Razer’s planning an awesome ‘12K’ gaming laptop with 3 actual screens

In the laptop world, we’ve previously seen innovations on the multiple display front like Packed Pixels – essentially a system that allows you to bolt iPad Air wing mirrors onto your MacBook Pro – but how about a notebook which actually has three displays built-in? Enter Razer’s Project Valerie.

Revealed at CES 2017, Project Valerie is a concept laptop with one main screen and two further displays which mechanically slide out on either side, with multi-display support fully integrated (obviously enough).

Each of the three displays is a 17.3-inch IGZO panel with a 4K resolution (so technically this is a 12K notebook!), and the benefits for gamers are obvious, particularly seeing as Nvidia’s “surround view” tech is on board along with G-Sync to keep frame rates smooth and stuttering to a minimum.

Although that said, driving this amount of pixels obviously won’t be an easy task for a notebook, and Razer hasn’t detailed any specs at this point – only mentioning that Valerie will come equipped with a GeForce GTX 1080 (or indeed, we’d guess there might possibly be an option on a pair of them).

The laptop isn’t just aimed at gamers, though, but also creative professionals given that the displays offer 100% Adobe RGB color accuracy, and obviously having three screens is a massive boon in terms of productivity, multi-tasking and working on the go.

Expect Project Valerie to have an all-aluminum chassis and to be around 38mm thick, weighing about 5.5kg (obviously packing in three screens isn’t an easy task).

The device’s keyboard will benefit from Razer’s ultra-low-profile mechanical switches, and nifty custom cooling which includes a fan plus dynamic heat exchangers and a vapor chamber.

At this point, as mentioned this one is still a concept, but a hugely intriguing one – although sadly it’s unlikely to be landing any time soon.

Project Ariana

Project Valerie’s keyboard, trackpad and extra monitors also support Razer Chroma and its diverse array of lighting effects, which brings us neatly onto a second project the company announced at CES.

Project Ariana is effectively an extension of Chroma, bringing RGB lighting not just to surrounding peripherals, but to the actual room you’re gaming in.

Ariana is a high-definition video projector with an ultra-wide fisheye lens that projects real-time lighting and also video effects into the entire room, extending in-game graphics and colors onto the walls around the monitor.

It utilizes two 3D depth sensing cameras and tailored calibration software to ensure that the projected images fit with the lighting of the room, any items of furniture around and so forth.

This is the future of Chroma, according to Razer, and it represents “total gaming immersion.” Indeed, if the company pulls it off, this could have quite breathtaking possibilities – but it’s not going to be easy to make it work, at least not if we look at previous attempts.

Such as Microsoft’s ‘IllumiRoom’ concept for the Xbox (with Kinect), which never made it past the tech demo/concept stage and now appears to have completely fizzled out. (Although certain TV manufacturers have dabbled with lighter versions of this concept and had some success).

  • New year, new tech – check out all our coverage of CES 2017 straight from Las Vegas, the greatest gadget show on Earth
TOPICS

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

Latest in Gaming Laptops
Lenovo Legion 5i
It's the best time to buy an RTX 4070 gaming laptop since Black Friday - get up to $600 off on massive clearance deals
Render of a new RTX 4000 Max-Q gaming laptop.
I can't say I'm surprised, but Nvidia's RTX 5090 laptop GPU has a big performance leap over its predecessor, according to early benchmarks
Lenovo Legion 5i gaming laptop on pink background with don't miss text overlay
Amazon's gaming laptop deals are good - but they can't compete with this RTX 4070 machine for $899 at a rival today
HP Victus 16 on purple background with big savings text overlay
I've said it before and I'll say it again - this $899 RTX 4070 gaming laptop is a steal
Canva
It's just a concept for now, but this RTX 5090 liquid-cooled gaming laptop is possibly the craziest thing I've seen in a while
Nvidia geforce 4070
Don’t panic, gaming laptop buyers – Nvidia assures us that mobile RTX 5000 graphics cards won’t have the chip-level fault that hit desktop GPUs
Latest in News
Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con up-close from app store
Nintendo's new app gave us another look at the Switch 2, and there's something different with the Joy-Con
cheap Nintendo Switch game deals sales
Nintendo didn't anticipate that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was 'going to be the juggernaut' for the Nintendo Switch when it was ported to the console, according to former employees
Three angles of the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch M4 laptop above a desk
Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) review roundup – should you buy Apple's new lightweight laptop?
Witchbrook
Witchbrook, the life-sim I've been waiting years for, finally has a release window and it's sooner than you think
Amazon Echo Smart Speaker
Amazon is experimenting with renaming Echo speakers to Alexa speakers, and it's about time
Shigeru Miyamoto presents Nintendo Today app
Nintendo Today smartphone app is out now on iOS and Android devices – and here's what it does