At CES 2019 today, Razer announced its first step into the gaming monitor market with the Razer Raptor. While only an "early-design-phase" model for now, the Raptor is packed full of gaming goodies and is set for a release sometime later in 2019.
The most striking aspect of the Raptor is its design, featuring a stark matte black exterior with the screen mounted on a wide stand lit by Chroma lighting underneath. The rear of the stand includes five convenient channels for routing cables and making everything look neat and tidy.
Up front, Razer has equipped the Raptor with a 27-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) IPS panel surrounded by ultra-thin 2.3mm bezels. The display itself runs at a speedy 144Hz and supports AMD's Radeon FreeSync tech, allowing games to stay fluid by eliminating dropped frames and screen tearing.
The panel also supports HDR for vivid colors and deep blacks and covers 95 percent of the DCI-P3 wide color gamut with 420 nits of brightness. Response times range from 1ms to 7ms.
Interestingly, the Razer Raptor will come with a feature that should prove appealing to anyone concerned with productivity: picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture support. The features allow multiple inputs to be displayed simultaneously on the screen, allowing you to run separate programs on separate PCs without requiring multiple monitors.
Lastly, the port selection is pretty standard, with one HDMI, one DisplayPort, one USB-C with support for DisplayPort and power delivery, and two USB-A 3.1 ports.
Since this is currently a concept monitor, there's no word on pricing. But the fact that Razer is interested in entering the monitor market is interesting – if not altogether surprising given the company's gradually expanding lineup – on its own.
