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Razer ‘Remote Play’ brings PC games to your Android device, but without the black bars

Streaming PC games to your Android device is nothing remotely new, but Razer’s new “PC Remote Play” service has a welcome upgrade with the ability to stream games at the native screen resolution of your mobile device, meaning no black bars.

Most PC game streaming services will pull the game from your PC over the same network (or via cloud infrastructure, in some cases), but often with the limitation that it streams at the same resolution as your monitor, or at a typical 16:9 or similar common aspect ratio. That gets the job done, but it means that you end up playing a game on your mobile device with black bars around the sides as most modern phones and even tablets don’t fit into those aspect ratios.

Razer looks to fix this with its PC Remote Play service, which the company explains is able to leverage the “full frame rate and resolution of your mobile device” to stream games “without black bars.”

Razer explains:

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Automatic optimization that takes full advantage of your device’s powerful display: Enjoy incredibly sharp, smooth visuals on your device. Razer PC Remote Play automatically optimizes for the device’s maximum resolution and refresh rate, without locking gameplay to fixed aspect ratios. 

The service first launched in beta earlier this year, but is now widely available.

Other benefits of PC Remote Play include improved integration with the Razer Kishi controller (including rumble support), the ability to play games from Steam, Epic Games Store, and PC Game Pass, and the use of the AV1 codec to deliver high-quality streaming at low latency.

Razer has released PC Remote Play as a part of its Razer Cortex app on Windows. Users can access the stream on their mobile device with the Razer Nexus or dedicated Razer PC Remote Play apps on Android 14 and up and iOS 18 and up. You can also stream to other Windows devices, including gaming handhelds.

More on Android:

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

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