*Update: Razer's signup page for the Razer Zephyr open beta program is now live. You can sign up here for a chance to participate in the beta before the face mask goes on sale.*
Razer just announced that Project Hazel, the company's RGB gamer-inspired face mask concept the company debuted at CES 2021, is now a market-ready product renamed the Razer Zephyr –and signups for the open beta program will start soon.
The announcement is fairly light on details. A 15-second video revealed the new name and the plan for the public beta program, but little else, and didn‘t include where to sign up to participate.
We've reached out to Razer for clarification about where to sign up for the beta once it goes live and we will update this story if we hear back with specific links or steps you'll need to take. In lieu of more specifics, Razer will no doubt announce the opening of the sign up period on their website and through its various social media accounts, so if you want to be among the first to give Razer Zephyr a go, bookmark their homepage and follow Razer's social media accounts.
We'll obviously be keeping tabs on this story as it develops and we'll let everyone know when the signup period opens up, but with an expected Q4 launch fast approaching, we don't think you'll need to wait long for the start of the open beta.
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First introduced as a concept piece at CES 2021 earlier this year, Razer's Project Hazel generated a lot of discussion. Some were clamoring to see the new air-purifying face mask make it to market while others derided it as a gimmick that would never see the light of day.
Personally, some of us here at TechRadar didn't think much of Project Hazel when it was first shown off in January, as we were much more interested in Razer's Project Brooklyn, a concept design for a gaming cockpit based on the Razer Iksur gaming chair.
It was Project Hazel that captured the imagination for a lot of Razer fans though, both as a reflection of the reality of pandemic life and also the fact that it would likely be much more accessible, and practical, in our day-to-day lives than a gaming chair with cables running out the back and a screen enclosure locking you into it like something out of a William Gibson novel.
Razer Zephyr wasn't an interesting gimmick. It was a preview of our new reality
Unlike most concept designs, Project Hazel is actually going to make it to market after all, now officially branded as Razer Zephyr. When Razer announced at E3 2021 that it was actually going put Project Hazel into production, it felt like Razer might have missed its moment.
In those heady days of late June, the US and UK was well on its way to being safely vaccinated against the novel coronavirus that caused mass global disruption, lockdowns, widespread illness, and a staggering number of deaths.
Richer countries were finally starting to donate doses of the new coronavirus vaccines to countries that haven’t had access or produced their own doses in an effort to vaccinate the world and hopefully return us all to some semblance of normalcy.
Something happened along the way to a quick and easy end to the pandemic though. With vaccination rates stalling and the rise of highly contagious new variants of the virus, reality has sobered us up. The pandemic isn't over yet, and it likely won't be for some time, so the Razer Zephyr is depressingly relevant again.
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