T.he Aurora 7 laptop seems lifted straight from the imagination of a Hollywood prop builder working on a bad hacker movie. But with seven fold-out screens, there’s little chance anyone will actually be able to use this beast on their lap. It is a mobile transforming workstation for those who need more screen space than monitor space.
Made by a British company called Expanscape, the Aurora 7 is really just a prototype at this stage of the game (as evidenced by the extensive use of 3D printed parts), but it is designed to truly mobile workstation for everyone from developers to content creators to even well-funded gamers who want an immersive experience of a computer that they don’t have to leave at home.
Powered by an Intel i9 9900K processor supported by 64 GB of DDR4 RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 1060 series graphics card, the Aurora 7 also comes with 2TB of hard drive storage and an additional 2.5 TB of SSD storage, plus all the ports you could ever need to expand the capacity even further. But the star of the show is the intricate mosaic of screens, including four 17.3-inch 4K (3840 X 2160) LCDs – two in portrait mode and two in landscape – as well three smaller 7-inch screens all print 1920 X 1200 pixels, one of which is in the palm rest of the laptop.
G / O Media can receive a commission
Perhaps even more impressive is that all those screens are designed to fold on themselves to create a flat profile that can be carried in a bag, albeit a bag large enough to hold a 4.3-inchthick laptop that weighs no less than 26 kilos. The makers of the Aurora 7 hope to cut its weight down to 22 pounds when all is said and done, but this isn’t a laptop you’ll want to haul to and from the office every day. This is a machine for which you want to build a custom cart on wheels.
Although the Aurora 7 only exists in prototype form at this point Expanscape is still there offer to sell his creations for consumers demanding more pixels than ever before on a laptop. But not only does the company not disclose pricing information, it also requires interested buyers to sign a nondisclosure agreement promising Mom knows how much money they actually paid for their unique mobile workstation. In general, prototypes always cost more than a consumer version of a gadget, given the time and money it takes to make individual parts. Making them in their thousands on a production line will cut costs significantly, but don’t expect the Aurora 7 to be anything reasonably priced if and when it’s made available to the public.