A laptop brand I’ve never heard of beat Razer’s Project Valerie to the market with a three-screen laptop
Eight years ago, Razer announced a version of its laptop with three screens built in. With attention to detail and proper ergonomics, that many screens could potentially work in a laptop form factor, but we haven’t heard from it since. Well, Razer has been beaten to the market by Byone over at AliExpress, and it only took almost a decade.
As reported by ITHome, the triple-screen Byone Bax 16 laptop has one 16-inch central panel, with two smaller 10.5-inch screens on either side. Two smaller screens mean you can effectively fold them over to fit the same space as the 16-inch panel when closed.
For $1,100, you can pick up a version of the laptop with 16 GB of RAM, 256 GB of SSD storage and an Intel Core i7 1270P. No, 1270P is not a resolution; it’s a 12th Gen processor with 12 cores (four P-cores and eight E-cores). According to PassMark, it can achieve a multithread rating of 16743 and a single thread rating of 3335 in its CPU test, which places it 232nd fastest out of 1503 laptop CPUs tested.
This is to say, it’s certainly not an awful chip, even though the laptop itself feels a bit expensive. Interestingly, Xyber has recently released a similar three-screen laptop, also using the exact same chip, and it comes in at $790. This same Xyber machine doesn’t appear to be selling on AliExpress or any other big marketplaces yet, though
A light annoyance, all things considered, but the 16-inch screen in the Bax 16 is 1920 x 1200, and the two smaller ones are 1080 x 1920. That means the screen on either side has a lower pixel density, and you will likely notice it when moving the mouse between them.
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There’s a video of the device (except with 64 GB of RAM and 4 TB of storage) in action on AliExpress.This shows off the touchpad in the top right of the trackpad, plus it goes over how one would set up and use the laptop. It looks fine, I suppose, but it does show a noticeable jump when dragging tabs across the three screens.
Also, the two smaller screens don’t equally take up the 16-inch screen when folded, which means there’s a big space in the middle of the screen when folded. This isn’t a major problem, but I could see dirt or dust getting into this crevice when in a backpack.
As pointed out by ITHome, the promotional material does seem to suggest the device is compatible with external GPUs, but it doesn’t seem to have the ports necessary to do so. Rather strangely, the video has a moment where the logo for Counter-Strike 2 is on the right monitor, whilst the original Counter-Strike from 2000 is being played. Really pushing those Iris Xe 96EU integrated graphics to the limits there. It also happens to have a big activation prompt for Windows on screen, which is rather relatable.
I’ve used three screens on a laptop at one time before. I thought it might be a tad more productive to grab a KYY dual screen, attach it to my MacBook, and have access to three in the office without having to take up as much space. I hated it. The dual screen was heavy, didn’t fit into the groove of the back of my laptop, and it was cumbersome to travel with. I found myself distracted by the screen not lining up, and that cut down on imagined productivity.
I’m a dual monitor person at home. I like two split both screens in half, with the two on the left being my main tabs, and those on the right being social media or communications platforms like Slack or Discord. When gaming, my left is where I play games, and the right is where I stay connected to social media or write notes.
However, two screens attached to a single one on a laptop screen feel like a lot, and it needs to get the ergonomics just right to justify the extra weight and size it tacks on. That’s before testing how much battery those three screens could get out of the 5000 mAh one in this lappy.
I had little faith Razer could actually pull this concept off, so I have even less faith a brand I’d not heard of could do the same. Still, like Razer, I admire when a company tries something new, and I’m waiting for the day I’m finally sold on three whole screens. Just think of all the productivity gains. Potentially.
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