Razer entered the gaming display market in 2019 with its Raptor 27 gaming monitor, and made quite a splash. Now, almost two years have passed and Razer is updating the display, bringing it up to speed a little more with features expected from a display in 2021, the company announced at its E3 2021 press conference.
Being a bit of a halo product for Razer, the Raptor 27 isn’t getting a new name — you’ll have to look carefully to tell which version you’re buying, but that’s not all that crazy as the display isn’t receiving any groundbreaking updates. It maintains a 27-inch form factor, QHD resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels), a sleek housing with Chroma RGB lighting, and a unique cable management system.
The real changes hide under the hood, with the panel being a hair faster at 165Hz instead of 144Hz, while gaining THX certification and an optional $100 VESA mount, and bumping the adaptive-sync compatibility rating to FreeSync Premium and G-Sync Compatible. Razer says the Raptor 27 is the first gaming monitor to receive the THX certification, which ensures the quality of the colors, sharpness, and panel performance.
Peak brightness sits at 420 nits, which paired with the ability to interpret HDR signals, gives the display an HDR400 rating. It will cover 95% of the DCI-P3 color space, and though we can’t say anything about a calibration, this is a lavish color space that will translate to vivid images with rich color depth.
The display’s housing looks similar to that of its predecessor, and it’s made of aluminum with a wide RGB-lit foot, textured back, razor-thin (forgive the pun) bezels, and a tidy cable management system that’s sure to please even the most nitpicky of cable managers. This might be one of the prettiest gaming monitors money can buy.
This display will carry a premium price tag of $799. That’s $100 more than the original Raptor 27 when it came out, which can be a bit of a sting given how few upgrades are offered (we were secretly hoping for 4K and HDMI 2.1). Keep in mind that Razer’s products have always carried a design premium, and many displays have risen in price due to panel shortages spurred by the rise in popularity of gaming.
We’ve reached out to Razer for a review unit, so we’ll keep you posted on whether the $799 price tag is worth it and worthy of our best gaming monitors list. In the meantime, all I can tell you is that the 2021 Raptor 27 will come out near the end of the summer and be exclusive to the Razer Store.
Alongside the updated monitor, Razer also announced its first AMD-powered gaming laptop, the Razer Blade 14.
