Travelling with a laptop is an ideal way to remain connected, but sometimes you just need a second screen, which is where a portable display fits into your travel bag. The E1759FWU is one of AOC's offerings and is somewhat affordable coming in at around $129. Is it worth packing away for the road trip?
About the review
AOC was kind enough to supply us with a review unit, which we've tested on both an aging Acer Aspire S7, MSI GS63VR, custom desktop PC, and the HP Omen 15. We tested the portable monitor with the desktop in the office and took the unit outside with each laptop to see how it fared at various locations.
Portable pixels
Laptops, smartphones and even monitors themselves are becoming thinner, but still, nothing in the portable world has come to replicate the experience of dual-screen on the desktop. That is until portable displays came along, including this AOC unit. Sporting a resolution of 1,440 x 900, it's not quite 1080p, but it's also not a terrible resolution either, especially when you consider this as a secondary screen and not one you should use constantly.
And being a portable monitor, it's also really easy to take around, thanks to weighing just 4.4 pounds (2kg) and the included carry case. While not the lightest on the market, it's by no means heavy.
The bezels are actually surprisingly small too, and everything is wrapped in a glossy black finish, and yes this is a fingerprint magnet.
On the rear, you'll find a built-in fold-out stand that can be configured in a whole manner of positions. It's metal and clicks into place when you no longer wish to have the display set up on a flat surface.
When erected a landscape or portrait, the display never wobbled, nor did it feel cheap. The stand is fantastic, to say the least. It surprised me to learn just how sturdy of a stand this small and cheap display has up its sleeve.
Next to the hinge is the USB port, which takes the bundled cable. You'll need to use this one as your standard phone cable will not work.
Mediocre visuals
This screen isn't billed as a gaming or professional monitor, and that's for a good reason — it's not either. You'll not be scoring high in color, saturation, brightness, and you certainly won't receive rewards from games for having an outstanding panel for a GPU to work with.
That all said, considering this thing is powered by nothing other than two USB ports, and you're only really going to be using this panel in a hotel room, airport, office or other location where you require a little more screen real estate, it's perfectly fine for general PC use.
So, what makes this a bad panel? There are washed out colors, which is also noted in user reviews, and the viewing angles aren't particularly brilliant. What makes things worse is there's no clear way of altering the panel at all. You can't increase or decrease brightness, nor can you alter the contrast. There's also slight input lag.
On the plus side, we have sharp-looking content, which is great for anyone doing some web browsing, document editing, and more. There's even VESA support, though only three screw holes are present.
Using the E1759FWU isn't a pleasant experience on the desktop. In fact, we see no real reason you'd want to use this with a tower PC — just pick up an affordable display. With a laptop, things got better, just not visually. Oh, and if you do not have two USB ports next to one another, you're stumped. An extension cable would work just fine.
Interestingly, it's not quite plug-n-play. You'll need to install AOC's own DisplayLink drivers so everything works, which isn't too much of an issue but should be noted if you think of picking one up on your way to the airport.
Fantastic price tops all
The E1759FWU is a really good portable display if you only plan to carry out light tasks and some Office on the side. Should you be traveling abroad and need a second display to get more done, you can certainly do worse than this panel.
The only downside is picture quality, which isn't the best.
Pros:
- Really, really solid stand.
- Affordable.
- Decent resolution.
- Included sleeve.
Cons:
- Poor colors and saturation.
- Slight input lag.
For $129, this is where things get interesting. Not only is it a handy screen with a superb stand for portable use, but it's also incredibly cheap. Just don't go wanting to do accurate photo and documentation work.
