Has anyone suspected that Razer has a planned obsolence policy in action for all of its Laptops. The laptops that I am referring to are those with a three pronged AC/DC power jack which is soldered to the motherboard. These jacks are doomed to failure. With months of movement of the recharger cable, the two thinner prongs break off and charging becomes impossile, converting an expensive laptop into an equally expensive door stop. It takes several months for this to occur, so the break usually happens after your warrenty has expired. Since the repair is a replacement of the motherboard, it is quite expensive so many people will just buy a new laptop… a financial benefit for Razer. It may be that the newest laptops have an AC/DC jack that connects to a motherboard socket, but that does not help thousand sof customers that have laptops from before 2023. If youu have had this problem please answer this post.Razor should give free motherboard replacements for this issue but probably will not. Maybe we should switch to Alienware.
I don’t think there’s any planned obsolescence in this regard. The 3 prong connector is pretty darn strong, certainly a lot more durable than a barrel connector other manufacturers use. Alienware isn’t any better, they also use a proprietary connector. Most manufacturers do. Razer has an advantage because the connector is on the side instead of the back. There’s less of a chance to bend or mar the Razer connector. Realistically, you just need to take better care of your gear if you’re damaging connectors that easily. They are pretty darn robust.
I beg to differ. I take excellent care of my two Razers.
Your comment about the positioning of the input jack is off base. Most users will drape the charger cord around the back ouf the laptop to keep it out of the way. Since the AC/DC jack is located about 3 cm from the back ot the laptop, the thick cord of the recharger torques from side to side without any support because there in only about 3 cm of the laptop’s edge parallel to it. There is just enough side to side movement of the male connecter ot the charger to have it angle from side to side transfering torque to the two thin flanking pins on eirher side of the robust central pin of the female power input jack. Eventually, the accumuated strain of thousands of side to side movements will snap of the thin connectors, which arebmerely about ½ mm in thickness. Altough the laptop will still charge with only one of the thin pins in place, without the second pin, all of the side to side torque force is transfered to the remaining pin. Eventually itt shears off too. Then, as Raser has decided to have the input jack soldered to the motherboard, the user has no choice but to use an expensive non-rechargeable laptop as a doorstop or spend big bucks for a new mother oard. If the customer elects to have Razer replace the mottherboard, he or she has to pay an addditional large sum for labor which is surprising as it only takes 10 minutes to extract the broken motherboard and another 10 minutes to install a new one. How do I know? I was able to find an identical motherboard which cost me $900 and installed it my self. I am a retired pediatrician and have no training in electronics repair but was able to do it without a problem.
Two questions remain that need to be answered before a diagnosis of planned obsolence is acceptable:
- If Razer wanted to produce a long lasting laptop, why are the flankng pins of the AC/DC jack so thin and not 3 times thicker like the center pin? There is absolutely no physical reason why this could not have been done.
- If Razer was aware the input jack could fail because of the fragility of the thin pins, why did it hard wire the jack to the motherboard instead of attaching the jack with a wired connector that snaps into a socket on the motherboard? Razer must have been aware of the problem because there is an easy to swap, wired snap in female AC/DC connecter available but it is only for newer 15 inch models.
These are legitimate questions that need to be answered before you accuse a customer of not taking good care of his Razer laptop.
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