The Expanscape Aurora 7 prototype is being marketed as the world’s first seven-screen laptop, a 17.3-inch behemoth designed with IT professionals and content creators in mind.
Having more than one display is quite common for PC workstations, but multiple screens have obviously been more difficult to implement on laptops. Well, until today, that is, as laptop manufacturer Expanscape has recently released the world’s first seven-screen mobile workstation, monster of a rig that unfolds into a mobile powerhouse. The London-based company has yet to announce a price for its unconventional device, but the company’s official website mentions that the prototypes are already available for sale.
“Expanscape will be manufacturing and selling and leasing our prototypes even before they are finalized as we recognize there is an immediate demand for these items in the DevOps, SecOps, CyberSecurity and Day;Stock;Commodity Trader communities,” the company posted.
Basically, even though Expanscape’s seven-screen Aurora 7 machines don’t really look like commercial products at this point, the company will build them to order to anyone willing to, a) sign a contract acknowledging that they are buying a prototype, and b) pay what I assume is a lot of money for it.
The Aurora 7 laptop features four 17.3-inch monitors (two in landscape mode, two in portrait) capable of 4K resolution, as well as three secondary 7-inch screens with 1920 x 1200 resolution. All seven screens fold out of the main chassis, like a sort of laptop Transformer. The whole thing weighs no less than 12 kilograms, which may seem like a lot, but is actually much easier to move around than a laptop and six additional displays.
According to Expanscape, the Aurora is powered by an Intel Core i9-9900K processor, 64GB of DDR4-2666 memory, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 SSDs, one 2.5-inch MLC SSD, and a 2TB 7200RPM hard drive. There are better gaming rigs out there, for sure, but this isn’t built for gaming. At least not yet, but the company claims that the spacious chassis can accommodate all kinds of configurations.
With seven reasonably-sized monitors running at the same time, battery life is sure to be an issue, right? Well, Expanscape claims that the Aurora 7 battery is rated at two hours and 20 minutes, which is pretty decent. It does need to batteries to achieve this kind of autonomy – an 82Whr battery for all the components inside the laptop, and a separate 48Whr battery just for the screens.
Is the Expanscape Aurora 7 the most bonkers laptop ever made? Well, it certainly looks the part, but we’ll have to see if it actually works and if the demand is high enough to make it viable.
