How Many Screens Is Too Many for a Laptop? Is It Seven?

We love multi-monitor setups around these parts, both for gaming and productivity. Three nice widescreen monitors are perfect for playing flying sims and racing sims, because they provide a “cockpit” view that fills nearly your entire field of vision. When doing work, every additional monitor provides valuable real estate that you can use for multitasking between multiple windows and programs. But there is probably a limit to how many monitors you can use on a practical level, despite what you’ve seen in movie hacking montages. Apparently Expanscape never got that memo, because they have built an absolutely absurd laptop that has seven functional screens.

Yes, you read that correctly. This frankly ridiculous device has seven monitors crammed into what can very charitably be called a laptop. Expanscape claims that this computer, called the “Aurora 7 Prototype,” is the world’s first laptop to feature seven individual screens. We’re normally skeptical about those kinds of claims, but in this case we’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt, because we don’t think anyone else would be crazy enough to even attempt such a feat. The copy on the Expanscape website says that the Aurora 7 was “made for DevSecOps!, Data Scientists, and Content Creators!” But we know the truth: that this was created purely for mad scientists. And, more likely, for giggles and publicity. In addition to the Aurora 7, they have developed a dual-screen “pocket” server called the TeenySERV Duo, so this could all be to get attention for that — though it, too, seems to be tongue-in-cheek.

The details on the Aurora 7 are sparse and we aren’t even sure that those screens can fold up into a portable package. But we do know that there are four 17.3” 4K LCD panels, three 7” 1920x1200 LCD panels, and even another (eighth!) tiny LCD touchscreen in the palm rest. Those are attached to what was originally a consumer laptop with an Intel Core i9 9900k CPU. After modifications, that now has 128GB of RAM as well as one or more NVIDIA GTX graphics cards. All of that insane hardware is apparently powered by a built-in rechargeable battery for on-the-go use, and we think you can expect to get literally minutes of work in before needing a charge. Expanscape says that they aspire to the three “U”s philosophy: utilitarian, uncompromising, and unconventional. We certainly can’t think of anything more utilitarian than a seven-screen laptop the size of a coffee table.