Multitasking on a laptop can be a bonafide nightmare. Tabbing back and forth between multiple webpages and applications to try and accomplish a day’s work is an incredibly inefficient way to work. Home offices (and just… offices) are often insufficient workspaces to see everything you need to at a glance. Enter Aura, whose collection of multi-monitor solutions, including the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max monitors, have taken even the simplest workstation and made it a space for power players.
In the box, you get the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max monitors, a 65W power source, two USB-C to USB-C cables (one for the power supply, a mini HDMI to HDMI cable and the documentation. The frame for the stand is made from a durable aluminum and the hinges that hold the three monitors together are firm without being hard to maneuver, meaning you can get the monitors where you want them and be confident that they will stay there.
Each of the 3 monitors are, as the name of the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max would suggest, are 15.6” LED monitors and offer a 1080p resolution with 60Hz refresh rate. The monitors have a brightness of 350 nits, which you will notice as being much dimmer than your laptop monitor, and offer an additional eye care mode which will lessen the blue light coming from them while you work.
Setup of the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max is incredibly simple. Unfold the stand so that the monitors are elevated, then unfold the monitors. The space underneath the monitors and between the stands is perfect to place your laptop and the stand sits at an angle that I found ideal for my laptop monitor to become one with the rest of the workstation. The power cable plugs into the centre monitor to power up the entire system.
How you connect to the monitors is actually up to you. The simplest way is to plug the laptop into the centre monitor and, at that point, you can choose to extend or mirror the display from the laptop. Mirroring the 3 monitors, and folding the two outer monitors back until they form a triangle, is an ideal way to set up a presentation centre for a meeting or just give everyone a screen to look at when watching a movie or playing a game.
“Podcasting is another fantastic use case for a monitor setup like the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max, as you can make one source viewable to an entire table of podcasters.”
If you choose to connect to the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max in an alternative way, the centre monitor has 3 HDMI Mini inputs for you to input separate devices into each monitor. Its big limitation, however, is that only the first monitor can play audio, so you would need to take audio from the devices plugged into at least two of the monitors for everyone to hear, which is probably for the best, anyways, since the audio quality lacks a presence that a set of headphones or your device’s own speakers can offer, with poor bass and high mid-tones.
The OSD menus offer incredibly simple options, like your basic brightness, contrast, sharpness, backlight and so on, with the added bonus that you could set the settings on a monitor by monitor basis. This is most meaningful when you are connecting different devices to different monitors and not being limited to one configuration. This also serves its purposes when using certain monitors for certain uses, and wanting to hone in the look of each monitor to match its purpose.
During my testing, I used the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max for a number of use cases. While all of them were rooted in multi-tasking, they were still all very different. The first, and most common, was a simple home office setup, where I had my e-mail and Teams on separate monitors while I used the third monitor and the laptop to work on a project, allowing me to do my tasks while keeping tabs on communication so I didn’t miss anything, something that is a major challenge on a single-screen setup.
“The Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max is a great tool for anyone who wants to get the most out of their workspace without creating a massive setup that locks them into one location.”
As a creator, editing is another task where the more monitors you have, truly the merrier you will be. Being able to see my editing software, my files and all of my notes in one glance is incredibly useful. The ability on some software to be able to move the preview onto a separate monitor is also crucial. The limited resolution for the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max to become a reliable preview monitor really depends on what you are editing. The colour accuracy, while good, will simply not live up to high-end monitors, but will do in a pinch.
Streaming is another example where a creator needs to be able to see a lot of things at once. You may be multistreaming and need to keep an eye on the health of your stream on a number of platforms, keep an eye on your streaming software and you may be using your laptop screen to game or browse the web as part of a Just Chatting stream, and a lot of that is simply not possible without working from a number of monitors unless you start using every other piece of hardware (phones, tablets) that you have in the house.
Podcasting is another fantastic use case for a monitor setup like the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max, as you can make one source viewable to an entire table of podcasters. I didn’t have a full table of people for this, but each person having a clear, straight-on view of what we are looking at just makes the whole setup feel more professional.
At an MSRP of $699 USD, it feels expensive, but let’s all remind ourselves that the Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max is three monitors in one with a setup optimized to upgrade a workstation with minimal cabling and is built to fold down to virtually nothing to take with you on the go. Yes, you could grab a couple of inexpensive monitors for your desk and be good to go, but can you take them with you? Can you quickly and easily configure them for all kinds of uses? I’d say no.
The Aura Triple Aero 15.6” Pro Max is a great tool for anyone who wants to get the most out of their workspace without creating a massive setup that locks them into one location. The combination of a laptop and this monitor set up can make a good permanent setup, but the ability to take it with you wherever you go is what gives it its edge. If, however, you are looking for more performance out of your monitors, then this may not be the solution for you.
