CES 2011 Coverage

Razer

A trip to CES would not be complete without our usual meeting with Razer's president, Robert Krakoff. It's always a pleasure meeting with him and discussing the company's future, and this year was certainly no exception.

The product getting all the buzz at CES this year is the Razer Switchblade. This mobile PC gaming concept even won the CNET "Best of CES" award in the People's Voice category, and deservedly so. Though merely a concept, with the specs yet to be finalized, the Razer Switchblade looks to be a breakthrough device in mobile gaming. It features a multi-touch 7" LCD on the top with an "innovative tactile dynamic keyboard" on the bottom. What makes the keyboard unique is that underneath the unlabled, see-through keys is an LCD screen that changes depending on what application is running. Launch a document editor and a QWERTY keyboard appears. Switch to a movie and playback controls appear. But that's nothing — the coolest part comes when playing games. Launch World of Warcarft, for example, and none of your hotkey icons apear on your top screen, but rather in individual keys on the dynamic keyboard, providing quick and easy access to your favorite skills. Best of all, not only will templates for various games be available for free download, but Razer will also provide the tools for users to create their own keyboard layout. What templates will be available at launch is unknown, but aside from World of Warcraft, Robert said that we can expect popular Steam games to have templates as well since Razer works very closely with Valve. As far as the hardware goes, the Switchblade contains two batteries for extended battery life and features a USB port so you can hook up your favorite mouse for games that rely heavily on mouse control, like first-person shooters.

Below, you can see a QWERTY keyboard, World of Warcraft, and World of Goo, along with what the Switchblade looks like when closed. In addition, we've included a short video showing the keyboard layout changing when the application changes.