We’re always looking for fun pieces that make our work desks feel a little less like work desks, and Divoom keeps delivering. The Times Gate isn’t new, but it’s the kind of product that ages well. Most digital desk clocks tell time and call it a day. The Divoom Times Gate doesn’t care about that baseline. It’s built around five individual LCD screens, each running its own pixel art display, arranged more like a miniature mission control panel from a retro sci-fi set than anything you’d call a clock. The cyberpunk styling hits immediately, with hard angles and a look that belongs in a Blade Runner apartment rather than next to a pile of sticky notes.
Price: $129.99
Where to Buy: Divoom, Amazon
Divoom’s been building a name in pixel art hardware for years. Where the Pixoo focused on a single screen and the Times Frame leaned into transparent display tricks, the Times Gate goes wide instead of big. Five 1.44-inch screens, each pushing 128×128 pixels of full-color art, give you a surprising amount of visual real estate for something that measures 283mm across. It’s compact enough to sit next to a monitor, but loud enough visually to catch eyes from across the room.
Each of those five screens works independently, pulling different data and running different functions all at once. Your clock can show the time on one panel, weather on another, a stock ticker on a third, and animated pixel art on the remaining two. That modularity turns one gadget into something that replaces several smaller ones, and the effect is satisfying to glance at throughout the day.
Add The Gadgeteer on Google Add The Gadgeteer as a preferred source to see more of our coverage on Google.
ADD US ON GOOGLE
What five screens get you that one doesn’t
Resolution sits at 128×128 per screen, which sounds low until you remember pixel art thrives on constraints. Colors pop with a warmth that small LCD panels don’t always deliver, and the contrast holds up under desk lamp lighting and monitor glow.
You can set each screen through the companion app to show completely different content, from a world clock set to Tokyo to a live YouTube subscriber counter right next to it. That flexibility could get cluttered fast, but the pixel art aesthetic ties everything together into one clean, cohesive display.
Dual-edge LED strips line the sides, offering 12 lighting effects that sync with the display or run on their own. The warm RGB glow adds genuine atmosphere to what could otherwise feel sterile.
Brightness and color control through the app let the Times Gate shift from a subtle accent during work hours to a full light show at night. The 283x47x97mm footprint keeps things manageable, about the width of a standard keyboard and thin enough to fit between a monitor base and a coffee mug.
Smart features and millions of designs
Divoom calls the data screens “smart data dials,” and they pull live info from social media, streaming services, and gaming profiles. You can watch follower counts tick up on Twitch, check Instagram engagement, or track game stats without opening a browser tab. For content creators especially, having those numbers visible at a glance cuts down on phone-checking throughout the day.
Everything runs through Divoom’s Smart App on iOS or Android, handling clock faces, weather displays, and LED settings without a subscription fee. Divoom skipped the recurring charge model entirely, and it makes the product feel more honest for it.
The whole thing runs wirelessly over 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, so there’s no need to tether it to a computer, and smart home integration through Amazon Alexa and IFTTT opens up automation options beyond the app alone. If you’ve been wondering what a Divoom Times Gate actually does, it’s a digital desk clock that doubles as a customizable pixel art display, social media tracker, and ambient light source, all controlled from your phone.
The pixel art community behind Divoom offers millions of ready-made designs, giving the Times Gate access to a content library that’s genuinely massive. Options range from clean minimal clock layouts to animated scenes with weather overlays and character animations running in tiny loops. That depth means the Times Gate doesn’t go stale the way most digital desk accessories do after the first week.
Creating your own pixel art is part of the draw. Divoom’s editor makes it approachable even if you’ve never worked with a canvas, and results look polished on the actual screens. New designs show up daily through the app’s discovery feed, and seasonal content arrives without effort on your part. That constant refresh separates Divoom’s platform from competitors who ship fifty preloaded faces and call it finished.
Who this is for and who should skip it
At $119.99 on sale from $149.99, the Times Gate costs less than most RGB lighting kits and does quite a bit more. If you’re the kind of person who curates a desk look or hunts for accessories that start conversations, this lands right in your territory. It also makes a genuinely surprising gift, the kind nobody thinks to buy but immediately puts on display.
If you want a single large screen or a transparent display, the Divoom Times Frame fits better. The Times Gate’s strength is multi-screen modularity, not screen size. Anyone expecting a digital picture frame will come away disappointed, because the 1.44-inch panels are built for glanceable info and pixel art, not photo slideshows. If you don’t want to spend time in an app setting up screens, this will feel like more effort than it’s worth.You can also consider the Divoom Timebox Mini or the Timebox Evo.
Price: $129.99
Where to Buy: Divoom, Amazon
Divoom carved a specific niche here, and it fills that niche with more thought than the price suggests. For a desk accessory that doubles as a conversation piece and a working data display, nothing else is doing exactly this at this price point.
Love our content?
Sign up for our newsletter today.
No ads, no spam, just links to our latest articles!