Razer Forge $99 Gaming Console, Turret Couch Gaming KB/mouse & Serval Controller - CES 2015
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,493 words · ~7 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2015 is brought to you by Phantom glass visit
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store. phantom.in screen protectors out there
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as well as hyperx so our second video here at the
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Razer Suite is also one where I look at the future as a little bit cloudy but I
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definitely believe in the premise here this is the forge TV it's got a qualcom
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805 quad core processor it's got an
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adreno 420 GPU so you can expect your frame rates to be high it's got gigabit
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Ethernet HDMI out USB it's got Wireless
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AC it's got Bluetooth connectivity it actually supports Wi-Fi controllers as
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well and it comes in at $99 but this
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isn't the first time we've seen an Android-based gaming console and what is
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Razer going to bring to the table that they think is going to make this compete
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with well any other Android device that you can plug into your TV whether it's
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from a small you know company that you've never heard of before or whether
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it's from someone like NVIDIA with their Shield line of tablets and gaming
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devices well number one is going to be
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the price $99.99 is going to be pretty appealing for something with these kinds
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of specs where you're at the point where you can run pretty much any Android game
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extremely smoothly even at 1080p 60fps
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number two is going to be of course the ecosystem razors never want to release
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just one product they want you to buy like this and then they want you to buy
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the controller for it and the uh you know the keyboard and mouse thing that
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goes along with it and these I'll start with the this one cuz this is actually really cool this is called the turret
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and it's a keyboard mouse combo that comes with a little dock maybe that's
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where it got the turret name and the idea is to address the problem that any
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PC Gamers who also want to enjoy content on their big screen tend to have which
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is how on Earth do I control a game like
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Civilization if I'm going to play on my TV we've seen Solutions in the past like
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the uh couch Master is one that we actually reviewed that I kind of went
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yeah this works really well but it's extremely bulky and uh you're not going
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to be you know impressing your lady friend that you bring over by having one
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of those next to your TV this is a little bit more elegant so instead of
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having a huge cushion that sits across your lap the keyboard itself for the
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turret unfolds into a mouse pad and then the mouse itself is actually very
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thoughtfully designed so it's got its um its slippy pads all around the outside
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so that even if you're right at the very edge of that mouse pad it is still
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functional until the mouse is hanging more than a a quarter to a third off the
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edge of the pad making the mouse pad effectively much larger than it actually
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looks it's nice little touches like that that I appreciate from Razer the cost
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for this one I actually don't know what's that one going to run you 149 I'm
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guessing 129 all right well they impressed me because the overall build
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quality of it actually feels very very solid now this one is where they kind of
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got away from me a little bit this is their new controller actually very very
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beautiful piece of Hardware I mean we've come to expect this Razer doesn't exactly do the whole you know $ 19.99
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controller thing so you've got those whatever they call them hyper response
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buttons I call them hair trigger buttons we can call them whatever they want they
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have a really nice tactile feel to them you've got Android buttons built in for
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Android navigation it is intended to be used with the forg TV but this one is
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going to come at a bit of a price so this is an $80 controller but this comes
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with their streaming software that's going to be built into cortex so now
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instead of being locked into well we shouldn't say locked into because there
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are other Solutions but instead of being locked into NVIDIA's game stream you are
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going to be able to use Razer cortex software in order to stream games from
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your PC so they've actually got it running right now and while I can't say
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the latency is very impressive they tell me that behind the scenes most of the
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work that goes into something like this is actually really on the codec side
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they're not using h264 they're not using h265 they're actually using a
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proprietary codec that they believe in the long term is going to give them better latency and better image qu quity
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compared to other Solutions also this is another cool thing it's I well I don't
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know depending on how you look at it oh I unplugged this fortunately wait what I
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thought it was running out no it must not be because this doesn't have an HDMI out running to it okay well whatever
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there was a green light on it now there isn't um good news the light's back on and I
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can finish up that thought where I left off so the good news is that you are
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going to be able to use third party controllers whether they're Bluetooth or
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Wi-Fi Direct which is great because you know if you want to be that guy who has
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the one nice controller for himself and then like the crummy controllers for all
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of his buddies then hey you can be that guy but the bad news is that if you want
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to take advantage of their end to-end latency optimizations you are going to
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benefit from the firmware upgrades and tweaks that Razer is putting into their
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own controller for the best most low latency possible experience uh in line
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with that sort of open attitude whole thing that they've got going on in their
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Suite today is that unlike NVIDIA game stream or even line for that matter you
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are not going to be locked into an NVIDIA graphics card to run this so AMD
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radon owners Rejoice that is to say as
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long as they improve the latency a fair bit over what they're doing now because
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I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and I'm just going to like be that guy who
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shows how far off we are right now although the beta doesn't even start for
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another couple of months and they've got what was it 10 million users you guys
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are rolling out the beta too to uh to test this out for you guys anyone with
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cortex ultimately 10 million current users so hopefully
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that gives them a little bit of feedback and helps them turn this thing into something that totally kicks ass I do
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believe in game streaming I do believe in Android as the next gaming platform
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so whether I believe that razer's going to be the one to uh to crack that egg or
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it's going to be someone else I'm glad they're throwing their hat into the ring
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because this is a very beautiful little piece of Hardware they actually had the same team that worked on blade do this
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so it's uh shouldn't be surprising to anyone that I think it's the bees all
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right guys thanks for checking out video number two here in the razor Suite don't
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miss any of our c s content and remember our trip to the show this year was
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