Razer reveals the world’s first THX-certified monitor, the 27″ 1440p Raptor

Razer made a big play this year with appearing at E3 to showcase its new products. The convention is typically reserved for games rather than hardware, but Razer and gaming are synonymous I suppose. The keynote involved the reveal of the new Razer Blade 14 laptop sporting an AMD processor and other technology. For the desktop crowd, Razer revealed the world’s first THX-certified gaming monitor called the Raptor.

You may have heard of the Raptor monitor already, as it is an existing product. Razer likes to stick with the same branding from year to year, but refreshes the products with better specs. This is the same case with the Raptor. The new IPS monitor features a 1440p resolution, 1ms response time, HDR400, and an 165Hz refresh rate. The price? $799 USD.

You might reel in sticker shock, but this is marketed as a premium monitor, no doubt for the crowd that’s willing to pay more. There are some interesting features to back it up. Here’s the pitch for buying the 2021 Razer Raptor. Aside from the specs already mentioned, this monitor comes with an RGB strip for the Razer Chroma software, an all aluminum base, full tilt control, VESA mount compatibility, G-Sync Ultimate/Free-Sync Premium for no tearing, a special anti-blur technology, and a unique cable management system for a clean look. As for port compatibility, there’s HDMI 2.0B, DisplayPort 1.4A, x1 USB Type-C, and x2 USB Type-A. The monitor also comes with warranty of one year. Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

The Razor Raptor is the first and only THX-certified monitor

Razer worked with THX, a company that specializes in high-grade visual and acoustical accuracy to develop this monitor. The THX rating is a new standard that requires a monitor to pass over 400 different tests to ensure accurate, life-like color reproduction. This monitor features a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 420 nits brightness rating, and a factory calibrated 95% DCI-P3 wide color gamut. That last spec is very impressive for an IPS monitor.

This makes this monitor a solid choice for professionals and content creators that want to make sure their color grading looks right on any screen. The fact that this monitor is marketed towards gamers might throw many off though. Professionals are willing to pay more for good monitors, but the gaming monitor market is very competitive. Many gamers tend to just focus on framerate, response time, and resolution. Features like HDR remain slow for gamers to adopt. With that in mind, it will be curious to see how this monitor sells. With the Razer name on it, the Raptor THX gaming monitor might do better than we expect. You can learn more about it on Razer’s website.