While smartphones have originally been a casual gaming platform, that has changed in recent years, with more complex games getting players to invest in hours upon hours of play every day. Suffice to say, today’s mobile gamers spend as much gaming time on their handheld devices as PC gamers do. And you know what happens when you do a gaming marathon on a single machine? It gets hot. That’s why the Razer Phone Cooler Chroma exists.
That’s right, Razer made a cooling device for smartphones, allowing gamers to play for extended periods while keeping their mobile devices from overheating. Is that a real problem? We don’t know. It makes sense, though, since any kind of electronics will get unusually hot after being used continuously for several hours. This vows to help prevent that.
The Razer Phone Cooler Chroma is a small heatsink with a fan, all housed inside a disc-like enclosure, that draws heat away from the smartphone and sends it towards the back. It uses a Peltier cooling tile to transfer heat from the phone to the aluminum heatsink, while a seven-blade fan takes that heat and dissipates it in the air. According to the outfit, the fan is designed to operate relatively quiet at 30 decibels, so you get a good amount of cooling power without the loud noise you probably remember with gaming PCs from many years ago.
While designed for mobile gaming, it’s not quite as easy to take around as regular mobile devices, as the Cooler Chroma doesn’t have its own battery. Instead, it requires being plugged to a power outlet during use, so you’ll need to be constantly tethered if you’re going to game for long periods. Of course, gaming like that will also require you to plug in your phone (which means, you’ll need an outlet regardless), so not putting a battery in this thing does make some amount of sense, as that keeps it small.
The Razer Phone Cooler Chroma comes in two variants: one with a clamp for working with any smartphone and one with MagSafe for Apple’s newer iPhones. Both use, pretty much, the same design, so the mounting capability is the only thing that differentiates the two. Does it work? We have no idea. Considering you’re putting the heatsink outside your phone instead of directly on top of the electronics, it’s questionable how effective it’s actually going to be. Still, if you’ve been in search of ways to keep your phone’s temperature lower while you’re in the heat of a satisfying battle royale match, it’s, pretty much, the only legit-looking option we’ve seen so far.
Being a Razer device, it naturally comes with the outfit’s Chroma lighting system. That way, it can put on a light show behind your phone, while you tap, swipe, and rage at your opponents out front. Other features include 12 customizable RGB LEDs, up to 6400 rpm fan speed, and onboard Bluetooth that allows you to wirelessly connect to the device (for adjusting the Chroma and the fan properties).
The Razer Phone Cooler Chroma is available now, priced at $59.99.