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<p><p> </p> <p> We saw Razer's Project Fiona gaming tablet last year at CES, and came away from the hands-on opportunity and corresponding conversation with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan fairly impressed with the device. It was chunky and hot, but it ran a Core i7 CPU and an unspecified Nvidia GPU. The concept still needed a fair amount of refinement, but it was clear that Razer had a fairly good idea there.</p> <p> This year at CES, Razer's big reveal is the Edge, essentially the production version of Project Fiona. It's a Windows 8 tablet running Core i5/i7 CPUs, an Nvidia GT 640M LE dGPU, and a 10.1" 1366x768 display. Like many of the new Windows 8 tablets, a lot of the story is hidden in the accessories and attachments - the Gamepad Controller being the most recognizable. Basically, the gaming controller/handles from Project Fiona are now part of a case that the tablet unit attaches into, with an optional extended battery that doubles battery life. Other accessories include a keyboard dock that uses a traditional keyboard and external mouse experience for MMO gamers and other heavily keyboard reliant games, as well as a docking station for connecting to big screens and external gamepads. </p> <p> From a hardware standpoint, the Edge is pretty interesting. The tablet unit comes in two different SKUs, regular and Pro. The regular comes with an unspecified Core i5 CPU, GT640M LE, 4GB DDR3, and a 64GB SSD for $999, while the Pro upgrades you to an i7, 8GB DDR3, and comes in 128GB and 256GB variants. Razer has not yet announced pricing for the Pro, but will be offering it in a bundle with the Gamepad Controller for presumably cheaper than the accessory on its own.</p> <p> </p> <p> The design of the Edge is pretty familar to anyone who has used the Blade. The back has the same radiused edges and contoured ridges on either side of a light-up Razer logo. Think of the Blade's lid scaled down to 10" and you've got a pretty good idea. Bet on a similar anodized aluminum unibody construction to the Blade. The front face is clean, with a single unbroken glass surface with a circular Windows button underneath the display and a webcam above. Ports and accessories on board include a single USB 3.0 port and Bluetooth 4.0. The dock/power connector is a rectangular slot-in kind, similar to the connector you see on the ASUS Transformer and VivoTab tablets. </p> <p> Now, there are a few interesting wrinkles here regarding the hardware: the odds that Razer is using one of the new 7W Ivy Bridge parts seems pretty high, there'd be no other way to fit a Core CPU and a midrange GPU, even a 28nm one, in a chassis of this size. There are a bunch of different GT 640M and GT640M LE SKUs, including some that are built on 40nm Fermi cores, but the Edge is virtually guaranteed to be using a 28nm Kepler part. And though it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I think Optimus graphics switching is a given. As far as SSD goes, a Marvell 88SS9174-based drive wouldn't be a bad bet, considering its use as the exclusive SSD controller in both generations of Blade, but I think I would lean towards it using the next-generation Marvell 88SS9187 controller.</p> <p> A major point of contention I have with the specs, on paper at least, has to do with the display. Razer specced a 10.1" 1366x768 TN panel for the Edge, and while I believe that this will be a high quality TN panel like that used on the Blade, I really have to question the decision to skip an IPS display. Razer's line is that the response rate of the IPS panels was not good enough, and while I think they believe that, I don't really agree with them. With these specs, you're going to be aiming for 40fps with any recent title, and we haven't seen any issues with IPS panels handling those kind of frame rates at all. I'm okay with the resolution though, GT640M LE will push 1366x768 displays pretty reasonably from a performance standpoint, while it'd probably choke and die at 1080p. Sure, you could play at lower-than-native resolution, but who wants to do that? That's a decision I understand, even if the panel type baffles me. I'll have a better idea of how the display actually is when I get my hands on with the Edge tomorrow. </p> <p> </p> <p> The Edge is a fairly thick tablet, at 0.8" thick it's about twice as thick as the fourth generation iPad and a solid amount thicker than the 0.53" Surface Pro. Weight, at 2lbs, is essentially the same as the Surface Pro though, which is not too bad. The footprint should be smaller due to the smaller display, though the bezel looks fairly large based on the press images.</p> <p> Now, the major reason the Edge needed to be so thick is simple: heat dissipation. To that end, there's also two pretty large vents at the top rear edge of the tablet. Large relative to the size of the body, at least. The chances of this tablet getting very hot are pretty high, particularly in gaming situations. Thankfully, if you're using the Gamepad Controller, you won't be holding the back of the tablet anyways, so it hopefully won't be as much of an issue. Obviously, throttling is a major issue to keep track of here, as is battery life when gaming. Razer says they've got some heat dissipation tricks up their sleeve here, a claim I'm more than happy to test out when I get my hands on one. Their thermal engineers have come up with some interesting solutions in the past, so I'm willing to believe them. </p> <div> Read on for a detailed discussion of the Edge accessories and pricing. </div> </p><div class='mf-viral'><table border='0'><tr><td valign='middle'></td><td valign='middle'></td></tr></table></div><br/><br/>

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Source: AnandTech
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