Razer Raptor 27 165Hz Monitor Review

The Razer Raptor 27 looks nearly identical to the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz. It features the same stand that has a square base and tracks to route your wires, and there's LED lighting underneath the stand. It's a simple design that should look nice in any setup.

The base of the stand is larger and takes up space, but it's flat on top so you can place things. The back of the stand has tracks for your wires.

The Razer Raptor has poor ergonomics. You can only adjust its height, but you can tilt it backwards until it's flat, making it easy to access the inputs, which many monitors can't do.

The back of this monitor is basic, and cable management is serviced through the tracks in the stand. You can't wall-mount the screen on its own as you need to buy the VESA Mount Adapter, which Razer sells separately. The stand is also hard to remove and likely needs specialized tools that come with the adapter.

The build quality is fantastic. It's very well-built and feels solid throughout. The stand is aluminum and holds the screen very well. The 90-degree tilt adjustment is great to access the inputs, and it's easy to adjust. The back of the screen is covered in a cloth material that feels premium. Also, the included cables go along the cable management tracks easily, which helps keep your setup clean.

The Razer Raptor has an IPS panel with a low contrast ratio, so blacks look gray. There's no local dimming feature to improve it. Keep in mind that contrast can vary between units.

There's no local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the backlight on this display performs and compare it to a similar product with local dimming.

The Razer Raptor 27 has great SDR peak brightness. It's bright enough to fight glare in most settings, and brightness doesn't vary much between content. Unlike the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz, real scenes are slightly brighter than the test slides. It's not as bright as the advertised 380 nit typical brightness, but the difference is minor.

We tested the SDR brightness after calibration in the 'Custom' Picture Mode with the Brightness at 100.

The HDR brightness is decent. It gets much brighter than in SDR and should be good enough for most games, but it doesn't deliver a true cinematic HDR movie experience. Luckily, the brightness doesn't vary much between different content.

The horizontal viewing angles are great, which is typical of an IPS panel. The image remains accurate from wide viewing angles, which is great for sharing your screen with a friend or coworker.

The Razer Raptor 27 has decent vertical viewing angles. It's a good choice if you need to mount the screen above eye level or share it with someone standing next to you, but at really wide angles the image looks darker and colors start to appear washed out.

The gray uniformity is excellent. The corners are slightly darker, but it's hard to notice. Uniformity is better in near-dark scenes, but there's some backlight bleed. Keep in mind that uniformity can vary between units, but it's rarely an issue on monitors.

Our unit has okay black uniformity. The entire screen looks blue/gray due to the low contrast, and there's backlight bleed along the edges, particularly on the right side. However, black uniformity may vary between units.

The Razer Raptor 27 has great out-of-the-box accuracy. The color temperature is very close to our 6500K target, and the white balance is excellent. However, most colors are inaccurate because the primaries are over-saturated, and the gamma seems to follow a flat 2.2 target instead of this sRGB curve, so most scenes aren't shown at their correct brightness. Overall, it's much better than the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz because Razer advertises this model as factory calibrated, but accuracy can still vary between units.

After calibration, the accuracy is remarkable. Any inaccuracies to the white balance and colors are fixed, and the color temperature is still close to the target. Gamma is a lot closer to the target, but some dark and bright scenes are slightly over-brightened.

You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit even for the same model due to manufacturing tolerances.

The Razer Raptor 27 has a simply remarkable SDR color gamut. It fills out the entire sRGB color space perfectly without over-saturating any colors, but this measurement was taken after calibration because the colors are over-saturated out-of-the-box. It also has excellent coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing, but it's not as good as the Corsair XENEON 32QHD165.

Thanks to the incredible SDR color gamut, the SDR color volume is also fantastic. It displays colors at a wide range of brightness levels, but due to the low contrast, it can't display dark colors well.

The HDR color gamut is impressive. Its DCI P3 coverage is incredible, and it's right at the advertised 95% coverage. It has decent coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space, too.

The Razer Raptor 27 has a great HDR color volume. Once again, it displays brighter colors well but struggles with darker ones.

This monitor doesn't show any signs of image retention after display a high-contrast static image, but this can vary between units.

Like the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz, this monitor has exceptional gradient handling. You shouldn't notice any banding in scenes with different shades of the same color. It's advertised to use 8-bit + FRC to simulate a 10-bit panel, but we can't test for that.

Sadly, there are signs of color bleed with vertical bands of different colors. This isn't ideal for photo editors, but shouldn't be too noticeable with regular content. Keep in mind that this can also vary between units.

The reflection handling is good. It diffuses a lot less light than the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz, but the light is directed back stronger. It's good for rooms with a few lights around, but placing it opposite a bright window isn't ideal.

The Razer Raptor 27 has decent text clarity, which is normal for most 1440p 27 inch monitors. Enabling ClearType (top photo) improves the clarity on diagonal lines, as seen with the letters R, N, G, and S.

This monitor has a fantastic response time at its max refresh rate of 165Hz. Motion looks smooth and we recommend using the 'Strong' overdrive setting. Its response time is a lot quicker than at the 'Weak' setting, but there's more overshoot in darker transitions, which leads to some ghosting. You should choose whichever you prefer.

The response time at 60Hz is good. Unlike at 165Hz, we recommend the 'Weak' overdrive setting because there's too much overshoot with 'Strong'. This means that you may have to change the overdrive setting if the frame rate of your game drops. The Corsair XENEON 32QHD165 has a much faster response time at 60Hz.

The Razer Raptor has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

There's an optional backlight strobing feature to clear up persistence blur, which is commonly known as black frame insertion. However, it creates image duplication, makes the screen considerably dimmer, and works within a narrower range than the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz. Keep in mind that the BFI score is based on the flicker range and not the actual performance.

The Razer Raptor 27 has a high max refresh rate and has variable refresh rate support. Both FreeSync and G-SYNC work over the entire range via a DisplayPort connection, but only FreeSync works up to 144Hz with an HDMI connection.

We experienced an issue where VRR didn't work when settings the refresh rate to 60Hz either through the Windows Display settings, NVIDIA Control Panel, or the Radeon Software settings. VRR was an option when set at 60Hz, but there was constant screen tearing. However, VRR still works over its entire range when setting the refresh rate to anything above 60Hz, so we suggest doing so for a nearly tear-free gaming experience.

The Razer Raptor has very low input lag. It's slightly higher than the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz, but the difference isn't noticeable. We couldn't measure the 60Hz input lag with VRR because of the issue explained in the Refresh Rate section. Also, we couldn't measure the 10-bit HDR input lag because the highest refresh rate for 10-bit HDR over HDMI is 60Hz, and we don't have the necessary tools to measure it at its max refresh rate over a DisplayPort connection.

The Razer Raptor 27 has a 27 inch screen, giving you enough space to open a few windows side-by-side.

The Razer Raptor 27 has the same inputs as the Razer Raptor 27 144Hz, except it's a DisplayPort 1.4 connection now. The USB-C input support DisplayPort Alt Mode, allowing you to display an image from a compatible device. However, it appears that it doesn't support Power Delivery like the previous model because we tried to charge a few different phones using various USB-C cables, and nothing worked.

The Razer Raptor has a few extra features to improve the user experience. You can display images from two sources at once using the Picture-in-Picture or Picture-by-Picture modes. You can customize the RGB lighting through the Razer Synapse software, which is only available on Windows. There's also a Refresh Rate Counter, THX Cinema Mode, which we didn't test, and USB-C Speed Options, allowing you to decrease the refresh rate to 60Hz over USB-C signals.

There's a single joystick on the back to control the on-screen display.

• HDMI cable
• DisplayPort cable
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• USB-A extender
• Power brick
• Power cable
• User guides