2.0 out of 5 stars
little has improved in the 5 years since my previous portable monitor
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2024
I have a 13" Elecrow monitor, which I bought ~5 years ago. It was a bit expensive back then, but larger options were even moreso and I didn't think I needed them. It wasn't the best quality in general, but it worked fine as a portable way to play my Switch on a larger screen when I was stuck somewhere.
~5 years later, I had been keeping an eye on portable monitors for a while. I jumped on this 17" ZSCMALLS monitor because it was on a decent discount, with a coupon on top of that, and what few other options in that size I found lacked VESA or were overpriced. An extension matching my laptop would be nice, as well as something for my Deck.
I've had it for a few days, and already I'm packing it up to return it. Following are the points that contributed to that.
WASHED-OUT COLORS. 100% SRGB is listed, but put next to my laptop, which also has 100% SRGB, it doesn't come close. Maybe it is 100% SRGB, and something else is affecting the colors negatively, but nothing on the monitor or in my laptop or Deck fixed it. It looks practically identical to the Elecrow, 5 years later.
UGLY HDR. Turning on HDR just makes the display look horrible, worse than the washed-out colors with it off. I'm assuming it requires tweaking, but I'm tired of dealing with the OSD controls (explained further down) and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect decent colors out of the box.
WEAK SOUND. I don't expect strong sound from a portable monitor, but this no better, possibly a little worse, than the Elecrow. After 5 years I was hoping sound would be improved. If earbuds can put out decent sound, surely portable monitors can do better with the space they have to work with. Maybe it has been improved, but not with this manufacturer.
FRUSTRATING OSD CONTROLS. All are equally spaced from each other and feel identical, making it very easy to confuse the power (top) with and confirm (second from top) buttons. Power should have been placed at the top of that edge or on the back. This is also the exact same OSD used by the Elecrow, which isn't a good look, but maybe it's just that common.
SHALLOW VESA HOLES. I tried to attach this to my monitor arm using the same screws I used on the Elecrow monitor, only for them to hit some very hard resistance half-way through. What other M4s I have are also too long, so I ended up having to add 2 nuts to the screws to fill up the space. I wasn't confident about how securely it was attached.
SMARTCASE LOST ITS MAGNETISM. The smartcase works by latching onto the back of the monitor so it can function as a stand. It needs that magnetic strip to work. As I was packing it up, I noticed the strip no longer held onto the monitor. I'm not sure how it lost its magnetism. I've never seen any magnetic anything just die so quickly, or ever.
There are a few positive points.
BRIGHTER THAN EXPECTED. The backlight is usually the weak point for portable monitors, going by some reviews I saw while browsing them. Next to my laptop's display, the brightness is actually decent, though the downside of that is it makes it that much easier to see how washed-out the colors are.
SURPRISINGLY LITTLE BACKLIGHT BLEED. Backlight bleed is usually an issue with these, sometimes pretty bad by some reviews. Maybe I got lucky, but there was practically none, and what little it has wasn't visible without a completely black screen. Might've been a fluke, but still noteworthy. Wish there were flukes in more areas.
HIGH REFRESH RATE. It has a 120hz refresh rate, which is nice. It doesn't seem to work on anything below 1920x1080, which isn't so nice for my Deck (since I'd stick with 1280x720 for performance reasons), but it is there and it does function. Unfortunately, I was going to use this for my Deck more than my Laptop, so that positive doesn't mean much.
FULL-SIZED HDMI PORT. The store page repeatedly refers to a mini-HDMI port, and the packaging is supposed to come with a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable, but that may be due to outdated specs (should just make a new page). The port and included cable are full HDMI, which is actually an improvement over the usual portable monitor offerings.
PROPERLY ORDERED OSD CONTROLS. The Elecrow's controls had inverted up and down buttons, which made navigation awkward. Here, the up and down buttons are in the right order. A weird thing to consider a plus, but it was a weird issue to encounter, so I guess it counts for something.
Averaged out, it works okay, I guess? If you don't care about color, or sound, and you can get your OSD settings where you want them the first try so you never have to deal with accidentaly turning off the monitor over and over, it gets the job done. But I don't think it's unreasonable to espect more than "it just works" at this price.
That's just too many flaws and problems to warrant keeping. I get that when electronics are made smaller there tends to be a premium attached. But if there's a premium for the size, the quality of other important components shouldn't be lowered, especially considering this is FHD instead of the higher resolution screens (which seem silly at this size).
That this is mostly on par with a 5-year old monitor in the areas that really matter, color and sound, has me concerned about what's going on with the rest of the portable monitors, and how accurate or honest their store pages are. Even with lowered expectations, I was disappointed, and frankly misled.
I considered the newer 16" or 18" portable monitors, since they might have newer and better panels and speakers, but I don't want to keep returning monitors because they fall so short of what was promised. I'm suspicious of anything listed on their store pages now, from any seller (many of which are selling the same models, some with their logos).
If portable monitors in general can't get an increase in quality to the point that their store pages don't have to exaggerate their specs and performance, I'm not sure any of them should be priced above $100, even the fancier models. And if that's not possible due to the component and manufacturing cost, maybe they're just not worth bothering with.
For about the same price I paid for this ZSCMALLS monitor, give or take $10-$20, I can get a much better, though much less portable, 27" monitor (or 24", if I want to keep a little bit of portability), which is what I'll probably end up doing.