Netflix Deal Ramps Up Razer Phone's Entertainment Power

Razer's phone has amazing speakers; now it has the 5.1 audio content to take advantage of them.

LAS VEGAS—Razer and Netflix announced today at CES that the Razer Phone will start showing Netflix content in HDR and 5.1 surround sound, for content where that's available. While other high-end smartphones support HDR, this makes Razer the first phone to have both capabilities, the company says.

The Razer Phone has an HDR screen and dual front-facing, Dolby-certified speakers. Obviously, it doesn't have six speakers, so the "surround sound" here is virtual. The phone's front-facing speakers, as we noted in our review, are louder and more powerful than other phones' speakers.

Finding HDR 5.1 content on Netflix can be tricky, though. There's no official list. When we searched, we mostly found recent editions of Netflix original series and movies—Stranger Things 2 (good), the Netflix Marvel TV series (good), Marco Polo (so-so) and Bright (bad), for instance. It'll clearly take a while for Netflix to ramp up that content.

We tested out Netflix playback on a Razer phone versus a Nexus 6P using Stranger Things 2 in Razer's suite. Honestly, we didn't see much of a difference. The Razer phone definitely showed "HDR" and "5.1" logos in the Netflix app while the Nexus only showed "HD." But watching the show on the two phones, the difference wasn't hugely striking. Maybe the lighting on the Nexus seemed a little harsher. But the Razer phone's relatively dim screen muted the effect that HDR might have, as the brighter screen on the Nexus 6P delivered more punch.

The new capabilities will come to Razer Phones later this month in a software update that also includes "improvements to screen and sound," which may improve that HDR experience. Razer has been pretty good about pushing through software updates to address some of the issues we remarked on in our review. Specifically, they've asked us to re-test the phone based on new camera software. Messed-up camera software is a perennial pitfall for new phone makers (see: Essential), so it's good to see that Razer is on top of it.

If Netflix and Razer want to sell phones based on HDR 5.1, they're going to have to show a major difference. Hopefully, the final software updates will push Razer's Netflix quality beyond its competitors.

1 Cool Thing: Razer Phone