- with either the 24-carat gold plating or Razer Chroma accents -- and T-shirts, hoodies and pants. The chair and headset will have limited edition runs of 1,337 pieces. I don't yet have the prices for any of these.
The D&G Barracuda headset with the gold plating
For people who want to sit in their chairs rather than collect them, Razer's adding a third line to its offerings. The Fujin gaming chairs add mesh to Razer's choices and come in two models: Fujin and Fujin Pro, which cost $649 and $1,049, respectively. The Fujin is available now, while the Pro ships in November.
These are actually pretty staid for gaming and for Razer, looking more like typical office chairs. The mesh is claw resistant and they coordinate movement of the seat and back when you tilt back. The base model has a nylon frame, height adjustable lumbar support and height adjustable arm rests; the headrest, which comes standard with the Pro, is optional. The Pro adds depth adjustment for the lumbar support and 4D armrests, plus it uses an aluminum alloy for the frame.
The Fujin Pro
A little more prosaic, Razer updates its Huntsman esports-focused keyboard line with three new Huntsman V3 Pro models -- a standard Pro ($250), a Pro TKL ($220) and a Pro Mini ($180), all available starting in October.
The key upgrade for these are Razer's Analog Optical Switches Gen-2, which improve the actuation range from 0.1mm through a key's entire 4mm travel, and add support for rapid trigger mode, an increasingly popular feature that resets the switch as soon as you release rather than waiting to reach a specific reset point. You'll be able to tune the settings on the fly via keystroke combinations; one nice touch on the two larger models are LEDs that indicate the current actuation point setting and you select via the on-board dial. And yay! -- labels for the shortcuts to the hardware profiles.
From left to right, the Huntsman V3 Pro Mini, Pro TKL and Pro.
Razer's new Aether line of Chroma smart lighting products consists of the Aether Lamp ($80) and Lamp Pro ($130) -- the Pro has multizone lighting rather than just a single color at a time -- Light Strip ($130) with a $30 extender option and Light Bulb ($50). To support them, Razer's launching a new app, Razer Home, taht can also work with Matter, Alexa and Google Home compliant products. They're all slated to ship by the end of the year.
Razer uses this line of LEDs to indicate the depth of the actuation setting which you adjust in conjunction with the dial at the top of the keyboard.
To facilitate independent control of the lighting, Razer has broken its Chroma scheme into a separate app, appropriately called Razer Chroma RGB; it's for people who don't need the full control of keyboard mappings, macros and so on of the company's Synapse utility and who just want the pretty.
If you used all of Razer's new Aether lighting products at once, this is what you'd get.
Synapse has gotten an overhaul under the hood, which Razer says delivers better performance, stability and resource handling. Plus, it has a simplified interface.
And because every single company needs to use "generative AI" in its marketing materials, Razer has added a new feature to its Axon wallpaper software, Axon Create: It produces custom wallpapers with matching lighting schemes based on text prompts.