Razer Edge Pro

[Psykomantis00]

Amazon recently dropped the price of the Razer Edge Pro from 1450.00 to sub 1000.00. I've been eyeing this tablet for a long time and really wanted it after Linus reviewed it. I've been looking for a laptop/ultra book that would let me play League of Legends on the go with a small form factor. The razer edge is perfect for that right? Not so fast...

 

The Tablet. 

The Razer Edge Pro has really awesome hardware for what it is. i7 cpu, 8 gigs of ram and a gt640m video card in a device that is just a little bigger than an ipad and not really that thick or heavy (at least compared to what I thought it was going to be). The first tablet that I got was defective right out of the box. Wifi and bluetooth would disconnect randomly (almost always when loading LoL at the very beginning of the game) and require a disable/enable or reboot to connect back to wifi. Driver updates didn't fix this at all. Bluetooth would work fine, but when the tablet went to sleep and woke back up, I would have to enable/disable the bluetooth to get my keyboard/mouse to work again. Then there were the random lock ups that I finally chalked up to bad RAM. If I opened up Hardware monitor the tablet would freeze, every single time. It would also do it in the latest version of coretemp but I've found out that coretemp has an issue with windows 8.1. Upgrading windows to 8.1 did end up fixing the bluetooth issue, but not the wifi/crashing. At this point I asked for a replacement. 

 

The replacement arrived the next day and I didn't have any of the issues I had before. Success! Everything worked perfectly. I hammered this thing pretty hard making sure I didn't just get another broken tablet. Nothing would crash this thing. Then I decided to upgrade to windows 8.1 and during the installation (keep in mind I did this install on the broken tablet and didn't have any issues) the tablet went to a black screen and just kept rebooting. After messing with it and booting to the bios and disabling the main drive, booting into efi shell and building a usb boot drive to boot from the efi shell, I finally got it working again and on windows 8.1 to boot! Still, at this point, everything is working fine. The tablet is great! 

 

The accessories.

When I first purchased the Razer Edge Pro, the gamepad case, dock, keyboard case and extra battery were all sold out everywhere. The only place I could find anything was on Ebay, with at least a 5x markup. The dock that sells for $99 was listed with a buy it now of $500. The gamepad sells for $250 and it was going for $1000. I contacted Razer and they basically told me that they might (maybe, not even a for sure) be getting some of the keyboard cases (which has horrible reviews and everyone says it's a waste of money) in 3-4 weeks, maybe. This made me angry. 

 

Flash forward to the day I get the new tablet... Amazon now has the gamepad case and the dock in stock so I order one of each and pay for next day shipping. I was so excited! When the two items arrive, the first thing I did was try the dock. I plugged the tablet in and it shows up on my second screen... but the colors are inverted and there is no audio over hdmi. I worked on this for about two hours before finally getting the video to work correctly (it wouldn't let me duplicate the image onto my tv, but it would over a logical vga connection that shows up when I plug the tablet in. Still no audio over hdmi though. I was happy again. I decided to try out LoL on my tv while laying in bed... As soon as the game loads the screen reverts back to inverted colors and a crap resolution. At this point I decided to return the dock. It shouldn't be this difficult to get these two things that are made for each other to work together. 

 

Now I'm already mad, but I have the gamepad to try out now... Yay.... So I plug the gamepad in and I already have synapse 2.0 installed (it handles drivers for everything Razer makes) so I figure it's going to be plug and play. Boy was I wrong! To make a long story short, I scoured the internet for drivers for this stupid gamepad. The only thing I found was on the Razer website it says that Razer Synapse 2.0 does NOT handle the drivers for this gamepad. This now means that there are NO known drivers for the gamepad. In a last attempt at desperation I forced it to use the xbox 360 controller drivers. OMG that worked! It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration had they just said this on the site. I ended up playing Resident Evil 6 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengence and it was so smooth and the controls were great! Right up until the tablet shuts off and won't power back on. I assume it overheated because 30 minutes later it came back on like nothing was wrong. I played some more games but couldn't get it to crash again. Not even 24 hours later I'm setting at work trying to show off my new toy in the office (I work in IT so all my coworkers enjoy new toys) and I put the tablet in the gamepad and nothing happens. Normally it vibrates and lights up, but now, nothing happens. I pull up device manager and now it's showing up as Razer Boot or something like that and won't function. I tried to force the MS 360 drivers again and it won't work. I've been at it for about 2 hours now installing/uninstalling trying to make this gamepad work and I've now given up. I called amazon and now have a return setup for all the stuff that I bought, including the Razer Orochi mouse and a logitech bluetooth keyboard, which I bought specific for this tablet that I will not be keeping. 

 

Summary.

I've had a very terrible experience. This tablet, when it does work correctly, is great. I have no faith in Razer now. The build quality of all the stuff I've mentioned is pretty great honestly. Everything feels solid, it just doesn't work correctly due to software issues. This is why the tablet didn't sell very well. This is also why console gamers have such a hard time going to PC gaming. Most console plebs would have seen it didn't work and returned it. There is no support on their website for any of the issues I've had and razer support is a joke. 

 

TL/DR

Got Razer Edge Pro, didn't work. Got replacement, had issues but worked at the end. Accessories made for the tablet by Razer didn't work due to software. Everything is getting returned. 

 

 

[dizmo]

Great review! Unfortunate...but great.

[Psykomantis00]

Thanks!

[voaz]

I'd like to see some pictures

[Phage]

thanks for the great in depth review, ill be sure to be cautious around razer products.

[cjeffcoatjr]

Razer is overhyped and overpriced. Its the Alienware of hardware. 

[Psykomantis00]

Razer mice are really top notch. I've never used their keyboards, but I assume they are of similar quality. Like I said, I have 2 razer death adders, a naga hex and the orochi. I love them all. Never had any issues with them. I wouldn't trust them much more than accessories though. I do plan on getting the Atrox (fight stick) and I'd buy a razer keyboard if they made a compact tenkeyless to replace my cmstorm. 

 

I only have a couple pics. I just dropped everything off at the UPS store... It cost me 113 dollars (return shipping on two tablets with insurnace) to learn Razer makes shitty systems. 

 

 

This one shows the gamepad working. It was awesome while it worked. 

 

 

[flibberdipper]

That's pretty neat. Sucks that it sucked, but it's still neat.

[Psykomantis00]

That's pretty neat. Sucks that it sucked, but it's still neat.

 

I wish it worked out. Was really awesome to play REAL games on the go and not some Candy Ass Candy Eaters bs.  Now I'm thinking of waiting for something with the new Intel Iris graphics. 

[foxyroxy69]

I have to say that despite your experience the razer edge pro kicks ass. That blows that you have bad luck but the product is great. You also said that the sales wern't so great but I don't think you know too much about this product just from that statement alone. The razer edge pro was on back orderfor 5 months because preorders after it was released were so damn high. I am sure if you do a quick google search you will see what I am talking about. Anyway, I preordered mine and was one of the first to get it. I have fully replaced my gaming desktop, laptop, and ipad with the razer edge pro and its normal docking station. When I want to play games like the latest tomb raider and metal gear solid I simply move it over to the dock that I have at my tv and it responds great. I have always played games on it with my 3rd party xbox controllers without any issues as of today. I had no problems plugging in my afterglow xbox controller and have it lightup and vibrate when playing games. I did not have to do anything except for plugging it into the usb port and that was it. I also use a logitech g19s keyboard now and the razer naga mouse, again without any issues. I think it is funny that you put in that you had issues installing 8.1  in your article because that is a Microsoft issue. Did you know that 8.1 has caused the same issues you described with the restarting on desktops and laptops too even though windows 8 ran perfectly on their systems before?

 

I use the normal dock when I play league of legends, I have it plugged in through hdmi to my 50 inch tv in my room. Again, I don't know why you have so much bad luck...although it is starting to sound like you are doing something wrong. I have always been able to get sound out of the hdmi connection and a fine resolution without inverted colors. The dock is simple, plug in power, plug in usb and video connections, and place the tablet in dock. Then it just works lol that simple, sounds like you purchased everything from Amazon.....I wonder If anything happened while they shipped it to you or in their warehouse... Anyway, I have yet to purchase the dock with the handles as I rather play my games on a tv or monitor. I still rather play with a controller rather than the gaming dock with handles as it just didnt look comfortable. So IMO the dock with the gaming controller isnt worth it for me. I have the regular dock and the keyboard dock with extended battery......have to say I LOVE IT!!! I have also upgraded my ssd hd to a 1tb samsung ssd just for kicks to see if it was possible. I dont think razer makes shitty products like you said, I just think you are very unlucky. I used to work at Western Digital and I can honestly say that sometimes it happens where you get 3 bad drives in a row...jsut bad luck. If you want to argue shitty products then you will have to take into consideration how many devices are released and how many were defective. I would hear all the time that WD drives suck but in reality they have less than a 1% fault rate from factory.

 

Back to the point, I know several people who preordered the razer edge pro when it came out like me and we just cant get enough of how awesome it is and it has been about a year or so since i have had it. I don't know how you got yours to over heat either. I did a charity event called extra life where you game for 25 hours straight and I used my razer edge pro to do it on. I was playing Dark Souls Prepare to die edition on it during the 25 hours and not once did it over heat or lock up or freeze on me. I am sorry you had a bad experience but I would not pass this product up if you were thinking of picking one up. I did have one problem with it early on and that was when 8.1 was released, I downloaded and installed windows 8.1 and it bricked my razer edge. I do not blame razer for microsoft's mistake though, even so I called razer support and they promptly mailed me a flash drive so I could reisntall windows 8 and redownload 8.1.  I was happy to see that their tech support was so friendly and quick to help me out with my issue. In short the razer edge pro is a great product with great support, but again sorry you have had such bad luck with such a great product.

[Psykomantis00]

I didn't have issues with windows 8 restarting, that was bad hardware (ram and intel wireless card) causing the system to crash. I was able to fix the windows 8.1 failed install by using a usb drive I created. Why would you wait for razer to send you one? That just seems silly. While I agree that the tablet is awesome as the second one I got was great and clear of any hardware faults, the accessories were terrible. The ONLY reason to buy the razer edge is for the accessories. Without the dock it's just a tablet and without the gamepad there is nothing special about the hardware. The gamepad was a main concern. It just stopped working after working flawlessly for hours. I never said razer made shitty products. I said razer makes shitty systems. Huge difference there. I still used razer mice exclusively and don't expect that to change anytime soon. I probably won't buy a computer from them again, but that could change also. 

 

Bottom line: I paid a premium price for a tablet that had way too many issues. The second tablet I got was perfect but then when the $350 worth of accessories I purchased wouldn't work at all, that was the final straw. Also I like how you assume I was doing something wrong with the dock, as if there were much to go wrong. I'm not sure what you think I did wrong, but I assure you I plugged the tablet into the dock just as razer intended (theres only one way). The dock hardware may have been defective, I'm not sure. It was more than likely software related since I could force the dock to work with some quirks but again, it wouldn't allow the dedicated graphics to be used with the dock, only the onboard, which is useless for anything that this tablet was designed for. 

 

Also, how do you explain razers lack of driver for the gamepad controller? And no, there isn't one. I searched high and low and came up with nothing. The only thing I found out was on the site it mentions that the gamepad controller isn't supported by the razer synapse 2.0 software which just so happens to be the ONLY driver software they make. Honestly had the gamepad worked I would have kept the tablet and returned the dock and just gotten a usb 3.0 dock.

 

I REALLY wanted this tablet to work. I would have been soooooo happy had this worked out. I ended up losing money on this due to return shipping costs of two tablets insured for $1000 dollars each. I've actually thought about trying it again but if I do that I think I would feel like an idiot if I got another bad system or if the gamepad stopped working again. Maybe if they have a second gen I'll go for that, but I doubt it. Haswell tablets with the iris pro graphics should be coming out soon and those will be thinner, lighter, faster and hopefully cheaper (no razer premium tax). 

 

Oh and another thing I'd like to mention. The placement of the charging cable, and the design of the charging connector are terrible. It should have been placed on the top of the tablet or made differently so you could set the tablet down and not worry about the awkward connector breaking. 

 

Also, as far as sales go, what are the sales figures? Just because something sold out doesn't mean they sold a lot of them, it just means they sold all they had. If microsoft only made 100 xbox ones and sold out, they still did worse than sony if sony made 5 million and sold a million of them. They still have 4/5 of their inventory while microsoft sold 100%. That doesn't means they sold well.