I'm a software engineer who travels about 25-50% of the time for work. Mainly, I code apps and websites and as such, I almost always prefer to work with multiple screens. My primary work laptop is a 2018 MacBook Pro 15 and my sidecar "hobby" machine is a 12.5" Asus Chromebook C302 that I absolutely adore (seriously, see my review of it). At home and work I have a plethora of displays setup on my workstations to service both of these machines and over the years I've become used to being able to "spread" my work out... Communications and productivity apps on one screen, code editor and output browser/simulators on another and one just dedicated to debug terminals and consoles. It really is workflow bliss...
And then I got the new gig... Traveling 1-2weeks out of the month, living in hotels... trains, planes and automobiles... pop-up meetings in restaurants/coffeeshops/conferences. Suddenly my workflow bliss started feeling like a single-desktop pile-on. It's not that I need to drag several 30" displays on the road with me... just some more breathing room.
And then a friend told me about this line of ASUS monitors that sounded way too good to be true... So, I picked one up just to see if it could give me the breathing room I needed w/o the inconvenience of hauling around an external display, power brick and connection cables.
Happy to say, this device hits all 5-stars at a price that's comparable to a low-end desktop monitor. It has the same footprint as my 15" MBP and slips in right next to it in my bag w/o a fuss. Yeah, it adds a little extra weight to my bag, but no more than a hefty USB battery brick or extra Apple MBP wall charger. For me, the big-win is that it does everything over a single USB-C cable, data, image, and power... just magic.
Pros:
- Light weight and low-overhead, just need the device and a USB-C cable that's DisplayPort-over-USB certified
- Same footprint as a 15" MacBook Pro
- Great resolution and color
- Power and image over USB-C, no need for a power-brick
- Easy to use adjustment settings directly on the device
- Sturdy and low-profile magnetic cover very similar to the covers you can get for Android tablets and iPads
- Solid metal/plastic construction
Cons:
- Doesn't have the ability to auto-rotate on MacOS
- No USB-C pass-thru... it eats a whole port, so have a port-expander dongle with power pass-thru for your other port
- Doesn't support HDMI input on the device (I've heard you can get an HDMI-to-USB-C DisplayPort adaptor, but I've yet to source one/try it, would love to have for on-the-road console gaming)
- Hard to find replacement USB-C data cables that support DisplayPort over USB-C
I've been using this for about 2 months now and it's been a worthwhile travel companion... I even crack it out at the home office on occasion to mirror my screen for small 2-3 person group demos/presentations. I haven't tried gaming on it, but video playback and color matching to my MBP screen are great.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920x1080 |
