Razer’s new Project Sophia turns your desk futuristic

A new year brings new products and new conventions, and this year isn’t any different. For CES 2022, Razer has announced Project Sophia, the “world’s first modular gaming desk concept”. This is not a simple desk that you might buy from IKEA or the one you’ve had for ten years. Razer claims that it’s completely modular and magnetic. In contrast to having a PC tower next to your monitors, the PC is inside the desk. With different accessories and devices, you can configure your setup the way you’d like it.

Razer offers accessories that you can put in the desk. These include sound control, system monitoring, programmable hotkey module, external GPU, raid controller, as well as a network performance module, 15W wireless charger, Thunderbolt 4 hub, and media controls. The desk can include custom input modules, a tablet, webcam, and microphone with boom arm. Other smaller things you can find include a digital planner, productivity launcher, team communication, privacy control, and a beverage warmer.

Additionally, Razer mentions different ways you can design the desk, whether you play video games, create, stream, or work from home. You can change the desk to suit your needs, with RGBs and a glass top along with your choice of a 65″ or 77″ OLED monitor.

Richard Hashim, the VP of Growth at Razer, mentioned that Sophia is their vision for a multi-purpose gaming and workstation set-up. The desk “meets the very different needs of a variety of PC uses, negating the need to move between workspaces.” A modular system allows users to reconfigure their desks with flexibility. Hashim also added that you can adapt “Project Sophia not just for the task at hand, but also to the user’s particular preference.”

In previous years, Razer has announced some of the box concepts. During CES 2018, they unveiled Project Linda, a laptop combined with a smartphone. In 2020 during the start of COVID-19, Razer planned to help create surgical masks to help with the crisis. During CES 2021, Project Hazel was unveiled, which turned into Razer Zephyr.

Yet, there’s a real downside to these projects that Razer throws out. As The Verge notes, Razer’s history of CES prototypes are flashy “one-off projects shown off annually as an example of the potential of [the] future”. A lot of Razer’s projects don’t turn into real things. The Verge mentions Project Christine from 2014 that’s supposed to be a Jenga PC tower. Project Valarie, 2017’s project was a laptop with 3 monitors. Or, as mentioned at the beginning, Project Linda was their Laptop-mobile phone combination. So even if Razer announces something cool, it doesn’t mean it will actually eventuate into a purchasable product.

We don’t know how much Project Sophia may cost if they go through with making it. Although considering that there’s a PC already in the desk, it might be thousands of dollars. It’s an interesting idea and could be something we’ll see in the future. Although it’s probably a pipe dream, it’s still pretty cool to look at.