INTRODUCTION

   As expected, portable monitors are not nearly as popular as their full sized cousins but their sales numbers have actually risen in both 2020 and 2021, probably due to many people pairing them with their USB-C smartphones and tablets (even laptops, iPads and MacBooks). Now I’ve always liked the idea of a portable monitor but at the same time I’ve always had a thing for large screens and so I never got around to either getting or testing one. That was until roughly 2 months ago when i got in touch with Desklab, a rather new manufacturer which back in late 2019 launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign (concluded in 2020) for a feature-rich 15.6-inch 4k portable touchscreen monitor that landed in the lab not long ago.

   We started by a team of engineers that believe in something more than gadgets. Gadgets were great back in the day, but in the modern world, we have the power to consolidate all the functions of our gadgets into one, lightweight system. So why do we fill our bags and pockets with more gadgets, cables, and accessories than ever before? Our engineers had a solution. They sought to put an entire suite of functions for work and play into one ultra-light monitor. It’s not a laptop, and it’s not a tablet. Instead, it brings the functionality of a cutting-edge workstation to any device on the planet. You don’t need gadgets. You don’t need accessories. You don’t need clutter and excess weight.

   This portable monitor by Desklab sports a rather large 15.6-inch (40cm diagonal) 4k (3840x2160p) touchscreen WLED 16:9 IPS display (8bit with dithering) that supports HDR and features a refresh rate of 60Hz (FreeSync compatible), input lag of just 20ms (GTG), 1200:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 luminance and 178 degrees viewing angles. It also features a brushed aluminum rear plate and comes ready with two rear-firing stereo speakers and a good number of available connectors such as dual USB-C (one is used for power), USB-A (can be used to charge portable devices), HDMI and a 3.5mm headphones jack. Aside FreeSync and HDR the monitor also has 5 display presets loaded from the factory (TV/Games/Cinema/Photography/Text), 3 temperature settings (9300/6500/user), allows the end user to rotate the screen 180 degrees and also has a dynamic contrast ratio (DCR) function. So, let's see if the 4k portable touchscreen monitor is worth what Desklab asks for it.