Razer Edge teardown reveals an active cooling fan

Razer hasn’t made a smartphone in a while, but it just released an Android-powered gaming handheld, the Razer Edge. The device is built very much like a smartphone as you can see in the teardown video by PBKreviews. Only a few things set it apart, e.g. no cameras on the back – but there is one on the front, on the long edge of the display since this is intended for landscape use.

The first thing to come out is the card slot, which is designed to hold a nanoSIM and a microSD. This particular device is the Wi-Fi only model, so it lacks 5G (indeed any cell) connectivity. If online play and game streaming on the go is something you want, Verizon started selling mmWave enabled versions of the Edge last week. Later on in the video you will see the places where the mmWave antenna was supposed to go. This model only has Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.

The Snapdragon G3x Gen 1, RAM and storage stacked together • 5,000mAh battery

The Edge has some passive cooling with graphite film on the plastic back panel. However, there is also active cooling with mesh-covered vents and a small fan tucked inside. This pulls heat from the chipset through thermal pads, thermal paste and a layer of copper tape. There is a vapor chamber on the other side of the board that expels heat through the display.

Active cooling fan on the Razer Edge • Copper tape, thermal paste and thermal pads over the chipset

The base Razer Edge comes with 6GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage, both of which are stacked on the G3x Gen 1 chipset. This one is priced $400 on Razer.com. Verizon’s 5G model ups the RAM to 8GB and adds sub-6GHz and mmWave connectivity, it starts at $10 a month.

PBKreviews gave the Razer Edge a repairability score of 6.5/10. The major complaint is the limited availability of replacement parts.

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