Razer Phone 2 - Review 2022 - Irvin Youserainvid

Razer makes fantastic gaming PCs and accessories, just information technology isn't quite there yet with gaming phones. The $799 Razer Telephone two makes many of the same mistakes we saw in the original model, putting power alee of basic smartphone functionality. At that place are improvements, for sure, including higher-terminate specs, better cooling, a customizable RGB logo on the back, wireless charging, and a waterproof build. If yous're primarily interested in mobile gaming, you'll detect a lot to like here. But poor camera performance and battery life mean we continue to recommend the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 as the best phablet for well-nigh people.

Pattern

The Razer Phone 2 has a distinctive design that calls to mind last year'southward model equally well as the Nextbit Robin. It's a thick, heavy rectangular slab with a pair of huge front-firing speakers above and beneath the display, and a fully customizable RGB Razer logo on the drinking glass back. It helps the telephone stand up out a fleck with a more "gamer" artful than final year'due south model, though information technology won't draw equally many eyes equally Asus' upcoming ROG Telephone.

Measuring in at vi.24 by iii.xi past 0.33 inches (HWD) and a hefty 7.84 ounces, the Razer Phone 2 is a big, heavy handset. It's significantly larger than the LG V40 (half dozen.25 past two.98 by 0.30 inches, five.96 ounces), and comparable in size, but heavier than, the Galaxy Note nine (6.38 by three.01 past 0.35 inches, vii.09 ounces). With its thick bezel and wide body, the phone is nearly impossible to employ with i hand, and strained the seams of my pockets. No thing how long your fingers are, this is a two-mitt device.

The smooth metal sides of the phone are fairly devoid of ports. You'll discover a unmarried USB-C port on the bottom for both charging and headphones (the included headphone dongle has a 24-scrap DAC). Ii pocket-sized, dot-similar volume buttons are on the left, forth with a SIM/microSD menu slot that worked fine with a 256GB menu. Adoptable Storage is enabled, allowing y'all to configure the SD card to run every bit internal storage. A recessed ability button/fingerprint sensor is on the right.

The real physical attraction is the Razer Chroma RGB-lit logo on the back. Using the included Chroma app, it can be configured with a variety of fade and color shift effects. Y'all tin can configure the LED intensity and even set it upward to flash certain colors for particular apps, effectively turning it into a notification LED.

The phone is rated IP67 waterproof, meaning it tin can handle total immersion in several feet of water for up to 30 minutes. That'southward an improvement over the original model, though it isn't as good as the IP68 Note 9.

120Hz Display

The Razer Telephone 2's 5.7-inch ii,560-by-1,440 LCD features a 16:9 aspect ratio, which looks a fleck dated compared with OLED flagships like the Note 9 (2,960 by i,440, 18.5:9) and the LG V40 (iii,120 by i,440, nineteen.five:9). While it does attempt to achieve an OLED-similar await by ramping up color saturation, information technology just can't produce the aforementioned dumbo, inky blacks. Viewing angles are expert and the screen gets vivid enough to run into outdoors, but it fades under direct sunlight. The screen is HDR-compatible, but it doesn't do upscaling like the Sony Xperia XZ3.

The more than notable element almost the brandish is its 120Hz refresh rate. That's twice the speed of standard phone panels, for a smoother, more responsive experience. The original Razer Phone also sported a 120Hz screen, but the number of games that support it has since improved, including popular titles like Injustice 2, Pokemon Go, Lineage two: Revolution, and Burn down Keepsake Heroes. I plant the college refresh rate to exist most noticeable in racing games and beginning-person shooters, though it can certainly brand a difference in whatever title that requires responsive action.

The Featured department in Razer'southward Cortex app points you to games that support the high refresh rate. The Game Booster console in the app gives you granular controls to customize the exact settings of each game. For a shooter similar PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, you may want to drop the resolution from 1440p to 1080p or 720p, for instance, to go a higher frame rate. Other games might not be perfectly compatible with the higher refresh charge per unit. GTA: San Andreas, for instance, is glitchy unless you turn it down to 60Hz (90Hz is another option that most games default to).

Maybe most interestingly, the Cortex app also gives you control of processor clock speed. Yous can individually clock games from ane.36Ghz to 2.80GHz, though two.32GHz is the default. If y'all don't want to deal with all the details, you can just max out all settings by hitting Performance style or tamp everything down with Ability Salvage style.

Network Performance and Audio

The Razer Telephone ii is bachelor unlocked, with support for LTE bands 1/2/3/four/five/7/8/12/13/fourteen/17/18/nineteen/20/26/28/29/30/32/38/39/40/41/48/66/71. It works easily on AT&T and T-Mobile. For the first calendar week later on launch, information technology didn't work on Verizon; Verizon now officially says information technology does, simply you have to actuate your telephone using its online account portal, which we can't practice with our examination SIMs. It doesn't work on Dart. Network performance in midtown Manhattan on T-Mobile was solid, with 22.8Mbps down and 14.5Mbps up despite heavy network congestion.

Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, Bluetooth 5.0 for wireless listening, and NFC for mobile payment.

Call quality is solid. Transmissions come across a little muddy, just noise cancellation is excellent, blotting out the vast majority of traffic and other background noise. Earpiece volume is loud enough to carry on a conversation in a loud environment.

With its massive front end-firing stereo speakers and Dolby Atmos software, the phone has thunderous audio. Calls, games, and music audio full and rich, without the tininess that plagues most phones. The speakers were powerful plenty to easily fill a small conference room in our examination lab with audio.

Processor and Cooling

In terms of specs, the Razer Phone 2 is a powerhouse. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.8GHz and 8GB of RAM. You can overclock it with the congenital-in Game Booster to pump out the highest frame rates while gaming. Rut becomes a concern, of course, just the phone has a "vapor chamber cooling" organization that lets information technology disperse warmth better.

In criterion testing, the phone scored 9,125 on PCMark, which measures several tasks like web browsing and video editing. That'due south 1 of the highest scores we've seen, second only to the highly optimized Google Pixel three (9,191). In terms of multitasking and full general responsiveness, information technology feels just as fast, despite a heavy UI layer. Altering the settings between standard and gaming modes did little to alter benchmarks, nor did shifting the screen refresh rate from 120Hz to 90Hz (the default).

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The cooling system is key. We played over an hour of intensive games ranging from Asphalt 8 to Life Is Strange, and despite the phone becoming somewhat warm, it never became as hot equally other devices we've tested. Performance was steady throughout, with no dropped frames or choppy gameplay, and controls were responsive. If you like to play games on your phone for hours at a time, the Razer Phone two should handle better than just about any other flagship out there.

Battery, Photographic camera, and Software

All that gaming power has consequences for bombardment life. The telephone clocked simply 3 hours, 51 mins when streaming video over Wi-Fi at maximum brightness with the screen is ready to 120Hz. That's far brusk of phones like the Note nine, which outlasted our 12-hour test video with power to spare.

This result was disconcerting, so we set up the screen refresh charge per unit to 60Hz and ran the test again. This time it lasted 4 hours, 17 minutes, another poor result. If y'all're non playing games, you lot'll desire to save juice past reducing the screen refresh rate, processor clock speed, and resolution. Thankfully the phone supports fast charging with the included Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0+ adapter, as well as wireless charging. But with battery results similar these, you might want to consider carrying a power depository financial institution.

The rear camera setup consists of one 12MP standard sensor with optical epitome stabilization and another 12MP telephoto lens with 2x zoom. Unfortunately, the camera app was slow in testing, the sensor was unresponsive fifty-fifty in adept lighting (locking up entirely in 1 instance), and functioning was downright poor in depression light.

Images nosotros snapped in the dim setting of PC Labs were either noisy, blurry, or a combination of the two. Autoexposure was foreign, blasting out the groundwork of shots in the viewfinder, merely oddly not in the processed photo. Pictures we took outdoors on a beautiful fall day looked dark and muddy, with color reproduction meliorate suited to a midrange phone than an $800 flagship.

The phone is capable of recording 4K video at 30fps and at present supports optical epitome stabilization resulting in relatively stable video. The 8MP forepart-facing camera delivers acceptable functioning for selfies, just has the same autoexposure issue in the viewfinder. If camera functioning matters to you, merely well-nigh any other loftier-finish phone (and even many midrange models) volition practise a better chore.

Nosotros asked Razer if it plans to coil out any big changes to the camera software, but there doesn't appear to be anything in the cards bated from bug fixes.

While we're on the discipline of software, the phone ships running Android viii.1 Oreo, a generation behind Pie, which is available on Google'south Pixels. The software is loaded with Razer's heavy UI changes to app icons, widgets, and menus. Thankfully in that location isn't much in bloatware. Out of 64GB of storage yous have 50GB available for apply, and every bit mentioned earlier, you tin can use a microSD carte and enable Adoptable Storage.

Conclusions

The Razer Phone 2 is some other impressive gaming machine, but it neglects the nuts. Yes, the 120Hz screen and advanced cooling system are certain to delight mobile gamers looking for top-notch functioning. But it doesn't deliver an extraordinary operation bound beyond phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the LG V40, and the Google Pixel 3 XL, all of which offer similarly powerful hardware with much improve battery life and camera performance. Unless you're a highly competitive mobile gamer, you'll exist better served past any of those options. We still like the thought of a killer gaming phone, and there's no company better equipped for the job than Razer. But in gild to win that game, it needs to deliver on more than just gaming.