Razer has been making some interesting announcements as of recently. Back at CES 2016, the company announced the Razer Core graphics enclosure, now the price has been officially revealed and we're certain most folks won't be too happy about it.
For those who were interested in picking up a Razer Core, be warned, this thing cost $499 at retail, and the graphic card is not part of the package. You can save $100 from the base price when purchased with a new Blade or Blade Stealth notebooks. Already, several folks on the web are not viewing this as a good deal, so Razer will have a long way to go here.
How does it work?
From what we have come to understand according to Razer's official website, the Core plugs into a Blade notebook by way of a USB-C cable. Furthermore, to transfer files, it relies on Intel's Thunderbolt 3. The build quality is excellent too, and it supports a wide range of graphic cars that includes the AMD (Radeon R9 Fury, Radeon R9 Nano, Radeon R9 300 Series, Radeon R9 290X, Radeon R9 290, and Radeon R9 280) and NVidia (GeForce GTX Titan X, GeForce GTX 980 Ti, GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 970, GeForce GTX 960, GeForce GTX 950, GeForce GTX 750 Ti, and GeForce GTX 750).
As long as the graphic card doesn't require more than 375W of power, then it should work just fine with this enclosure.
We see this thing as a touch sell mainly due to the $499 price-tag. Not to mention, it only works with Razer Blade gaming laptops, so right away if a person doesn't own a Blade, they would need to either spend the cash to get one or just do without the Core.
We envision most PC gamers shunning this thing when it is released later in the year. Still, it looks great from our point of view, we just wished Razer didn't want to be like Apple by kicking up the price too far and making sure it only works on its laptop despite the amount of diverse Windows 10 devices on the market today.
Hopefully, the company will come to its senses and slash the price to a reasonable cost.
AnandTech reviewed the Razer Blade Stealth and called it a computer that is not your typical Ultrabook.