If you’re here, it’s because you’re considering buying one or more laptop monitors and we’re happy to say that you’ve come to the right place to find the best ones for under £250.
Every user has their own needs: if you have a laptop and you’re on the move, if you’re a digital nomad, if you travel a lot, if you need an auxiliary monitor, choosing a portable monitor is definitely your best option.
Which portable monitor should I buy?
To ensure that buying a portable monitor is not a chaotic affair, you need to consider two basic factors: your budget and how you will use the monitor. These two aspects will determine whether or not the product will meet your expectations.
Acer PM1
We start our selection with a bang. The main advantage of this portable monitor is its attractive cost/performance ratio. It shares many of the same specifications as the other solutions we’ve chosen, but in some areas, such as contrast ratio and brightness delivery, it rivals the more ambitious models in this selection.
But at a more modest price point, at the heart of the device is an IPS LCD panel which, as with any quality IPS device, can be expected to deliver convincing colourimetry and wide viewing angles. Its weak point? A folding stand that only allows it to be positioned horizontally, not vertically, which some of its competitors can do.
AOC I1601FWUX
This laptop monitor is one of the most balanced of the selection we’ve put together for you. It uses a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS panel with interesting, but not revolutionary, features including 220 nits of brightness and a typical contrast ratio of 700:1.
One of its strengths that sets it apart from some of its competitors is its versatile stand, which allows it to swivel to change the screen orientation from landscape to portrait and vice versa. Another advantage is that it weighs just over 800g. It’s not the cheapest of the solutions we offer in this article, but its price, which we think is reasonable, makes it an interesting cost/performance alternative.
AOC I1659FWUX
This portable monitor shares many of the same specifications as the AOC model mentioned above. Like it, it uses a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS panel with the ability to deliver 220 nits of brightness and a typical contrast ratio of 700:1. However, there are a number of significant differences between these two models that are worth a closer look.
The first of these is the response time, which is significantly higher on this monitor (10ms), making it less suitable than the I1601FWUX for gaming. The other difference is its weight, which is almost 400g heavier than the I1601FWUX. And the third is its mounting system, which uses a foldable picture frame-like stand that also allows it to be positioned vertically.
ASUS MB168B
This laptop monitor is clearly the most modest of the selection we’ve prepared for you, but don’t forget that it’s also the cheapest (it costs just four euros less than the AOC we’ve just reviewed). It uses a 15.6-inch TN panel whose subdued performance puts it a little behind the other models we’ve selected, not least because its native resolution is 1366 x 768 dots.
It also has a brightness of 200 nits and a maximum contrast of 500:1, which are also fairly muted, so why did we decide to include it in this review? Simply because it’s cheaper and one of the lightest, two attributes that rarely coincide in the same product.
ASUS ZenScreen MB16AC
Unlike the first ASUS laptop screen we featured earlier, this model uses a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS panel, rather than a TN unit. IPS panels offer more accurate colour reproduction and wider viewing angles than TN panels.
So there’s no doubt that the overall picture quality of this monitor is far superior to that of the MB168B. The design is also better, with thinner edges and a stand that allows it to be positioned in landscape or portrait mode. It also has a hybrid interface that natively supports both USB-C and USB-A connections.
This is definitely a much more ambitious portable monitor than the first ASUS model we reviewed, but it’s also significantly more expensive, so ideally each user should weigh their needs and budget to choose the option that best fits their profile.
ASUS ZenScreen Touch MB16AMT
Based on its design and panel, this laptop monitor looks identical to the ASUS model we just reviewed, but nothing could be further from the truth. Both devices feature a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display, but this one is a 10-point capacitive touch unit.
It also has a 7,800mAh battery and USB-C and micro-HDMI connectivity, so you can send video to it from devices that aren’t necessarily laptops, such as smartphones or games consoles. It’s definitely the most versatile portable monitor we’ve reviewed so far.
HP EliteDisplay S14
Unlike the monitors we’ve reviewed so far, this HP model has a 14-inch Full HD IPS panel, forgoing the 15.6-inch IPS panel found in the AOC and ASUS solutions we suggested. Interestingly, its smaller size didn’t make this monitor any lighter than the other options we looked at, although its weight in kilograms hardly penalises its portability.
In terms of brightness, contrast and response time, it’s in the same orbit as the other portable monitors we’ve included in this selection. And its mounting system is a folding case that does double duty of protecting the screen when we’re not using it and keeping the monitor upright when we need to connect it to our laptop.
Lenovo ThinkVision M14
Our latest offering shares some features with the HP monitor we just reviewed, such as its 14-inch Full HD IPS panel and very similar response time, but it has a personality of its own.
Its brightness delivery capacity, which reaches 300 nits, is the highest in this selection, but the three features that clearly set it apart from the other options are its rigid folding stand, its great lightness (it weighs less than 600g) and the presence of two USB-C ports.
One of these can be used to power the monitor while the other allows us to connect it to a laptop to receive the video signal from the latter. This connection strategy has an additional advantage: this portable monitor can use some of the electrical energy it receives to charge the computer’s battery. It’s an ingenious idea, isn’t it?
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