Lepow Portable Monitor 15.6 Inch, FHD 1080P USB-C HDMI Gaming Ultra-Slim IPS Display Eye Care Screen with Speakers, External Monitor for Laptop PC PS4 Xbox Phone w/Smart Cover, Plug & Play Black

I bought this Lepow portable monitor because I needed an extra monitor when I’m moving from location to location for productivity and for when I’m looking at stock charts. At home I have a huge ultrawide monitor for working and when I’m on the go, a regular 13-inch screen on a macbook pro just doesn’t cut it. A little extra screen real estate goes a long way. This Lepow monitor was a pleasant surprise, its large 15.6 in screen is big and is actually quite portable (you can put it in your laptop bag or backpack and it takes up the space of a large ipad). Usually on a 1080P display looking at stocks or finer detailed images can be difficult, and it leaves you longing for a 4k monitor, but it actually did the job quite well -- just don’t expect 4k clarity. As soon as I got the portable monitor, I threw every electronics I had at it to see if it lived up to its billing. It handled everything very smoothly.When you first open the product, you’ll notice it takes some cues from apple and it’s a white box that feels pretty luxurious. It comes with a magnetic case, the magnetic case isn’t the best of cases but it does the trick. There’s something about magnets that gives you a feeling like it can come right off if you aren’t careful and also wasn’t intuitive to stand up in the various angles but once you figure out how to stand it up it works perfectly. It’s a free case so I can’t really complain there, it also comes with a screen protector which I am terrible at putting on so I gave up on it and didn’t use it. But again, the fact that they gave you all these accessories included is nice in itself. One thing I really liked about this product is that it includes all the wires you need to plug in most of your devices without paying extra for them or buying them separately. It comes with a HDMI mini to HDMI Plug which makes it ready to plug and play with most of your devices, a USB C Cord, and for power a USB-C to USB A cord with power adapter.The screen is large and beautiful, it is slim for you to take around anywhere. It does everything you want it to for a very affordable price compared to other brands. It’s hard to justify paying a lot for a portable monitor since it can get pricey, this one was the most affordable one that does everything I wanted, and the drawbacks were negligible. The speakers are my biggest issue with it, it seems there’s no difference between 50% volume and 100% volume (it sounds the same, low and not robust at all). However, most monitors and even today’s televisions don’t have great speakers – it’s how retailers make products more affordable. Luckily it does have an aux port that allows me to easily connect it to a portable speaker or my home speakers.My main goal in getting this was to hook it up to my laptop. My macbook pro 13 inch worked like a charm through USB C, I didn’t need any additional plugs to power on the monitor. One USB C plug from the macbook to the monitor was sufficient to run the mac and power on the display which is great! It created my dual monitor setup I wanted with a minimal amount of wires making it versatile and less embarrassing if I’m in public such as in a coffee shop. In the manual it says that generally speaking you don’t need to plug the monitor into a power source unless your device doesn’t supply it with any power. It requires very little power in wattages to display properly, for your electronics that aren’t strong enough to power the monitor on its own you can power it on by plugging it into an outlet with the wires they give you or you can use a standard external power bank . I tried some low wattage output power banks that I use to charge my iphone on the go and it worked flawlessly. This will be useful when on road trips and you want to watch a movie together or play some games on a bigger screen.When it comes down to it, it feels like what you would love for your ipad to be, a beautiful display that you can plug anything you want into it. I had my old super Nintendo classic lying around I don’t use much and I instantly connected it and started to play Super Mario and Street Fighter II Turbo for the next couple of hours. It brought new life to my older game systems I don’t have connected. I’m going to bring it with me whenever me and my friends want to play co-opt Contra III or Street Fighter and we meet up for some beers at an outdoor brewery or camping. My Nintendo switch worked through USB C but required some power for the monitor, if you have a strong enough power supply, I think it supports passthrough charging to charge your Nintendo switch as well simultaneously. I’m not sure if that’s a feature but I saw it charging my switch and even my laptop when connected to my stronger power banks. I also plugged it into my iPad Pro and it worked as well.Overall, I don’t have a lot of complaints about the Lepow monitor, it was amazing as soon as I turned it on and it brought extra life to my electronics. I can’t wait to take it on a roadtrip, it does all the big things I want it to do very well with little drawbacks and at an affordable price. After I showed my buddies some of the pictures of it in use and now they want one.

ContentsThe Lepow monitor arrived in a nice looking white gift style box. It came with two cables, a type-C to type-C and a HDMI cable. The HDMI cable has a full size connector on one end and the end that connects to the monitor is a mini type. Additional included items are the smart cover, a screen protector and the user guide. A power supply connection device was not included. I hadn’t contacted them, however within a few days after receiving my monitor Lepow’s customer service sent me an email stating that they would send me a USB to type-C power cable if needed. Actually I had already purchased one because I was anxious to test and use the monitor.The user guide could be improved. It does have visuals showing connections to various devices - a good thing. Functional menu information is missing. For this reason I took photos of each menu tab. Also the contrast of the guide’s written text is low and the font size is small making the guide difficult to read.Physical CharacteristicsThe monitor has a stylish metal frame around the screen with rounded edges. Its overall dimensions are 14 3/8" x 8 3/4" x 3/8" thick. The monitor weighs about 25.5 ounces without the cover and 39 ½ ounces when the cover is added. The cover is a non slip rubbery material that folds to use as a standSmall magnets at the edges hold the cover to the monitor for protection. The magnets must be built into the cover because they aren’t noticeable or protrude. I can’t locate the actual text, but I believe there was a note somewhere in the guide about keeping magnets away from storage media. This is a fair warning but I don’t think the magnets here are strong enough to be a real issue.Functional Elements and LocationAll of the functional elements of the monitor are along its left and right edge. The left edge has a speaker, the HDMI port, an audio jack, and a fully functional type-C port. The right side has a speaker, a type-C port (for power supply only), a spring loaded lever type extension, and the on-off switch. The lever is called “the roll key” in the user guide. The roll key is spring loaded to center but it can be moved upward or downward to operate. This key can also be pushed. The user guide describes its use.Depressing the roll key provides brightness control. Depressing it longer brings up the functional menu. Using the roll key’s up and down movement along with short depressions of the on-off switch provides menu item change control. The process is easier to learn while using rather than describe. One mistake I made in learning was to accidentally change the language to Chinese. I had a heck of a time determining which menu item was needed to change language back to my native tongue!Power RequirementsBefore purchasing the monitor I reviewed the specs for information on voltage, current, and power draw and found nothing. So I performed my own checks. The monitor does not have a built in battery so it requires an outside power source. I used two sources as a check. One was a 120V plug-in module to USB port as is used for many devices. The second was a DC source that supplied 5 volts and up to 4 amps to a USB port.Power UsageThe test device was an in-line USB meter measuring voltage, current, and wattage. The monitor when first turned on defaults to 30% brightness. At this brightness level usage is 5.3 volts and .7 amps (i.e. 700 ma). Power draw is 3.5 watts. Ramping the brightness up to 100% the voltage remains the same but the current draw is now 1.26 amps (1260 ma) and 6.69 watts. These numbers show that a USB connectable battery box of reasonable size can be used as the power source.Except for varying the brightness as noted all testing was done at the defaults as the monitor came from the factory. It is possible that changes in other parameters (such as contrast or color parameters) might increase the current and power draw however I don’t believe the difference would be that significant. The guide states that the source should be 5 volts, 2 amps, or above. Some wall wart USBs could be closer to 1.5 amps in terms of output capability but even these might be adequate. My tests with a USB having 4.2 amp output capability did not change the monitor’s current draw - remaining at about 1.26 amps.Visual TestsTo provide a video source and for visual comparison purposes I connected my gaming laptop to the Lepow monitor via the Lepow supplied HDMI cable. I used 100% brightness level on both the monitor and computer. Photos were taking using a Nikon 300 DX camera with a Sigma 18-35 Art lens - a superb lens for this type of test and lighting. Other than cropping no other changes were made to the photos taken.The major light source was diffused daylight coming from camera left. I took photos in my sunroom with the shades closed (200 lux) and with them open (750 lux). The light hitting the table was read as the intensity. The photos show the results.Visual ConclusionsIt is difficult - virtually impossible - to do accurate side by side comparisons between monitors because there are so many types of displays and display variables involved. However there is a qualitative sense to be gained in my test comparisons.Overall the Lepow monitor provided an impressive display especially since it was tested under just marginally adequate lighting. This monitor did have less contrast and grayer blacks than what my computer display showed - but again such comparisons are not entirely valid. As examples, I didn’t make any changes to Lepow color and contrast settings and my computer display is currently profiled for accuracy to a specific photo paper.