Top pick
This portable monitor offers impressive image quality for the price and is also good for gaming.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website Sihovision.
The Arzopa Z1FC is a budget portable monitor that punches above its weight, offering a sharp p display and fairly accurate color representation for a typical price of just $100. It has two USB-C ports, a Mini HDMI port, and a sturdy kickstand that works in portrait or landscape orientation. It looks nice in tandem with Windows and Mac computers, plus other devices such as the Valve Steam Deck.
Its p display is better than that of the competition. In our tests, the Z1FC was about as color-accurate as other monitors that cost twice as much, and visually we preferred its picture to all but those of the 4K displays. We watched scenes from movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos and found that the Z1FC looked sharper and more natural than competitors, especially with skin tones; if the colors aren’t to your liking, you can manually change the RGB balance to your preference. The display also reached 300 nits of brightness, getting noticeably brighter than other models, which maxed out around 270 nits and averaged 249 nits.
It’s also good for gaming. The Z1FC can reach a 144 Hz refresh rate, so if your computer or game console is fast enough, this monitor can change its pixels to new colors more than twice as fast as non-gaming displays, producing smoother motion. However, you need to set it to a refresh rate that your computer or game system is capable of running comfortably, because it lacks the variable refresh rate technology that’s found in more expensive monitors.
It has two USB-C ports and a Mini HDMI port. If you’re using the USB-C connection to the monitor and your computer supports USB-C charging, you can connect a USB-C power cable capable of up to 60 W and charge your laptop through it. Using that single USB-C connection to your laptop to both transmit data and receive power is beneficial if you’re using your laptop’s limited USB-C ports for other things. The Mini HDMI port is also useful for any laptop, PC, or game system that has an HDMI-out, as you need only the appropriate cable to translate the full-scale HDMI to Mini HDMI.
Its kickstand works in both landscape and portrait orientations. The Z1FC has a sturdy metal kickstand that flips out from the device and can remain securely positioned at many angles. The kickstand works in both orientations, but you need to rotate the picture via your laptop or desktop PC, since that option doesn’t exist in the monitor’s settings. The kickstand also has a magnet to keep it secured to the back of the monitor when not in use. Similar to our previous top pick, this monitor also has small plastic feet that keep it well anchored to flat surfaces.
If there’s an issue, Arzopa support can step up. We’ve found that budget products from unknown companies with somewhat inscrutable names, especially if they’re mainly advertised on Amazon and TikTok, are more likely to be low quality—that is, either the product is lacking in basic functionality, or quality-control issues make it impossible to recommend. To gauge whether the monitor quality was consistent, we purchased two additional Z1FC units, and they all tested similarly well. We experienced an issue with the ST Table, another Arzopa monitor that we purchased for testing, but after we reported the problem to Arzopa customer support, the company responded quickly and a new, functional monitor arrived about three weeks later.
It’s held up to six months of testing. In mid-, we distributed four copies of the Z1FC among staffers in other departments to test over time. One left-handed Wirecutter software engineer said they wished there were USB-C ports on both sides, as they preferred to put the monitor on the left side of their screen. You can do it, but the USB-C cable that comes with the monitor is just barely long enough. They also said that the monitor was great to use outside in the summer, though it wasn’t bright enough to use without an umbrella.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Some people might not like its kickstand. Compared with our previous pick, which had a wide kickstand that covered half the back of the device, this portable monitor with its slimmer kickstand is a little less stable on soft surfaces. The kickstand still works on such surfaces; the monitor is just more prone to tip over if jostled. On the other hand, this much thinner kickstand takes up less space than those of the competition, making the Z1FC easier to position on a crowded desk.
Upgrade pick
This ViewSonic model has a vibrant, sharp OLED display that offers the best contrast of any portable monitor we’ve tested.
The ViewSonic VX-4K-OLED is the best-looking portable monitor we’ve tested—its OLED display produces near-infinite contrast and vibrant colors. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology allows each pixel to turn on or off individually, so when you’re watching, say, a scary movie and a character peers into the darkness, you’re actually seeing an absence of light. In addition, during our tests this monitor’s 4K display showed more detail and sharper text in comparison with the p and 2K models we evaluated, which made words on screen more legible.
It has a cutting-edge 15.6-inch display. The VX-4K-OLED’s display is sharp, vibrant, and bright. When we watched content on this monitor side by side with competitors, every other portable monitor we tried paled in comparison—often literally. Most rivals looked washed out and appeared to be no match for this OLED screen’s fantastic near-infinite contrast. We measured the peak brightness at more than 500 nits, which is bright enough for you to use this monitor on a moderately sunny day, though the screen’s glossy finish can be reflective in the sun.
Its ports are hidden behind the screen. The VX-4K-OLED’s stand is a small square puck that flips out from the back; that’s also where you’ll find the monitor’s two 60 W USB-C ports, Mini HDMI port, and headphone jack. The design makes this display look a bit neater than its competitors, where the cable typically sticks out of the side of the monitor. When this portable monitor is connected to your laptop, it runs off your laptop’s battery. To keep your laptop charged without using another USB-C port, you can use the VX-4K-OLED’s second USB-C port to connect a cable capable of up to 60 W of power, and the monitor will route the power back to your computer.
It can work in portrait or landscape mode. The monitor’s stand is mainly meant to be used in landscape orientation, where you can change the angle of the screen. It can also work in portrait orientation, but in that case you have to tilt the screen back pretty far to reach the small square kickstand, so it can be a little awkward depending on your desk setup.
It’s very light and thin. At a weight of only 1.5 pounds, the VX-4K-OLED ranks among the lightest monitors we tested. Heavier portable monitors ranged from 1.7 pounds to over 3 pounds.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
It’s way more expensive than other portable monitors. The VX-4K-OLED isn’t the most expensive portable monitor we’ve tested, but it’s close. It typically costs $500, which is far more expensive than our top pick, but it truly is an upgrade in every way. If you’ve tried a p monitor like our top pick and want to scale things smaller on screen, or know you have eagle eyes and like to fit as much as possible on your screen, then we recommend the pick right below this one, the ViewSonic VGN. It’s about halfway in resolution and price between our top and upgrade picks, and it has a built-in battery and a neat wireless feature.
Best for...
This uniquely versatile monitor has a wireless transmitter that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
The ViewSonic VGN is one of the most interesting portable monitors we’ve tested due to its wireless transmitter, which plugs into the USB-C port of a capable laptop, desktop, or game system, and sends video wirelessly about 20 feet. We tested the transmitter on MacBooks, iPhones, Windows laptops, and the Linux-based Valve Steam Deck, and it worked flawlessly on all except one laptop, which we’ll talk more about below. It’s not the best-looking portable monitor, and the device we tested also had a significant light bleed on the screen’s lower left corner, which occurs when the monitor’s backlight discolors darker tones near the edges of the screen. But the wireless capability was just too useful, and we think it excuses a lot of weaknesses.
The VGN has a sharp p screen. The VGN has a similar resolution to our top pick, but it has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which means there are more vertical pixels. This ratio is especially good for working on documents or spreadsheets, because there’s more vertical space. However, content like movies or TV shows won’t fit as nicely on your screen, and you’ll have black bars that fill in the top and bottom of your picture.
It has its own battery, which lasts about three hours. Unlike most portable monitors, the VGN has a built-in battery, so it can be used wirelessly and not connected to any other source of power. This is really beneficial if you’re using the display to present slides from a laptop, for example, as you can place the display anywhere within about 20 feet of your laptop, and it doesn’t need to be attached by a wire to a wall or your computer.
Its wireless transmitter is widely compatible. The VGN’s wireless transmitter worked on nearly every device we plugged it into, except the first laptop we tried, the Asus Zenbook S 16. But when we plugged the transmitter into an older Lenovo with a Ryzen processor it worked fine, and it continued to work fine on laptops with Intel Core Ultra chips, MacBooks with M1 to M4 chips, an iPhone 15 Pro, and a Valve Steam Deck. We’re puzzled by this and have asked ViewSonic for more clarity on the transmitter’s compatibility.
It also has two USB-C ports for wired connections and power. If the display’s battery is dead or you prefer a wired connection, the VGN has two USB-C ports and supports pass-through charging up to 60 W. This means you can plug your laptop charging cable into the monitor, and the monitor into your laptop, and your laptop will charge without needing two USB-C cables connected.
It comes with a case that flips into a stand. The included case magnetically attaches to the monitor and can be unfolded and flipped backward into a stand. The stand has a few configurations, including two different tilts in landscape orientation, plus a portrait orientation. If you prefer a kickstand to a case, you’ll have to explore third-party options like a tablet stand.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
When connected wirelessly, the display looks slightly different. Every once in a while when using the monitor you’ll see a slight bit of barely noticeable lag, due to the computer’s image being transmitted wirelessly. We watched videos and worked without any issue, but when testing color accuracy we also found the wireless option to be significantly less accurate, with Delta E values above 5.0, meaning colors will look visibly different from those on a calibrated display. Most people wouldn’t notice, but we don’t recommend this monitor for color-critical work.
It had significant backlight bleed. We saw discoloration of black tones on a significant portion of the lower left side of our screen. This screen is much better suited to working in documents, spreadsheets, and slides, as opposed to watching movies and streaming video games, where you’ll notice these kinds of imperfections more often. If you put all your devices in dark mode, or if you prefer to write against dark backgrounds, you’re more likely to notice these imperfections.
It still has a dongle. The wireless feature is incredibly neat, but the transmitter is still a physical dongle. The transmitter is considerate of other nearby ports, though, with a 1.5-inch cable-like USB-C connector that attaches to a roughly 2-inch-by-1-inch rectangle that’s about a third of an inch tall. It’s just small enough to lose, and I did briefly lose it once while writing this review. We couldn’t easily find a way to buy a replacement dongle, either. ViewSonic sells a different wireless video dongle, but we haven’t tested whether it works with this display.
Best for...
This high-resolution ViewSonic monitor is an excellent second screen for a Windows laptop, and it adds touch capability.
The ViewSonic TD-2K has a 16-inch touchscreen that’s higher resolution than our top pick portable monitor, but the touch capability only works for Windows computers. If you want touch on Mac, check out the Espresso Displays 15 Touch we recommend in our Worth considering section.
It has a large, 16-inch touchscreen that works well with Windows. When using a touchscreen, we find larger displays are typically better, and the TD-2K is well-sized for tapping through the Windows operating system. Touch input was accurate and fast, and we didn’t experience any issues when testing with a few different Windows laptops.
It also has a sharp, p resolution display. Many portable monitors have a p resolution, which is perfectly fine on a 16-inch screen. But this higher resolution × display means text and images look sharper, you have more vertical space than other monitors, and you can set the scaling in Windows to fit more on your screen. This makes the biggest impact if you’re using the display for work, because this resolution makes it much more comfortable to fit two documents side by side or view more spreadsheet columns at once. You might need to experiment with your scaling to make sure elements on screen are large enough to tap, though.
It gets reasonably bright to use indoors and in the shade. The TD-2K reached an impressive 332 nits of brightness in our tests, which is high for a portable monitor. It’s not bright enough to use outdoors on a sunny day, but it gets brighter than many laptops and would be at home in a well-lit room. However this bright of a light, coupled with the touchscreen functionality, will blaze through your laptop’s battery if you don’t have it plugged into the wall.
Its two USB-C ports support 60 W of pass-through charging. When the TD-2K is connected to your laptop, you can plug the portable monitor into power, and it will pass the charge through itself into your laptop. The monitor supports 60 W of pass-through charging, which is enough for most laptops (except high-performance laptops or those designed for gaming).
It comes with a case that doubles as a stand. It supports two levels of tilt in a landscape orientation and one in portrait orientation. We haven’t tested this touchscreen as a tablet for art or drawing, but if you’re planning to try, you’ll likely want a kickstand that supports a lower angle, and potentially an artist’s glove to keep your palm from hitting the screen.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
It’s more battery-hungry than our other picks. The display’s bright backlight and touch capabilities mean that it requires more power than our other picks, and we noticed our laptop drained faster than other monitors when not connected to power. This pick is best for people who often have access to an outlet nearby, as opposed to our wireless pick, which doesn’t have touch but can last about three hours on its own battery.
If you want a more substantial stand (and don’t mind bulk): The ViewSonic VP has the closest thing to a real monitor stand we’ve seen. The monitor has a thick, segmented flap that flips out from behind the display and inverts into a stand. The monitor is lifted a few inches off the table and can be tilted up or down. There are other configurations for the stand as well, but its biggest downside is that it’s really bulky, and the whole thing weighs more than the average portable monitor. But it has two USB-C ports, a Mini HDMI, and an average color accuracy around Delta E 2.0. (We recommend checking out the link just to see neat monitor design.)
If your computer doesn’t have USB-C or HDMI ports: The Asus ZenScreen MB16ACV was our previous top pick, and it’s still a good monitor. It offers a 15.6-inch display with a p resolution, which looks good whether you’re typing up documents or watching videos. Thanks to its integrated stand, you can use it in both landscape and portrait orientations, and it can connect to a laptop via a USB-C cable. What sets it apart is its ability to download additional software that lets you use a full-size USB cable to transmit video to the portable monitor, so it can also work with older laptops or as a smaller, secondary monitor for desktops.
If you want to add touch to a Mac: The $550 Espresso Displays 15 Touch is a 15.6-inch p display wrapped in a slim aluminum casing that looks at home sitting next to a MacBook. It’s expensive, but it works well with Mac or Windows, and the company’s espressoFlow software adds touch support when the monitor is connected, even to a Mac. In addition, Espresso Displays sells a stylus for taking notes on the touch display, and it offers a note-taking app called Jot on both Windows and Mac. The razor-thin monitor doesn’t have any physical mounting points; instead, it magnetically attaches to a foldable stand that adjusts in height and tilt, and you can rotate the display into any orientation. It also offers pass-through charging. However, our picks have better-looking displays, and we found the color controls on this model to be far too simple for us to adjust the picture appropriately. Our top pick from Arzopa offers the same resolution for far less, as well. Even so, the 15 Touch is an interesting option for Apple fans who are willing to pay more for an experience that’s designed to work seamlessly with their MacBook.
If you want a slimmer, smaller, higher-resolution touchscreen: We really liked the Lenovo M14t Gen 2, which is a 14-inch touchscreen portable monitor with a × resolution. It has a similar-looking resolution and the same touch responsiveness as our larger 16-inch pick, but it’s much thinner and more portable. It’s also more expensive, at $400, but if you travel with the monitor often and want touch on Windows, this is the more convenient option.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website 15 inch Touch Monitor.
At CES , we saw a handful of new portable monitors that we’re excited to test this year.
Arzopa, which makes our current top pick, showed off two new products: a 13-inch OLED portable monitor and a stacked dual-screen portable monitor. OLED monitors typically look better than their IPS counterparts, because they can individually turn off pixels to create truly black tones. But since the pixels are creating all the light themselves, we’ve found that cheaper or more budget-oriented OLEDs can be too dim for typical use, or sometimes have strange color casts. Arzopa doesn’t have much information available yet on those two new monitors, but we’re also interested in testing the 16-inch, p Z1RC released late last year.
We also saw the Xebec Snap, screen extenders that are similar to (but seem better than) the clip-on laptop screen extenders that we mention below, but don’t recommend. Instead of clipping two monitors to the top of your laptop at the same time, you can clip a dock with magnetic attachment points onto your laptop. The dock has two pads that flip out from behind your laptop that let you magnetically attach up to two displays, or a display and accessories like a MagSafe mount for your . Other accessories allow you to put one display above your primary laptop screen, too, which we think is more comfortable ergonomically. It’s a very expensive system, starting at $550 for the magnetic dock and one display, but it’s unique and worth testing.
Australian company Espresso Display has two new monitors that we’ll be testing, the Espresso Display 15 and Espresso Display 15 Pro. The Display 15 costs $300, which is about $150 cheaper than the previous touch-enabled version, and is available now. It also has an option to come with a taller stand that raises the monitor above most laptop screens. The Display 15 Pro is more expensive, but it has a 4K resolution, full touch capabilities even on Mac, and is thinner and lighter than the previous 15-inch touch version. It costs $800, and is also on sale now.
Both iPads and Android tablets have gotten better in recent years at doubling as a second monitor. But unless you already have a tablet, we think that most people seeking a second screen should just buy a portable monitor, as they are less expensive and work better as a second display than any tablet we’ve tested. Portable monitors provide a simple, one-wire connection to your laptop or PC and have larger, 15- to 16-inch screens (versus the 10- and 13-inch screens of iPad models). On top of that, you never have to worry about a software update or a dead battery somehow interfering with your use of the device as a second monitor.
However, if you already own an iPad or want to mostly do iPad things and occasionally use the tablet as a second screen, it’s entirely doable. iPad models released in and later are compatible with Apple’s second-screen software, Sidecar, which is a simple-to-use feature with no latency. To connect iPads to Windows PCs or laptops, Wirecutter senior staff writer Joel Santo Domingo has used software like Duet for years and stands by it as an option.
We also tested Android functionality using a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, an also-great pick in our guide to pro tablets. We used the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra as a second display for a desktop PC connected wirelessly over Wi-Fi. Our first connection produced a result so horribly artifacted that it looked a little like an alien transmission, but when we disconnected and reconnected the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, the second-screen function worked correctly and with almost no latency. The Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra might be one of the very few tablets we would recommend for use as a second screen, since it has a 14.6-inch display, larger than what you can get from most other tablets. However, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra starts at $1,050, and we truly do not recommend spending more than a thousand dollars to solve a problem that a $100 portable monitor can solve.
The ViewSonic VG-2K is similar to our best touchscreen pick, but without the touchscreen. It has good color accuracy and hit 396 nits of brightness, the brightest portable monitor we saw in this round of testing. But at $300 we don’t think the 2K resolution is a big enough jump for most people to warrant paying more than twice the price of our top pick. If you know you want the extra resolution for better scaling, it’s a great monitor, but it’s a bit more expensive than we’d like.
The Pluggable USB-C Portable Monitor looked OK when we first powered it up, but tested poorly in terms of contrast and color accuracy. We repeatedly measured the contrast of the unit we tested around 460:1, which is well below our threshold of :1 for an IPS display. It supports a higher rate of pass-through charging than our picks, with 100W of power that it can funnel into a connected laptop, and it adds an extra USB-C port with up to 10 Gbps of data throughput. These could be useful features, but they didn’t make up for the poor image quality compared with the competition.
The Espresso Displays 15 unit that we were sent by the company for review had an issue that caused the screen to go black when connected to an input source, unless power was connected through the second USB-C port. Espresso told us this was an issue with the firmware update that specifically affected review units, but we can’t recommend the monitor until we’ve tested another copy successfully ourselves.
We tested two portable monitors by Ricoh, the 150 and 150BW. These are both 15.6-inch, p touchscreen OLED displays, and the 150BW can receive wireless video over Wi-Fi from a Windows computer. They’re very slim, and both have a svelte kickstand that flips out of the back of the back of the display. This all sounds great, but the Ricoh 150 typically costs $550 and the Ricoh 150BW typically costs $850. This is much too expensive for a portable monitor, and we’d want to see these features cost closer to $400 to be realistically competitive.
The AOC 16T3EA had an issue in which its contrast ratio would drop when we turned it up to full brightness, a problem we’ve seen before in budget monitors. Its stand was also a bit limiting, and we preferred the look of other portable monitors.
We bought the Arzopa S1 Table but were unable to test it because it emitted a high-pitched whine when we powered it on, an issue that we saw a few other buyers report in online reviews. Arzopa accepted the return and replaced the unit in about three weeks, and the replacement didn’t have the same issue. We still think our top pick is a better monitor due to its kickstand, and a Wirecutter staffer long-term testing the replacement unit independently shared that they were a bit confused by the case stand at first and it had, rarely, collapsed when bumped.
The Arzopa Z1C is similar to our top pick, the Z1FC, except it doesn’t have a 144 Hz refresh rate for smoother motion. The Z1C unit we tested was much less color-accurate than the Z1FC, and we also thought the Z1FC’s picture looked better.
The Asus ZenScreen MB166CR is a lower-cost portable monitor in Asus’s line. However, its gimmick is a screw-on kickstand that is truly annoying to use. Adjusting the kickstand loosens it, which means you have to tighten the screw—but twisting the screw tight causes friction that changes the stand’s position. Life is too short to spend any amount of time fiddling with this stand.
Meant for creative pros, the Espresso Displays 17 Pro is a 17-inch, touchscreen, 4K portable monitor. Our testing showed that it could produce 97% of the colors in the DCI-P3 gamut, which makes it great for creative work. It also provides touchscreen and stylus functionality when connected to a Mac, features that you’d typically have to pay hundreds or thousands more for in a pen display such as those made by Wacom. We like this monitor on paper, but when we tested it, we found it to be too bulky and heavy to carry around comfortably—the Pro Stand made for the 17 Pro weighs 1.8 pounds, bringing the full portable setup to more than 4 pounds, not including your laptop or charging bricks. The monitor also has no physical buttons, so you need to use the espressoFlow software to change any settings, and we found the color settings in the app too limited for us to quickly fine-tune the display.
The ViewSonic VX wasn’t as sharp as the other monitors we tested, and when we put it in sRGB mode to test its color accuracy, its contrast dropped to about 630:1. Other budget monitors offer a better experience.
The ViewSonic VX-4K is a competitive 4K display that we would have named our upgrade pick—but the OLED version is better. The VX-4K is color-accurate and bright, reaching nearly 500 nits. We recommend the OLED version because it gets even brighter, and OLED screens generally look better due to their increased contrast. But if you don’t like the glossy screen coating of the OLED model, the VX-4K is a worthy portable monitor to get instead.
The HP E14 G4 is a solid portable monitor with a 14-inch, p display, a sturdy stand, and a basic on-screen menu for changing brightness, contrast, and color. But it’s smaller and much more expensive than our top pick, and it offers about the same image quality.
The Dell CH is extremely similar to HP’s E14 G4 in size and image quality, but it has fewer image settings. It’s a few years old, and you can get a better picture for much less money.
The Lenovo ThinkVision M14d is a 14-inch display with an impressive × resolution. It’s a nice monitor, but its $475 price tag at the time of our review was simply too high for that resolution and the monitor’s IPS display technology.
We also tested the Asus ZenScreen Go MB16AWP, a higher-end display with wireless connectivity and its own internal battery. This model has the ability to connect to your to act as a larger screen for you to watch TV or movies. However, when testing the wireless features, we found that many popular streaming services limit how their videos are viewed, which includes streaming video locally to another wireless device nearby. Although we were able to successfully stream video through Plex, the video was choppy and unwatchable. The wireless communication worked well for adding a second wireless display to Windows computers, though, so if you have that specific need, this monitor could be a good option. Overall, however, paying a premium for the battery and the wireless features of the MB16AWP doesn’t seem worth it given its restrictions.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Signe Brewster.
Uperfect A17 DS: The A17 may be far from an exceptional monitor, but for the money, it has relatively strong brightness and clarity in a package that’s solid for on-the-go productivity. On one hand, the 4K 15.6-inch panel delivers almost 285 pixels per inch, so the screen can be exceptionally sharp. Uperfect backs that up with a solid brightness level of about 427 nits (a touch shy of its 450-nit rating) and surprisingly high :1 contrast ratio. That pairs well with a strong matte finish for easy visibility. Regardless of how the monitor fails to meet the bars that Uperfect set for the A17, it manages good performance for a budget portable monitor (priced at $250 and discounted to $190 at the time of writing).
The design isn't elegant, but it’s simple and effective. For the most part it’s just a big plastic slab nearly half an inch thick with no integrated kickstand, just a magnetic cover that protects the display when it's packed and tilts it at a few different angles when in use. There are two USB-C ports and an HDMI port, and though it can run off a single-cable connection, like other monitors we’ve seen, that's not always reliable. At maximum brightness and using the monitor’s (bad) built-in speakers, it requires too much power for a single-cable connection and will begin to power cycle. Simply foregoing the use of the speakers was enough to get over that hurdle in our testing. Just how much you can use will also depend on your system’s port, as we had a better experience using Thunderbolt 4 and more power cycling on USB4.
Minisforum MDSA156: Like the dual-screen Acer PD163Q I've reviewed, the MDSA156 is one of few portable monitors to offer two displays that fold up like a laptop, but when opened, it turns into two p screens connected by a hinge to offer more screen real estate. But they have some clear differences in quality, including disappointing displays with limited color gamuts (far short of full sRGB), and the color and brightness shift dramatically when viewed off angle. The contrast is fine, and they hover around 300 nits of max brightness, though the upper display is notably dimmer, while the lower display has weaker contrast. On the plus side, the monitor let me use both displays simply with a single USB-C cable connection.
Running the displays at max brightness uses too much power for many devices (30 watts) and can require a second cable. At least the antiglare finish of the screens proves fairly forgiving while running the displays at lower brightness. It's also decently built with a beefy kickstand, plus the hinge between screens holds the monitors at a variety of angles for considerable flexibility. The chassis and kickstand of the monitor is also all metal. It all adds up though, with the MDSA156 weighing 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms), the same as a lot of full laptops. It even includes speakers that can be useful in a pinch, though they don’t sound good. Minisforum also includes two USB cables, an HDMI cable, and a small power brick to pretty much cover all the bases of what you might need for connectivity. You do get a lot for the money; at $231, it’s a nice price next to the Acer PD163Q.
Measurements are taken using a Spyder X2 Ultra colorimeter using DataColor's Spyder X2 software for SDR. Color accuracy measurement results are reported in Delta E using Datacolor's 48-color patch test.
In addition, HDR results are gathered using the VESA DisplayHDR Test app's patterns to display 100% and 10% windows for brightness measurements as well as RGBW values, again measured using the Spyder X2 Ultra, to get CIE xyY color values and compared against the DCI-P3 color space's xyY color values to calculate HDR gamut coverage using this gamut calculator.
On the most basic monitors, we may stick with just brightness, contrast and color gamut, while on more capable displays, we may run tests of most user-selectable modes for gaming or color-critical usage, uniformity and so on. For the color work, we may also run tests to verify how white point accuracy varies with brightness. We also use Blur Busters' motion tests to judge motion artifacts (such as ghosting) or refresh rate-related problems that can affect gaming.
Keep in mind that individual results can vary from a manufacturer's reported results for a variety of reasons. For instance, you can be using a different set of color patches for the accuracy tests (as I do), a different colorimeter (as most individuals do), a different way of calculating (such as determining gamut using RGB and CMY primaries rather than the more common RGB only), monitor settings (manufacturers rarely provide the OSD settings used for its tests) and so on.
Connections
There’s no universal rule about what connections portable monitors have to offer. From one to the next, you can find any combination of ports. Some portable monitors rely on just a single USB-C connection for power and video, and others may need auxiliary power. Many of the best options include a USB-C port to handle all your needs, so you only need one cable. Most also include an HDMI or mini HDMI port, which provides broader compatibility. Newer laptops can handle display output over USB, while game consoles, older laptops and desktops might not, so having any kind of HDMI port is useful.
Power
Some portable monitors can draw all their power from the same USB-C cable they get their video signal. Bigger, brighter and higher-resolution monitors typically need more power, and this can be too much for USB ports. In these cases, the monitor may have a second port for auxiliary power. Unfortunately, the matter of powering portable monitors is incredibly variable. Some laptop USB ports can supply enough power for a portable monitor, but another port on the laptop might not. Some monitors I’ve tested will work fine with a single USB connection to a laptop but then turn off if the brightness is set too high. Given the variability, it’s important to check each monitor's specific power requirements and try to ascertain whether your computer has a port to meet the requirement. If you’re particularly concerned about power on the go and using fewer cable connections, some portable monitors include built-in batteries.
Size
Size is an important consideration for a portable monitor. You want to maximize the additional screen real estate you’re getting on the go, but you also want to avoid ending up with a monitor that’s so big that it limits mobility or uses too much desk space. You’ll generally find a listed size with each monitor that indicates the diagonal size of the display area only. So, to make sure the monitor you’re looking at will actually work for you, be sure to also check the physical dimensions of the monitor.
Color
Just like size and resolution, color gamut is an important consideration. Put simply, it’s a measure of the range of colors a monitor can display, and it’s presented as a percentage of a specific color space. Lower ratings will mean a less vibrant, more drab monitor. Higher ratings mean more lifelike colors. If you’re just doing office work and want extra space for spreadsheets, just about any monitor will do, regardless of color gamut. A 95% or more rating for the sRGB color space is good for entertainment and general web work. Monitors that cover 95% or more of the DCI-P3 color space can display a wider range of colors, making photos, videos and games more enjoyable, but these will generally be more expensive options. For professional use, you'll want to check for a measurement of color accuracy, too; a value of Delta E≦2 is optimal. Most portable displays are not color-calibrated out of the box and can look significantly better after calibration with a colorimeter. Short of that, you can use tools in MacOS and Windows to improve image quality manually.
What’s important if I want to travel with a portable monitor?
Portable monitors, unlike laptop displays, don’t all have built-in protection. When you travel with your laptop, you close it, in turn protecting the display. The rest of the laptop covers the display and adds some structural rigidity to it. Portable monitors don’t have these benefits. So, if you take a portable monitor with you, it’s a good idea to have a sleeve or cover for the screen itself to protect it from scratching, and you’ll want to ensure it won’t get bent in your bag. Thankfully, many portable monitors come with covers and sleeves. Most also include some sort of stand, so you can prop them up easily wherever you go.
Can I use a portable monitor with my ?
This depends on a couple of factors. Many phones don’t support display output, so you won’t be able to use your with these monitors. Some phones, such as recent iPhones, support display output over their USB-C port. But these are unlikely to supply enough electricity to power the external monitor. That means while you can still use the portable monitor, you will likely need auxiliary power for the monitor itself.
Are portable monitors good for gaming?
Portable monitors don’t have any inherent advantages for gaming. Many are built with lower-quality display panels and have low refresh rates. Many I’ve tested suffer from some ghosting, which doesn’t impact day-to-day use heavily but negatively affects gaming. Low refresh rates also keep games from looking as smooth. That said, plenty of portable monitors have special gaming optimizations. You can find models with fast 120Hz and higher refresh rates, and some even offer OLED panels, which exhibit almost no ghosting. That said, most portable monitors are larger than the screens on mobile gaming devices like the Steam Deck" target="_self or
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