Razer Forge TV pre-orders are now real, shipping April 29

After a brief false alarm early this month, Razer has finally taken off the veils and put up its Android TV offering up for pre-order. Not much has changed, including the speculated price tag. And yes, there is a bundle that will net you both the Forge TV and the Serval controller, which don’t come together. More than anything, this reassures fans that the Android TV promise ala Razer is real and coming soon. In fact, it will come on April 29 at the earliest.

Although Google primarily intended Android TV to be, well, for the TV, there is no escaping the fact that it will eventually be used for gaming as well. Google even has an optional controller just for that purpose. It stands to reason, then, that gaming companies like Razer and NVIDIA would be making a grab for that market. Beating the NVIDIA SHIELD to the launch, the Razer Forge TV is now available for pre-order. But while you can order the console itself, you’ll probably want to grab the Serval controller as well while you’re at it.

What will you be getting when you buy this inconspicuous looking black box? You practically have an Android 5.0 device running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805. Sadly, there’s only 2 GB of RAM, which might be cutting it close as far as more resource hungry games go. 16 GB of storage might also not be enough space for more high-end Android games, but the USB 3.0 port could very well make up for it. Of course there’s provisions for connecting via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, but the Forge TV itself connects to your TV via the usual HDMI link.

The Forge TV itself doesn’t have any input device of its own. So either you connect to it using a smartphone app or try to get the next best thing: a controller. For that purpose, Razer has the Serval controller not just for navigating through the TV-optimized Android TV interface but also for gaming, naturally., Back CES early this year, Razer also revealed the wireless keyboard and mouse combo known as the Turrent, but that is strangely MIA at the moment.

Takea peek of our hands-on with the Razer Forge TV and Friends at CES 2015

The Razer Forge TV itself goes for $99.99 and will ship starting 29th April. The Razer Serval, on the other hand, costs a close $79.99 and will come later on May 5. But since the device is totally new, you will most likely want to get one of each, in which case the $149.99 Razer Forge TV Bundle would be perfect for you. You’ll just have wait for May 5 as well before it starts shipping.