Best known for its components and accessories, Corsair has just presented the Voyager a1600, its first laptop designed for gaming but also for streaming. An original model that also relies on power.
Custom PC enthusiasts, and gamers in particular, are familiar with Corsair. For 25 years, this American manufacturer – which is also well established in Europe and Asia – has been offering numerous accessories and components for computers (housings, power supplies, RAM modules, SSD storage devices, mice, keyboards, headsets , cooling systems, gaming chairs, etc.) renowned for their quality. Enough to satisfy, in principle, a demanding public on a very popular market. But the equipment manufacturer, which obviously intends to go even further, created a surprise at Computex 2022, the major computer trade show which is being held from May 24 to 27 in Taiwan, by presenting its very first portable PC: the Voyager a1600. And to distinguish itself from the plethora of manufacturers installed for a long time, Corsair has decided to bet on the difference by developing a model designed both for gaming and for streaming.
In fact, the Voyager a1600 surprises with its design, and in particular with its presence; at the hinge of the screen, a row of keys that remains visible and accessible even when the case is closed. This button bar, which is reminiscent of the famous touch bar of certain MacBooks, is however not intended to replace conventional function keys: called S-keys and accompanied by a battery level indicator, its ten keys are indeed intended for streaming functions. And for good reason, they are controlled by the software of the Stream Deck from Elgato – a brand belonging to Corsair –, a very popular touchscreen interface among streamers, which acts as a remote control by allowing you to directly and quickly launch special actions during a broadcast (mute the microphone, turn on the lights, publish on the networks social, etc). But the S-keys are not limited to this very specialized use since it is possible to configure them to associate them with functions chosen in all kinds of software (for graphic, audio or video creation, for example).
For the rest, Corsair has not skimped on the equipment and the Voyager a1600 seems ready to rub shoulders with demanding and intensive use, in particular for demanding games. It is equipped with a high-performance AMD Rtzen processor (Ryzen 7 6800HS or Ryzen 9 6900HS, your choice), associated with a powerful graphics circuit, also signed AMD (a Radeon RX 6800M GPU), all supported by 32 or 64 GB of RAM (DDR5 type) and 1 to 2 TB of SSD storage (in PCIe 4 NVMe). The display is based on a 16-inch LCD screen in 16:10 format with a definition of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels and a maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz, perfectly suited to action games. On the control side, in addition to a large touchpad, the Voyager has an RGB backlit mechanical keyboard with ultra low profile Cherry MX microswitches (a technology very popular with “hard core” gamers). And everything is the endorsement: we find a Full HD camera (1080p) with a mechanical cover, three USB-C ports (2xUSB 4.0 Thunderbolt 3 + 1xUSB 3.2 Gen 2), a USB-A port, an SDXC card reader , a 3.5 mm jack output, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi 6E and a 99 Wh battery (unspecified autonomy), the whole weighing “only” 2.4 kg, which remains reasonable in this genre format.
On paper, the e Voyager a1600 thus aligns many assets to appeal to gamers, streamers and even creative people. The prices remain. This first Corsair laptop available in June in two configurations: it takes around $2,700 for the model with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, and around $3,000 for the version with a Ryzen 9 CPU with 64 GB of memory and a 2 TB SSD, prices for France not yet known.