Expanscape out-displays any laptop ever made. Its prototype, the Aurora 7, is a monster of a mobile workstation with seven screens that pop out like an Inspector Gadget device. When you unfold the main screen, five different displays extend out in every direction, each showing its own windows and applications. (The six extra display is built into the right palm rest).
The company is describing it as a “proper mobile Security Operations Center.” It’s designed for developers, data scientists, and content creators – people who need lots of display area at the same time, in the same place.
The current version is still very much at the prototype stage of development. So, for now, it features:
- Four 17.3-inch 4K UHD panels – the main screen and three that unfold from it (one to the left, one to the right, and one above)
- Two 7-inch displays (at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution) that unfold from the top of both left and right displays
- A third 7-inch touchscreen displays (same resolution) below the keyboard, to the right
- A 104-key backlit keyboard
- Three USB ports
- One Thunderbolt port
- A 2-MB webcam.
- Integrated stereo speakers.
- A built-in subwoofer.
- HDMI.
- Wireless network adapters for 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
- A Bluetooth 4.2 module.
Its internal workings are:
- 64 GB of DDR4 RAM.
- An Intel i9 9900K 8-core processor.
- An Nvidia GTX 1060 series graphics card.
- 2.5 TB of SSD.
- 2 TB of HDD storage.
- Two batteries (one 148 watt-hour pack powers all the displays, and another 82-Wh battery runs the laptop itself).
As you could imagine, the Aurora 7 is massive and extremely heavy. It’s 4.3 inches thick and weighs about 26 pounds (11.8 kilos)! Its overall closed position dimensions are 20 x 13.3 x 4.3 inches (51 x 34 x 11 centimeters).
Because of the extra battery, you can’t take this laptop with you on a plane. However, the company is working out how to bring the battery size down so that you can.
The battery life for the device is an hour per charge.
Expanscape’s design team is currently working on a third prototype to debut in a few months. They’re aiming to get the system down to a top weight of 22 pounds (10 kilos) and make the components (including the battery) relatively easy to swap out. And to make available the options of 16 core AMD and 10 core Intel i9 processor, together with RTX graphics, more storage, and more memory.
