Razer Updates Raptor 27 Gaming Monitor: Higher Refresh Rate, Price

Razer makes all manner of gaming hardware from mice to powerful laptops, and of course, it’s all adorned with glowing multicolor lights. The company has just announced a new version of its premium gaming monitor with faster refresh and the option to ditch some of those LEDs with a custom stand. However, the Raptor 27 doesn’t come cheap.

The new Razer Raptor 27 is a 27-inch gaming monitor, as the name implies. The previous version of this monitor looks the same, and most of the specs are unchanged. The updated Raptor has a 2560 x 1440 IPS panel, and the big change is the jump to 165Hz. The old version was a mere 144Hz. Razer says the panel is calibrated to cover 95 percent of the DCI-P3 color space. It’s also HDR400 certified.

The monitor also comes with a plethora of ports, all unchanged from the last version. There’s an HDMI 2.0b port, a DisplayPort v1.4 port, a USB-C port with DisplayPort, two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 passthrough ports, and a headphone jack.

To take advantage of that high refresh rate, you have both AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync at your disposal. So, you can get smoother gameplay with the Razer Raptor 27 no matter which video card brand is in your PC. It’s not like you could swap to a new card just for a monitor. Even a midrange card would probably cost twice as much as the monitor, which is not cheap itself at $799.99. That’s $100 more than the 144Hz version, and the $700 price was already pushing the limits of 1440p gaming. There are 4K gaming monitors that don’t cost much more.

As this is a Razer peripheral, there are RGB lights on board. Although, it’s a more tasteful array than many of the company’s products. The LEDs are in a strip at the bottom of the base, but you don’t even need to keep those anymore. With the release of the new Raptor 27, Razer has debuted an optional VESA mount. It’ll cost you an additional $100, but it lets you use a third-party monitor mount — one that doesn’t have LEDs on it.

You can buy the old 144Hz version of this monitor right now, but the updated 165Hz model won’t launch until Q3 2021. So, you’re looking at a few months, probably.

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