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Instead of buying one of the best handheld gaming PCs, you might want to consider remote play from the gaming PC you already have first and at CES 2025, Razer unveiled a new subscription-free service to do just that.
While you can already stream games from your PC using Moonlight or the Steam Link app, Razer’s new PC Remote Play makes the whole process even easier but it also has a few more tricks up its sleeve.
With one of the best phone controllers from Razer, like the Kishi V2 or the Kishi Ultra, you’ll be able to launch its PC Remote Play right from the Razer Nexus app. Another nice thing about the service is that it combines all of the games on your PC regardless of which launcher they’re from into a combined library.
After checking out Razer’s new Project Arielle gaming chair, I got to see PC Remote Play in action. On the home screen of the phone used in the demo, I saw games from Steam, the Epic Games Store and Microsoft’s PC Game Pass all in one place. There was also an icon for the desktop on the computer the games we’re streaming from and using touch controls, I could navigate around and do things in Windows 11.
The thing that really intrigued me about PC Remote Play though is that unlike other remote play solutions, the gameplay from The Thing: Remastered shown off in the demo wasn’t locked to a fixed aspect ratio. You see, these days many phones use a wider 21:9 aspect ratio while your computer monitor — unless you’re using an ultrawide monitor — likely uses a 16:9 aspect ratio. When streaming games through other apps in the past, there were black bars on either side and the gameplay didn’t utilize my phone’s entire screen. With Razer’s PC Remote Play though, you can adjust the max resolution to utilize the entire screen of your smartphone or tablet.
The gameplay itself was also a lot smoother than I’ve seen with other remote play apps in the past and during my brief time testing the PC Remote Play beta, I didn’t encounter any stuttering issues or artifacts.
If you’re using one of the best Android phones with the Razer Kishi Ultra mobile game controller, you can take advantage of Razer’s Sensa HD Haptics to get tactile feedback just like you would on one of the best PC game controllers if you were actually playing on your PC. Unfortunately, at the moment, this feature is Android only.
Likewise, if you’re using a smartphone or a device like the Razer Edge with a high refresh rate display, you can stream games at over 60 fps. At the same time, PC Remote Play also works with the best laptops. This way, you can smoothly stream games on your laptop in the living room if your gaming PC is in your home office or somewhere else in your house.
Razer PC Remote Play: Outlook
I for one can’t wait to try this out for myself with the best Steam games when I get home from CES. The Razer Edge is a fantastic device on its own. However, the ability to utilize the entirety of its 144Hz AMOLED display without any black bars at the sides sounds like a literal game changer for me.
In the past, I’ve used the XBXPlay app to stream games from my Xbox Series X instead of the official Xbox app. The reason for using a third-party app is that it allowed me to stretch or zoom in on my favorite Xbox games while playing them remotely. This approach has its downsides though as stretching a game to fill the screen looks a bit off and zooming in cuts off important parts of a game’s UI.
Now though with PC Remote Play, I’ll be able to work my way through my Steam backlog while experiencing these games the way they were meant to be played, using the entire screen of my Android phone or tablet.
The best part though is that PC Remote Play is entirely free and it’s available in beta right now if you too want to experience something similar to using the PS Portal with the gaming PC or laptop you already have.
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