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3.0 out of 5 starsZenScreen MB16AC - Quite a Few Hassles for the Price but Still the Best Option
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2018
I like the ASUS brand, but this monitor falls short in a couple really important ways. I don't regret my purchase, but that's only because there just isn't any competition as far as portable monitors go. It was either spend nearly three hundred dollars on this plus an extended warranty or go with another product that reviewers say is prone to screen breakage, compatibility issues, connection issues, is low quality, etc. I honestly felt that if I wanted a portable monitor at all, and I didn't want to have to deal with an inferior product or a broken monitor, I had to buy this one. It works, but as of today, it costs twice as much as any other reasonable option.
I researched for weeks before I bought this monitor. I decided to toss out all of the lesser known brands because they cost about as much as the more basic models that ASUS sells and I would rather go with a brand I know, plus the ASUS options seemed to be better quality overall. The reasons I chose the ZenScreen MB16AC over the MB169B+, MB169C+, or MB168B are that yes, it looks better, but also that I couldn't find any reviews complaining of a broken screen on this model. That could be because it's so much more expensive and fewer people have purchased it thus fewer people have reviewed it. I hope I don't find out that hard way that this monitor is also as fragile as the other models. There are other pluses to the MB16AC. It's HD, it's USB C plug and play, it matches my Asus ZenBook... I'm just not comfortable with the price I paid for those pluses. I hope it was worth it.
I did purchase an extended warranty through SquareTrade but after speaking with their customer service, I was disappointed to find out that they don't offer accidental damage coverage for portable monitors at all. This means that if the screen on this thing does break, I'm up a creek and almost three hundred short in the wallet. The additional coverage of the extended warranty only covers things like manufacturers defects. I hope that covers connection ports. (More on that soon.) I think it's silly that ASUS makes portable monitors that are prone to damage when people port them.
So first impressions? I like the way it feels. It's light, but the small frame and glossy screen mean that every time I touch it I leave fingerprints. There really doesn't seem to be a way to pick it up without smudging it. It is pretty, can't deny that. Front and back look nice and stylish. I don't yet have any idea what the two buttons on the bottom left do. They're probably for adjusting settings on the screen. I like the way it looks out of the box so I haven't messed with them.
The sleeve/stand thing is a decent sleeve. It's black leather-esque on the outside and sharp looking. The inside is grey and soft like felt. I'm confident that this will keep scratches off of the monitor.
The bad news is the sleeve/stand thing is a complete and utter flop as a stand. It uses magnets to hold the stand and monitor in place but on the whole it just doesn't work. (I'll admit that maybe I didn't understand the origami instructions, but if so, I'm not the only one.) There are two positions that you can fold it to display the monitor in landscape position. There are marks on the case to show you where to put the base of the monitor marked "1" and "2." 2 has never ever worked for me (the stand collapsed and the monitor fell flat) and 1 was questionably unstable. The same goes for folding the stand to hold the monitor in portrait mode. One wrong touch and the stand falls over. No way would I trust this expensive monitor leaning against the sleeve/stand thing.
The only other built-in stand option is the pen/pen hole. I don't want to talk too bad about this option because it's honestly the studiest one available. As long as you don't bump your table/desk, this actually works pretty well. Compared to a sturdy stand, it's junk, but compared to the other options available to you, it's a blessing because it's the best you're going to get. The pen isn't a touchscreen pen or anything, it's just a regular ink pen. Kinda snazzy looking. Lacks the weight of a nice pen, but it doesn't matter because you can't use it because it's holding up your screen. (Supposedly any pen will work, and I don't see why not.) If there were some way to lock the pen in place it would be better. Maybe if the hole had a rubber gasket so that you could do a pressure fit. As it is, a good bump can displace the pen and your monitor falls over. Happened to me a couple of times due to an excitable dog.
Because of the instability of the stand options and because I like my screens standing straight up (not angled), I decided to buy a product to clip this monitor to my laptop monitor. I looked between the Mountie and the MountEra Side Mount Clip as they had the best reviews. I went with MountEra since Mountie had so many reviews saying the clip had broken. MountEra also mounts the monitor at a slight angle which I prefer but a con is that it blocks part of the portable monitor screen. (I wrote a full review.) Anyhow, with the clip, the monitor is held in place nice and sturdy as long as the base of the monitor is on the table. I highly recommend you buy a third party stand.
The screen is sharp. I don't do graphics work or anything that requires precise color replication. It looks great as far as I'm concerned. There aren't any noticeable differences between my laptop screen and this monitor as far as the display. The portable monitor is SHINY, however. Lots of glare during the day.
The "DisplayPort over USB-C" cord that came with it is another facepalm worthy flop in my opinion. Because of the clip I use to connect this monitor to my laptop, I have to put this monitor on the left of my laptop. (The clip covers a half inch of the screen and I need to be able to see Excel row markers on the left side of the monitor.) The only USB-C connection I have on my laptop is on the right side. The cord is barely long enough to reach around my laptop and plug into the monitor. The cord did not want to bend into the shape I had to bend it into and I imagine the tension is stressing the ports on both my laptop and the portable monitor. So hopefully the warranties cover ports.
So far I haven't found a longer cord. I contacted ASUS customer support to see if they could help me. They can't provide/sell you a longer cable and the best they offered was to give me a list of authorized resellers to contact. This list included everything from Amazon to Walmart. So, in other words, they just told me to search the internet and/or start making phone calls. Through trial and error, I discovered that a regular USB-C 2.0 cord won't work, and neither will a USB-C 3.0. (They seem to power the monitor but a message appears on the monitor that says that there is no DisplayPort signal.) The rep I spoke with told me to specifically look for a "DisplayPort over USB-C" cable, but so far all I have found are regular DisplayPort cables, not USB-C versions. I'm currently at a loss.
Last thoughts: You can use the included USB-C to A adapter. I haven't even tried. Some reviews said that it was buggy and it didn't support all display modes. Also, you supposedly have to download drivers. It sounded like a hassle over the plug and play USB-C option that would be perfect for me if the cord was 1.5 inches longer. ASUS is making another model with the same form factor as the MB16AC but with an internal battery. As of now, it hasn't been released. It's the ASUS ZenScreen GO MB16AP. The MB16AC may go down in price when the new model is released. If you don't need a monitor now, it might be worth it to wait and see.
Overall, it works, looks really pretty on screen as well as aesthetically. You're going to want to buy something to make it stand up. It might be more fragile than a portable monitor has any right being. There's no evidence yet that this model is fragile, however. I don't regret buying this monitor, but for the price, it shouldn't come with so many hassles.
