Razer Edge review - a competent yet pricey Android handheld

The Razer Edge is a mobile gaming handheld with some rather fantastic qualities. Bundled with the Razer Kishi V2 Pro mobile controller, it upholds Razer’s reputation for supreme build quality. The tablet part of the Edge is smartly designed, boasting a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen with impressively sharp image quality. The controller’s lovely, too, featuring satisfyingly tactile buttons and adjustable width should you wish to swap out the Edge tablet for your phone.

It’s certainly not cheap, though, and this price tag brings the Razer Edge’s value proposition into question. While it’s generally very solid at what it offers, it doesn’t offer much of an experience that you can’t just get with your phone and a cheaper mobile controller like the Backbone One.

Overall performance is pretty standard for a contemporary mobile device. Fitted with the Snapdragon G3X Gen 1 processor, the Razer Edge offers comparable performance to smartphones from recent years and is on par with the likes of the OnePlus 9 Pro or the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. All in all, while we can’t quite recommend it as one of the best handheld games consoles, it’s a competent tablet that offers adequate native play.

Price and availability

The Razer Edge comes in at $399.99 / £449.99 and is available to buy now from Razer’s official website. US buyers can also head to Newegg to secure a unit, and those of you in the UK can rely on Amazon for stock, too.

There’s no getting around the fact that the Razer Edge is an extremely expensive bit of kit. While the bespoke tablet and included Razer Kishi V2 Pro go some way to justify the high price tag, you may find better value in combining your phone with a mobile controller like the aforementioned Backbone One or Turtle Beach Atom, both of which are in sub-$100 / £100 territory. Alternatively, the Razer Kishi V2 Pro by itself costs $129.99 / £129.99 and is compatible with most Android phones that have a USB-C port.

Design and features

The Razer Edge tablet itself is quite brilliant. Its compact 6.8-inch screen size is perfect for portable play and is comparable to the Nintendo Switch OLED’s 7-inch display. The gorgeous AMOLED display allows for rich color depth and very sharp image quality, allowing vibrant games like Fortnite and Honkai Star Rail to really stand out.

The tablet’s rather light on buttons, with two for volume and a larger one for locking and unlocking the device. On the bottom, you’ll also find a microSD port if you want to bolster the unit’s 128GB of internal storage up to a maximum of 2TB. You’ve also got a 3.5mm headphone port and support for Bluetooth, meaning the Edge is compatible with both the best wireless gaming headsets and best wired gaming headsets.

As is usually the case with Razer products, I’m also really impressed with the build quality. Despite its lightweight and remarkably slim form factor, it ultimately feels sturdy and durable, lending the device a premium feel that’s fitting of its price tag.

The Razer Kishi V2 Pro controller, I’d argue, is even more impressive than the tablet itself. It’s delightfully comfortable in the hands and features wonderfully clicky buttons that feel ultra-responsive when playing games installed directly onto the Edge’s storage. Razer’s HyperSense haptics also feature here, offering contextual rumble that while not quite as strong as the vibration found in the PS5’s DualSense controller, still offers pleasant feedback when playing some of the best Android games.

A few shortcut buttons on the controller are a welcome quality-of-life touch, too. You’ll find a screenshot button, one that takes you to the tablet’s Android-based Home menu, as well as a button dedicated to bringing you to the pre-installed Razer Nexus app (more on that later). Overall, it’s one of the nicest mobile controllers I’ve used to date, with an overall higher quality feel than that of its competitors.

My favorite feature the Razer Edge brings to the table is its virtual controller option. Togglable on a per-app basis, it allows you to assign button and analog stick inputs to on-screen controls. For example, you can drag and drop a button module over the on-screen Fire button in PUBG Mobile and click ‘RT’ to assign it to the right trigger, allowing you an alternative method of firing over pressing the screen.

I found the virtual controller mode to be a far more responsive and comfortable way of playing mobile games on the Razer Edge. As someone who often finds his hands covering up much of a mobile screen - occasionally leading to unfortunate accidental inputs - the virtual controller felt like a much more reliable way to play. That, and it meant I was leaving far fewer fingerprints on the Edge’s lovely display.

Performance and battery life

The Razer Edge’s gaming performance isn’t quite state-of-the-art in the mobile space. Its processor is about on par with the Snapdragon 888, which was a popular choice for smartphones that launched around two to three years ago. That’s not to say the performance is terrible, or that it struggles, though. I was able to natively run Honkai Star Rail, PUBG Mobile, and Genshin Impact at a stable 30fps with medium graphics settings applied across the board.

That said, switching to 60fps across these games proved taxing on the Edge leading to inconsistent frame rates and causing the device’s internal fan to run loud. This is also where I could feel the Edge begin to warm up, so I ultimately had to settle for lower performance as a compromise.

Alongside playing games natively, the Razer Edge also supports cloud gaming and game streaming via services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Steam Link. Cloud gaming performance is about on par with that of my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Edge connected to cloud-based titles quickly, but ultimately offered a pretty subpar experience. A fast, stable internet connection will help here, mind, but I found overall cloud gaming performance to be more inconsistent here than on my Galaxy S21 Ultra.

Image quality while playing games like Forza Motorsport and PowerWash Simulator via Xbox Cloud Gaming was fairly grainy, and the occasional spot of lag muddied the experience. Input latency was quite noticeable, too; in PowerWash Simulator, washing away the last few specks of muck from Squidward’s house proved a challenge as a result of imprecise camera movement. This isn’t solely the Razer Edge’s fault, to be clear, as cloud gaming stability can vary wildly depending on internet speeds and connection quality. But I have had better experiences with Xbox Cloud Gaming when playing on Xbox Series X.

Thankfully, the Razer Edge performed wonderfully with Steam Link. Essentially Steam’s version of remote play (a service that lets you stream games from a nearby console or PC), tethering my library to the Edge via the Nexus app was a breeze. What was even better was that I was able to stream games like Horizon Chase Turbo and Station to Station at a high framerate with excellent image quality.

On-board audio performance is quite strong, too. The Edge has a set of rear-firing speakers built into the tablet. The overall sound profile was very clear, meaning you can go without headphones and still have a quality audio experience. For multiplayer shooters like PUBG Mobile, though, you may still want to opt for play with a headset, as the in-built speakers don’t handle directional audio such as footsteps and bullets quite as clearly.

The Razer Edge does disappoint when it comes to battery life, however. Much like a smartphone, battery life will vary depending on your activity, but from a full charge, I was only able to play games on the handheld for roughly three to four hours before needing to top up. Lighter tasks, though, like watching YouTube videos or streaming audio via Spotify, allowed the Edge to last around ten hours when left on in the background. Charging from empty to full, via USB-C, will take approximately two hours.

Software

The Razer Edge houses the Nexus app, which is accessible via a dedicated button on the Razer Kishi V2 Pro controller, or through an on-screen icon on the Android home menu. It’s a fairly simple app that’s quite similar to the Backbone’s app in that it houses shortcuts to several other applications within it. These include links to Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Steam Link which are all pre-installed on the device. PS Remote Play is also supported, but it wasn’t installed by default. Thankfully, it’s easy to add by downloading from the Google Play Store.

Scrolling down, you’re able to run games installed on the device via their own shortcuts (complete with lovely background art, too). Below that, you can browse a variety of games categorized by genre, not unlike how Apple Arcade organizes its library.

Nexus is a nicely laid-out app, but I did run into one major problem with it. Occasionally, the app elected to not recognize the Kishi V2 Pro’s inputs, even after rebooting. This left me to reach over and use the touchscreen instead, which was a mild annoyance.

Should I buy the Razer Edge?

Overall, the Razer Edge is a competent handheld gaming device with a handful of brilliant features like HyperSense haptics, virtual controller, and, of course, that gorgeously sharp AMOLED display. However, the performance it offers falls in line with smartphones that are a couple of years old, and the device’s price point makes it very hard to wholeheartedly recommend as a result. 

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested the Razer Edge

I spent a week testing the Razer Edge and its various features, for a total of about 25 hours. With pre-installed games like Honkai Star Rail and PUBG Mobile, I ensured features like the virtual controller and HyperSense haptics were enabled, finding they provided a smoother and more immersive gaming experience. I also spent much time playing games via Xbox Cloud Gaming and Steam Link, in order to get a good feel on how the Edge handles cloud streaming. 

For other top handheld gaming recommendations, consider browsing our guide to the best Nintendo Switch accessories or best handheld games consoles for more suggestions for fantastic hardware.