I bought a portable monitor not too long ago for use in conjunction with a Compute Stick or as a replacement monitor for my aging laptop (soon ten years old). Well, it was too bulky to be placed over my laptop monitor to become the replacement literally, and i had this brilliant idea of finding one that does.
As mentioned in my previous post, i never liked the built-in display of the laptop, being very low resolution (1366 X 768) and having very washed out colours. I used an external monitor almost all the time. If you’re wondering why i got a laptop, well, it’s for portability when i need it.
So, i need a portable monitor that’s light, slim and cheap, and such a product does exist presently. Taking advantage of a promotion, i snagged it at a discounted price of 641 Yuan (S$127), and that is almost S$40 cheaper than the previous portable monitor i bought. The package looks very enticing, because it comes with a protective sleeve and even a screen protector. It also supports USB-C display (works with selected phones) and throws in the cable in the package.
Anyway, it is quite light for what it is, but sometimes not quite light enough for my laptop hinge to hold its weight, depending on the angle. It doesn’t help that one of my laptop hinge is broken. You can see in the featured photo above that it fits on my laptop nicely, so my laptop display just got boosted from 13 to 15 inch, and the resolution up to Full HD. The bezels are slim and it looks quite pretty.
Now for the cons – the colour is a little dull. The normal USB power output isn’t enough to power the display (for example from my laptop) unless you use it in the USB-C display mode (while actually displaying HDMI input). In this mode, the backlight brightness is non-adjustable and is fixed at 50%, and it is not quite bright enough, and this results in lower contrast also. I find that i need to use it at 100% brightness in order to achieve a sufficient level of comfort for the eyes. The screen protector is too reflective and definitely affects the display quality. I might just have to remove it some day.
Overall, if you’re looking for a cheap portable monitor for gaming or to watch movies, this one will suffice. If you’re particular about the display quality in terms of colour accuracy, then you might want to consider the other options, though i don’t know if they are really better. This one could be a better option, or this one which was previously on my radar.
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