Max16 triple-screen laptop looks seriously smart and starts from $700 - with a catch

I'm always keen to see laptop innovations and here's an interesting one: a notebook which has a pair of extra displays that fold out from the main screen - albeit it comes with some hefty caveats that I'll return to.

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This is a triple-screen laptop called the Max16 and it's a Chinese invention toting a 16-inch main display, and a pair of 10.5-inch displays that fold out to either side.

As Liliputing, which spotted the device (via VideoCardz), notes, it looks rather like a laptop which has a pair of dual-screen monitors attached, but these are fully built into the notebook in this case (they don't clip on). The two smaller screens fold in when you close the laptop (obviously making it thicker - it's 28mm when closed, and weighs 2.6kg).

The Max16 offers an expansive 29.5-inch display across all three panels, although as you can see from the images included (from Amazon), it's not a seamless triple-screen setup, as the bezels are fairly thick.

Still, if you're going to be running different content across the screens anyway, that probably won't matter much to you. The main 16-inch screen offers a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and the 10.5-inch displays are 1280 x 1920 (all of them are IPS panels).

This notebook has a tempting price, too, because for a triple-screen laptop with an Intel Core i7-1260P processor, it starts at around $700 (US) from AliExpress (shipping and taxes will inflate that price by at least $50 though).

Reasons to be cautious

That said, even though this looks an interesting prospect, there are good reasons not to buy from AliExpress to have a device shipped internationally. Okay, so it might all be fine, but if you need support, or something goes wrong with the hardware - you're in hot water. More to the point, as Liliputing makes clear, there are a number of different listings for the Max16, complete with different info on the specs, which more than gives pause for thought.

If you really did want to plump for this machine's three-screen goodness, I've found what appears to be the same laptop (labelled as a Max16) on Amazon from an Asian vendor called KOOFORWAY which is shipped from Amazon.com - but even then I'd be wary.

In this case, on Amazon the price is $1,199, though you get a better spec with the Core i7-1260P coupled with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. If you put any store in Amazon reviews, they are generally positive, but again - I'd urge caution.

Still, this is a nifty idea if nothing else, and maybe we'll see models like this from outside of Asia.

Otherwise, you could go for a set of dual screens to add on to your existing laptop - a notebook screen extender of some variety - or even a three-screen solution like the Aura Displays Triple Aero 15.6 Pro Max, where the displays sit above the laptop (giving you four screens in total).