How to build your own DIY triple-display laptop to maximise your editing experience
Jan 31, 2023
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Share:
Triple display laptops have almost sort of been a thing since 2017 when Razer first showed off their then-top-secret triple-display laptop to Linus Tech Tips at CES. Those early prototypes were stolen and somebody was even caught trying to sell them, but they’ve kind of disappeared ever since. There haven’t been any commercially available laptops with triple displays, and most DIY solutions are a little brutal at best.
There are some bolt-on solutions to turn your regular single monitor laptop into a triple monitor machine, but Matt at DIY Perks thinks he’s come up with his own ultimate solution. Naturally, it’s a DIY job, and it actually seems to work pretty well. Matt’s trick is to change the aspect ratio of the displays, going to a pair of vertical iPad displays instead of adding a pair of horizontal screens.
While it’s not quite the same screen real estate as three 15.6″ 1080p (or 4K) displays, it’s still a very elegant solution. For photo or video editing, you still get plenty of room for shifting panels and palettes off to another display out of the way. The iPad screen Matt used matches the height of his standard 15.6″ display almost perfectly when oriented vertically. And it’s also a little under half as wide. This means that both screens can fold over in front of the regular display, protecting all three when the unit is closed up.
But that’s not all Matt does with this particular DIY build. He’s not just modifying a laptop but creating his own from scratch. In order to create the enclosure for it all, Matt utilised his 3D printer, and he’s made all of the STL files available to download. Not only that, he’s made the project fully open-source. So, if you want to have a go at building one for yourself, you can.
It is a very ambitious project – would we expect anything less from Matt? – even if you’re already quite adept at building your own projects from scratch. This one is almost certainly going to have you pushing your limits!
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
Join the Discussion
DIYP Comment Policy
Be nice, be on-topic, no personal information or flames.