The Razer Edge Review
by Vivek Gowri on March 28, 2013 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Mobile
- Razer
- Razer Edge
Battery Life and Mobile Gaming
This is the section that probably will garner the most scrutiny. The Edge comes with a 41.44Wh battery, and in normal usage situations, it does about as well as one could expect from an Ivy Bridge-based tablet. Surface Pro comes with a similarly sized battery, and we saw pretty similar runtime from the two tablets (Surface Pro, on average, had about 15-20 minutes more life in any given test). Considering that IVB ultrabooks don’t fare too much better (or, in some cases, significantly worse – looking at you Acer) I guess it’s hard to complain here; until we see Haswell and its significant idle power reduction later this year, ARM and Clovertrail tablets are going to slaughter IVB tablets in this category.
There’s an additional wrinkle with the Edge – the mobile gaming aspect. I broke down the typical gaming power draw in the introduction, and it’s worth bringing back up: pair a 17W CPU and a 20W GPU, consider that almost no reasonable workload will peg both at the same time, toss in loads for the display, SSD, RAM, WiFi, chipset, and all the other auxiliary components, and a 40W total system draw estimate in gaming workflows is pretty reasonable. If you’re using the Edge in the gamepad controller with the extended battery, there’s a total of 82.88Wh of battery power onboard. This sets up a pretty simple equation to estimate the gaming battery life: 82.88Wh/40W = ? hours. Do the simple division, and you’re looking at a hair over two hours, which is where Razer’s “two hours of gaming battery life” claim comes from. (I had John Wilson, Razer’s VP of System Engineering, walk me through the math here, and he confirmed that 80 divided by 40 did in fact equal two.)
Naturally, a good amount of testing was in order, so I unplugged the Edge, went to a nearby coffee shop, and played Dirt 3 until the battery died. I did this multiple times in the interest of generating as much data as possible (I love my job.) I was initially planning on using a timedemo or looping a benchmark, but I thought it would be more fun to actually game on the Edge – I also needed some real world mobile gaming experiences, so it killed two birds with one stone.
I spent most of my time in Dirt 3 and Need For Speed: The Run. The latter isn’t part of our benchmark suite and it’s not the most recent NFS title (it was a holiday 2011 release), but the Cannonball Run-esque storyline intrigued me and I’ve been meaning to play through it for some time without ever getting the chance to do so. The Edge review just gave me the excuse I needed to get into it.
The two hour estimate is pretty fair, depending on brightness levels, power plan, and graphics settings I saw anywhere between 1:45 and 2:30 in the newer games. I also fired up Quake III: Arena for curiosity’s sake, to see how much less strenuous a 12 year old game would be, and got 3:12 of playing time out of it. It’s worth noting that I wasn’t hitting network at all, either, so that’s another thing to consider.
In the “Balanced” power plan and a brightness of 200nits (55%), playing Dirt 3 with medium settings at the native 1366x768 resolution, the Edge lasted for 136 minutes (2:16) before running out of juice. That’s pretty much in line with what we expected, and lowering the brightness can help extend that. I wouldn’t recommend high or ultra settings due to the additional power draw, while the Power Saver profile throttles the GPU far too aggressively for smooth gameplay even at medium settings. The Balanced power profile and medium settings made for a nice compromise in mobile use cases.
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kyuu - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
Because Razer operates on large profit margins, and judging by the Blade and this thing, I'm pretty sure they don't really have any interest in putting out cheap "me-too" platforms. They're more interested in pushing innovative platforms and don't need or expect to move large volumes of the product.B3an - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
The Vita isn't a full PC with a real OS and Ultrabook level hardware with a game library anywhere near as big as Windows. Stupid comparison.Jumangi - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
Lolz, this is designed fist as a portable gaming device even though it makes every compromise you can. its price its stupid high, and it looks plain goofy. This thing is stupid and has no place in the market. It sits right up there with the N-gage in the history of dumb gaming devices.Visual - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
How can you not include IVB integrated results in the games charts? What is wrong with you? That is the ONLY important test that needs to be done to the Edge - is it worth the cost and added bulk over integrated or is it not...Also, saying Civ V is not playable is ridiculous. You did something wrong in the testing. It was playable on my ancient HP tm2 tablet, and that is worse than even the IVB integrated GPU. With the Edge it should be a ton better.
NeedsAbetterChair - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
I really do love the idea of this but it is obvious to me I'll have to wait a year of two for this category to mature. The next few years are going to be interesting.Hrel - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
Once again their first attempt is not viable. At 1000 dollars I'd like to see a higher resolution screen, 1600x900 at least. I realize the gpu can't take it, but you can run games at 720p and you'll be fine. Resolution comes down to screen real estate. I need more than 768 vertical pixels. Especially at $1000!!! Furthermore I agree a 64GB SSD is almost useless. 128 should be the entry point with a 256 and maybe a 380 option. I know they can get 256GB SSD's for 150, probably less if they buy in bulk.The thickness of the screen bezel makes me feel like it belongs in the late 90's/early 2000's. Expand the screen .4 to .6 inches and keep the same chassis with a smaller bezel.
I see no value from the i7 "upgrade" and don't want to be forced into it just to get a reasonably sized SSD.
Hrel - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
On the controller, maybe try moving ab xy to the back, so they line up with you ring and middle fingers? Not sure how well this would work as I've never used anything like it.Shadowmaster625 - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
Can they get any more stupid? They just trashed any hope of any future for this brand name. This is way way waaaaay too much money to pay for something that gives you such a small boost compared to a bargain bin AMD A10 notebook. They should have just waited for Richland and made a deal with AMD. They could have gotten about the same gaming performance, with 50% better battery life and $400+ cut from the price tag. They could have brought us something decent without the outrageous price that is going to make most people laugh and never look at this brand again. People commenting on facebook and twitter are just morons. It is easy for people to say they want all these things from a product, but it doesnt mean they are actually going to buy what they claim they want.anubis44 - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
They should use an AMD Jaguar for this. Only an AMD APU will provide the kind of low power consumption and great GPU performance stuffed into a 15w power envelope. Jaguar's GPU destroys the GT640.Silma - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
So basically this is a tablet thicker than an Ultrabook, with less i/o ports than an Ultrabook, and overpriced gamepad that make it wider than a 17" gamining laptop, all for the pleasure of playing at 1368 resolution?No thanks I'll keep my Alienware notebook. For gimmicky games at low resolution I have a phone.