Razer's Raptor 27-inch gaming monitor takes an imperfect first stab at the competition

[MUSIC] This is Razor's first gaming monitor. The Razor Raptor 27. I like to think of it as the mullet of gaming monitors. [MUSIC] So what do I mean by mullet? It's all elegant, design, business like up front An aggressive party in the back. If I had one word to describe it, I'd go with overdesigned. Its innovative but kind of impractical. [MUSIC] 27 inch panels really nice, which I would expect for $700. It's an IPS display 144 hertz designed for 1440 p gaming automatically detects precinct or G sync. It's relatively bright at 400 minutes within almost p3 gamut. So it's better than a lot of the monitors on the. Market. It supports HDR but 400 is really isn't quite HDR and it has a novel option in one of its game modes for streaming, which actually bumps up the brightness and makes the white point cooler so it will look better on camera. One of specs is it's got a one millisecond pixel response time but that's really in motion blur reduction mode where, it makes the screen really really dim. And it also does the doubling thing which is really annoying. But all of that really takes a back seat to the design. Which is an interesting translation of Razor's black slab aesthetic that it has for it's laptops. Another nice touch is the great fabric on the back of the monitor rather than flashing colors which make it a little more businesslike as well. There are a lot of things I really like about it. For instance it uses the underglow which I love. I can't rave about underglow enough. And I will until I get bored with it, and then suddenly it'll be old. The stand lets you tilt the display back 90 degrees, which is so convenient if you have to plug and unplug cables a lot, or if you're on a crowded desktop where you can't really get to the back. That's a touch that the manufacturers just don't think of. And the other thing is even though the monitor can't swivel back and forth, the stand easily moves left and right on the desktop. You just can't push it horizontally or vertically. Which is actually nice. [MUSIC] So what don't I like? I find the cabling kinda nuts. It uses flat, bright green cables with right angle connectors that feeds through individual channels down the back of the base. That's really impractical. What happens if something goes wrong with one of the cables? You either have to buy a matching one from Razor, or you have to get a third party cable cuz they do make those. But it will be a different color and it won't match the rest of them which kind of defeats the purpose of having all of that matching green. Also, the cables don't glide easily through those channels which means it's kind of hard to get them all pretty nice the way Razer has them. So if you're lazy like me, you'll leave them sticking out. Which, as you can tell, isn't very pretty. In the box, you get. Display Port, HDMI, USB C and USB extender cables, but there's no display port to mini display port which means that if you want g sync compatibility, you can't connect it to a razor laptop, which requires the mini display port or they don't match and frankly, they look like they should glow in the dark but they don't and I really want them to The other thing is all of those individual channels mean that the base has to be ready big. That means it takes up a lot of space on your desk. And it comes at a time when most manufacturers are decreasing the size of the base for that very reason. And I already noticed a ding in the base. Which I can't see. I like that you can lower the monitor pretty far down close to the desk, which is something that you don't see on other monitors except for maybe the Samsung space monitor. However, you can't raise a very hot, the middle of the monitor only comes to about 13 inches and that's where you're looking. Getting whereas the other two monitors on my desk can make it up to 17 inches. So if you have a long torso, that may be an issue for you. So it's a great monitor, and I don't really want to discourage people from buying it. But if you're a set it and forget it type person where you just plug everything in and you like to look at it and you're not going to touch it, you work in an empty workspace, etc. It's a great monitor for 1440 p gaming. If you're like me, and you futz with things and you have to change cables and you're working in a crowded desktop. Or if you're tall, it may not be for you.