Razer’s been working on the whole “revolutionise gaming devices” thing for many years now, but lacked the reach of the big names in PC hardware. Teaming up with multi-national computer technology company Lenovo should do the trick.
Announced yesterday during the Dreamhack 2015 computer festival in Sweden, the partnership between Razer and Lenovo gives each company something they have been missing. Razer gets access to Lenovo’s manufacturing, supply chain and engineering expertise, while Lenovo scores a nice chunk of gamer cred.
Not that Lenovo didn’t have gamer cred before. Why just the other day… OK, I’ve got nothing. Lenovo had absolutely no gamer cred. I didn’t even know they made gaming hardware. I’m not unfamiliar with the company — earlier this year I purchased one of its Yoga Pro 3 convertible tablet/laptops, and aside from its inability to properly render the colour yellow and some network issues, I’ve gotten good work use out of it.
As for Razer, every other thing on my desk is Razer, so good for Lenovo, or as Razer co-founder and CRO Min-Liang Tan puts it in the “Lenovo and Razer Partner to Revolutionise Gaming Devices” press release:
“This agreement opens opportunities to advance the gaming lifestyle through world-class product in unprecedented ways. Lenovo is the world’s #1 PC maker. Razer is the world’s #1 gaming lifestyle brand. Together we have the passion, insight and operational capabilities to delight and empower the PC gaming community worldwide.”
I feel delighted and empowered.
The first way the pair of companies will be delighting and empowering is through a line of co-branded Y Series gaming desktops, the first of which made its debut in concept form at Dreamhack 2015 and will be on the floor at CES in January.
It’s black and green. Weird. But it also takes advantage of Razer’s Chroma colour LED technology, as demonstrated by the multicolor drop shadow in the renders.
While spearheading the move to thinner gaming laptops with its Blade line of laptops, the closest Razer’s gotten to gaming desktops has been its “Designed by Razer” case program. It’s also black and green.
The Y Series desktops are just the beginning. With a big-name partner like Lenovo, expect more of Razer’s crazy gaming ideas come to fruition.
Comments
16 responses to “Razer And Lenovo Team Up To ‘Revolutionise Gaming Devices’”
Should call themselves “Lazer”.
Hire this guy ^
Lol
The logical next step after xbox: the ybox. Even bigger than the one, but even less focused on games: it’s a full PC now!
Not really appealing to me for two reasons.
1. I have always associated Lenovo with basic, ‘grandparent’ spec gear, hardly innovative.
2. I have had nothing but bad times with my Razer peripherals, the Razer keyboard I started with was a terribly plastic and felt cheap and I tried a Razer Mamba 4G mouse (twin laser one) that died after 2 years. And I’m not hard on gear at all, I still have my first ‘gaming’ mouse, a Logitech MX1000 that is over 10 years old and still sees daily use on my parents PC.
My current mechanical DAS Keyboard and ROCCAT Kone XTD is miles ahead of any Razer gear I’ve used.. In my opinion anyway ?
Just bad luck or rough use. My 7 years old Samosa is still working and already switched to Mamba Chroma from first gen Mamba from 5 years ago.
Very bad luck! Every piece of razer gear i have is going strong after 5+ years with no sign of wear or tear.
My first razer death was the leviathan i bought for the spare xbox. Power button got stuck and is getting returned later today.
bah capitalizing on their names.
i feel for the poor people suckered into buying this stuff.
sure it looks nice but really, you can build a pc online better, and cheaper, and if you want; have it shipped pieced together for you!
i guess this is catching that market that go by the psyche of, ” oh i dont know enough about pcs to build one”
i guess thats just good business hm?
i think the only “Revolutionizing” this is gonna do it to liberate the money in peoples wallets 😉
“revolutionise” is just a PR catch word, sadly.
However on the other hand building computers by hand absolutely can be cheaper, and is a lot more fun, but there is a catch 22.
2 and a half years into its 3 year warranty, my Antec Kuhler H2O 920 stopped cooling. It was pumping coolant fluid as hot as my CPU. I burned my hand checking. I couldn’t find an Australian call centre for them, so I waited until 1am my time to make sure I could call them during their operating hours. Over the phone they said they will absolutely replace the cooling system but I would need to send it to their service centre in California at my cost. I went and bought a new cooling system because it was cheaper.
When you buy one of these computers from lenovo, they cover all costs of repair(including shipping) under their warranty. Sometimes that ease of mind is what will sell a pre built to a customer
i’ll consider it a revolution when they make it around the cost of a new release console/smartphone
So then…never?
Probably when a new source of income from prebuilt gaming machines, available only for that machine is available. The reason consoles are cheap is because it’s a company investment in players inevitably buying games for that machine.
I would stay away from Lenovo or associated products. They’re not part of IBM. Friend had her Yoga Pro 3 die (charging port wouldn’t charge, other USB ports stopped working). One month on, still waiting for laptop to come back from Lenovo.
Plenty of ‘opinions’ on Razer keyboard floating around. I have a Razer headset and it works fine though (although the cups are small).
My Razer product history:
Bought 3 Lycosas, all 3 had an issue where the touch panel would think I’m holding the “next track” media button. No other issues. Just a pain to use media players.
1X Arctosa- bought it for when I was working in call centres- I refused to touch the keyboards they supplied me. So much food, sneeze marks, and possibly other bodily fluids all caked up in it. Gross. That $55 keyboard is fantastic, only reason why it’s not my main keyboard is because it’s not mechanical. It’s serviceable for a call centre day job and works well there
Black widow chroma: oh baby, going from the G19 to this was the best decision ever, considering I was sold the G19 by a salesperson claiming it was mechanical, when it wasn’t. Also a nightmare keyboard to clean an maintain. That little monitor didn’t have its own CPU, it leeched off my computer.
I had a Razer Imperator for 3 years. Good mouse, felt right, but like a chunk of corded mice do over time with constant use, it started getting little “knots” in the cable, leading to impacted performance, eventually having the mouse stutter when moving it.
Death Adder chroma- best mouse I have used, although the Imperator felt a little nicer in my hand. 10K DPI is insane
Always buy the Razer mouse pads. They are machine washable on a gentle cycle and last about 5-6 years of 5 hour+ daily use
I was about to buy the Razer BlackWidow, but then read reviews and did more research. Too many horror stories for my liking. Ended up with Cherry MX Browns. I should be getting my Ducky Shine 5 today, my third Cherry Brown keyboard. Currently using Steelseries M800, which is good for someone switching from flat keyboard, but is not good for a Cherry/similar user like myself. It’s all about the feels man!
Redacted
Have you seen the alien ware alpha? It’s almost the cost of consoles and performs even better also there’s no way to build it yourself for the price of 360$