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Finland, Helsinki
1 Level
61 Review
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Review on ASUS ZenScreen MB16ACE Portable External 15.6" Monitor, Full HD 1920x1080, 60Hz Refresh Rate, Flicker-Free, Blue Light Filter, IPS Panel by Antonio Olaad

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Mac users should show some pause, but two monitors are way better than one

It changed my world. I've never had an external monitor that's so portable. As a professional artist, this means that owning a laptop has always been a questionable decision for me; I can't do anything on a monitor, and what's the point of having a portable device that's always attached to the wall and the monitor? The problem has always been that I'm about a thousand percent more productive when I'm not at home with my other toys. Enter Asus MB168B (among others). It installs in seconds, doesn't drain the entire battery from my 13" MacBook Pro, and only has one great cable to connect to. I can see and feel the envy in the eyes of the guy in the library who showed up with his entire setup the frustration of the AfterEffects user who squints at his lonely monitor and angrily clicks looking for lost windows. I've been once. but this isn't a perfect solution. at least not for Mac users. The display is difficult to adjust at times and leaves behind a black screen until you unplug it and plug it back in and try again until you get a picture.Once you do that you lose a few features that would be nice and that's available to windows users;presumably Apple's API has prevents ASUS from supporting the correct driver to run the monitor and therefore support is incomplete. When using a Mac, the feature to a Auto rotate disabled along with the brightness buttons (and indeed any brightness control at all). It's a bit annoying, but not that, it's causing me too many pauses, the monitor is still bright enough to work, which is what I expected. Build quality is decent and if you treat it like a monitor and put it back in a case and don't break a door frame or anything on it, it should last for quite a while. The stand and case combo works pretty well, again it's not perfect but gets the job done and that's pretty much the definition of this product. It does the job. If I had to do it again I would get a higher resolution version. I miss the extra resolution and next to my retina display it's like looking at ancient technology (circa 2010). But then you fall into the price category; at $125 it's a total bargain. and almost a guarantee that I'll invest wisely in my next portable monitor. Conclusion: De facto a launch monitor for cautious buyers; Inexpensive, decent quality and performance, but if you're a Mac user you're paying for something that isn't perfect. In fact, this can be the case with many monitors of this type with Apple products. If Asus is to be trusted, Apple really needs to ramp up its third-party support before we see any real improvements. And yet this thing has made me a believer, at least for me. A portable monitor is a must.

Pros
  • 15.6 inches
Cons
  • Can hurt

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