Seven-Screen Aurora A7 Laptop Costs Up to $20,000

We recently reported about Expanscape, a startup developing battlestation laptops featuring up to seven displays and offering their prototypes to interested parties at undisclosed prices. Today we can share some more information about pricing, which tops out at an eye-popping $20,692 (after conversion) for the seven-screen model's base configuration that's powered by an AMD Ryzen 5950X processor paired with Nvidia RTX 3070 (8GB) GPUs.

Expanscape's Aurora laptops with five or seven screens are a work in progress, so every unit is unique to a large degree. The manufacturer says that it is getting closer to finalized pricing for its A7 prototype as it had standardized on specific hardware, but until now, the company hasn't announced official prices of its multi-monitor laptops. 

Expanscape currently has two types of laptop prototypes in three configurations. The 'basic' Aurora A5 notebook comes with five monitors: four 15.6-inch 4K displays and one 7-inch touchscreen integrated into its palm rest. This system packs an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 4800U processor paired with 64GB of DDR4 memory, a 2TB PCIe/NVMe SSD, and a 2TB SATA SSD. This entry-level machine currently costs approximately £4,500, or $6,286 USD after conversion. 

The 'full' Aurora A7 laptops are equipped with seven displays and come in two configurations powered by an AMD Ryzen 5950X processor paired with Nvidia RTX 3070 (8GB) GPUs. One model features four 17.3-inch 4K monitors, two 9.7-inch 1536p monitors, and one 7-inch touchscreen. Another does not have the 7-inch touchscreen but comes with a 17.3-inch touch-enabled LCD in its base to replace the keyboard, which now extends from under the chassis. 

Expanscape's Aurora A7 notebooks with seven screens are naturally more expensive than their smaller A5 brethren. At present, these machines cost £15,000 ($20,952 USD after conversion) for a standard model, but the pricing goes up with all of the customizations required for the professional built-to-order systems. All Aurora A7 machines come equipped with 128GB of DDR4 memory as well as 8TB of PCIe/NVMe and SATA storage. 

Both the A7 and A5 models come with internal 8 megapixel cameras with triple LED lighting and have dedicated hardware switches that can disable the cameras, microphone, speakers and wireless features. 

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Notably, the current pricing of Expanscape's Aurora machines is somewhat higher than several months ago because of component shortages and new policies at the UK border. 

It is noteworthy that while Expanscape's Aurora notebooks are still prototypes, they are rather clumsy and heavy. However, according to the manufacturer, demand for these systems is still fairly significant. Customers who bought the systems reportedly said that they needed them 'yesterday.' 

What remains to be seen is whether high demand for Expanscape's Aurora A5 and Aurora A7 will enable the company to make them look and feel like commercial products and not just prototypes. Evidently, a more solid build will make these systems considerably more popular among interested customers.