Razer's Absurd New Laptop Is a Multi-Screen Transformer

Razer's Absurd New Laptop Is a Multi-Screen Transformer

Multiple monitors that'll fit in your backpack.

Gaming laptops can seem like a great option for anyone who doesn't want to be chained to a desk, or can't afford to have a desktop computer for gaming and then a laptop for everything else. But even though gaming laptops can be pretty dang powerful, they just can't match the glorious screen-space of a three-monitor "battlestation" set-up. At least, they couldn't.

Razer's Project Valerie, a concept laptop announced at CES this year, attempts to solve that problem with two extra screens which slide out from either side of the main screen at the push of a button. That means when fully expanded, Project Valerie rocks not one but three 17.3-inch 4K screens for a total resolution of 11,520 x 2160 pixels or about two Macbook Air screens tall and exactly eight Macbook Air screens wide—not physically of course; Valerie just packs the same amount of pixels.

about two Macbook Air screens tall and eight Macbook Air screens wide

Such bonkers resolution comes with downsides, though. It takes a seriously powerful graphics card to push one 4K display's worth of pixels. Three requires even more. To that end, Valerie packs a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, the most powerful desktop graphics card that currently exists. Now, for the second downside—that huge graphics card also means the Valerie is pretty big. It's just a little bit thinner than three Macbook Airs stacked on top of each other. At just under 12 pounds its heavy, too. Not for a what amounts to a full-on gaming PC, no. But for a laptop, most definitely yes. As for battery life? We're not even sure how you could scrape by with more than an hour at best, making this device seem even more impractical.

Of course the biggest thing to note about Project Valerie is that it's just a concept device. It's not for sale, doesn't have a price, and may never actually be purchasable in its current form. This is just Razer taking an opportunity to show off. In 2015, Razer announced a modular desktop PC concept called "Project Christine." It never came out, and there's no guarantee this will either. If it does, it will probably be mind-numbingly expensive. But even if Razer never makes this laptop at scale, it's impressive that it was even able to make it at all.