The Razer Phone 2 is now selling at S$829 and here is why you should get it

The Razer Phone is a great gaming device and some might still consider it to be one of the best gaming phones to date. However, if you are an everyday casual user who uses their phones for daily tasks, is the Razer Phone 2 still suitable for you? Having used this smartphone for a while now as a “non-gamer”, here are my thoughts.

A unique phone

I was surprised by how much attention I was getting when I switched over to the Razer Phone 2. Most of my friends immediately recognized the phone due to its unique design. In 2019, most phones would have a similar “notch and rounded corners” look. Instead, Razer went with something different by having a boxy design with its enormously large speakers and sharp corners. The Razer logo at the back also screams out the Razer brand.

LED Chroma logo

The Razer Phone 2 has a pretty cool feature that enables the Razer logo, located at the back of the phone, to light up and constantly change colour. For the first few days, I set the Chroma Razer logo to pulse whenever I received a notification. It seemed like a neat little feature at first. Until I realised that the constant flashing of LED light started to be a bit distracting whenever I didn’t want to immediately attend to notifications. I ended up turning the feature off.

Camera

The camera of the phone is good but nowhere close to the best. It is able to record videos in 4k 60fps (with its recent Android Pie upgrade) and take decent photos. However, its camera still lacks the ability to capture pictures as well as the other flagships such as Samsung Note 9, Huawei Mate 20 and even Google Pixel 3. Sure, its camera isn’t bad, but still, I hope it could have been better.

Speakers

The speakers, in short, are very impressive! They are louder and have more bass than most other phones. It is also impossible to block the speaker no matter how you are using it. With its real stereo separation, the Razer Phone 2 gives such an immersive and enjoyable audio experience that the trade-off of having gigantic bezels are worth it. With that being said, the speakers can be of slight hinderance. Dust and small particles can get trapped within the speaker grills and it can cause slight annoyance.

Aspect Ratio

Another thing I would like to mention is the phone’s aspect ratio. The Razer Phone 2 still follows a more traditional 16:9 aspect ratio rather than the a 18:9 aspect ratio. According to Razer, the 16:9 aspect ratio gives the best experience for gaming. However, this makes the phone feel a little fatter and it makes the phone slightly harder to grip. With that being said, I feel that they made the right choice to stick to their 16:9 aspect ratio. If they had stuck to the 18:9 aspect ratio, the screen, together with the huge speakers at the top and bottom would lead a phone that is too tall to comfortably fit in my pocket.

Image credit: GizmoSlipTech

With a side-by-side comparison of the Razer Phone 2 and a Samsung Note 9, we can see that the huge speaker at both ends of the Razer Phone 2 causes the screen to seem a bit fatter than the sleeker Note 9’s screen.

120Hz Display

Also, how could one forget about the display! The 120HZ display, paired with the Snapdragon 845 processor and 8GB of RAM makes the phone incredibly smooth. Even basic tasks such as switching between apps and scrolling through Facebook have never been so enjoyable. It has definitely been one of my highlights using the phone and despite its high refresh rate, the battery has been able to easily last for a whole day. In fact, after switching back to my original phone, it made me feel like I downgraded to a rather laggy and slow device.

The fingerprint scanner

The fingerprint sensor is located at a really great spot — at the side of the phone. My thumb reaches the side of the fingerprint sensor rather easily. However, it would sometimes fail to read my fingerprint and only unlock after I tried a few more times. Given that, I actually prefer the side fingerprint scanner than the conventional rear fingerprint scanner on other phones.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you care a lot about having the best camera and a phone with the most modern look and feel, the Razer phone might not be for you. However, if you are a frequent gamer or a content heavy user like me, the Razer phone should be the phone to get. Given that the phone is now selling at SGD$829, about $420 less than the original price, it should be a deal breaker, given its solid specs and features.