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ViewSonic VG1655 15.6" Portable HD Monitor -- REVIEW
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Jun 22, 2024
Your laptop screen works well, until it doesn't and you just really need more screen real estate. Enter the beautiful, best in class ViewSonic VG1655 15.6" Portable HD Monitor. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ plugged the monitor into his MacBook Pro and runs it through its paces, including both USB-C and HDMI inputs. Check it out at https://www.ViewSonic.com/
View Video Transcript
0:00
Is this the best portable monitor? Let's check it out
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Dave Taylor here, and if you're like me, you're spending a lot of time on your laptop
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Now, generally speaking, that screen works just fine for me, but sometimes I just want
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more screen real estate. Now, I can go buy a second monitor, but it's big, it's clunky
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you have to figure out where you're going to put it. How much nicer to have a portable one
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Enter this. This, let me open it up, is the ViewSonic VG1655, and it's a 15.6 inch portable
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monitor, and it's very nice. Everything's built in. So, on one side, you have two USB and a mini
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HDMI and audio out. On the back, you have a built-in stand that you just tilt to the angle
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you want. And then, on the other side, on the back, you have power, and this ends up being
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the sort of joystick controller for all of the menu options. So, let me set it up, and it looks
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nice, but you're wondering, all right, well, how do you put something on the screen? Here's where
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USB-C is a huge win, because USB-C carries power. So, what that means is, if you have a USB-C device
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like my MacBook Pro, then a USB-C display cable, like this included, is all you need to push video
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signal onto this and power it. So, let me plug this back in. As you saw, it's a little snug
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in the connection. And then, the other side, I can plug into either of the USB-C ports
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and that should be all I need to do for it to turn on and become the second screen for my Mac
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And let me actually watch whatever the heck I want. That's it. What a nice setup. Now, the screen is
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1080p with a TFT Active Matrix screen, giving you 16.2 million colors. I have not counted them
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so I am just assuming that's correct. Has an anti-glare coating, and it's a WLED backlight, so
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you can adjust the brightness. It has built-in speakers. You can adjust the volume. That's all
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that little tiny controller on the back. So, let me wake it up again. It has, on the side, as I said
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two USB-C, and you can do 60-watt pass-through power. I'll talk about that in a minute
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It has the mini-HDMI, which comes with a cable that turns that mini-HDMI into a full HDMI
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So, that's what... Let's see. That's what this one looks like. So, mini-HDMI on one end
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full-blown HDMI on the other end. And it has the two 0.8-watt speakers. Doesn't sound like much
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but it's enough that you actually have it, and it can work just fine for your own audio needs
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So, I have this. Let's see if I can go ahead and turn on the audio. And, in fact, while I'm doing
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that, let me go ahead and zoom the camera in so you can see up front, front and center
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how clean this display is while it's doing its thing and giving you some audio
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Hey, Dave Thaler here. Thanks for checking out my YouTube channel. You know, I spend every day
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looking at consumer electronics, trying to figure out how things work, how to simplify
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your experience with technology and computers, whether you're an Android user, an Apple person
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a Windows 8 fan, the few of you, I'm sure there are, whether you're running Linux..
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That all is great if you have USB-C, but what if you don't have USB-C? Well, that's where you use
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the HDMI adapter, but HDMI has a bit of a hiccup in this context because it doesn't pass power
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So, I can plug the micro HDMI into the display, but then I need to power it. And to do that
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I need USB-C. So, what I need to do is I need to give power, and it comes with this fairly
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chunky wall charger. So, you plug this into a handy power source. I can do that right here
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And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to unplug from my computer
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And again, if I can only get this crazy thing to come out. There we go. So, now, obviously
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the monitor is turned off because there's no signal. But what we're going to do is we're
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going to use that USB-C just as power. So, I'm going to plug it in. Let me show you
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I'm going to plug it into the power adapter, and then we're going to use the mini HDMI
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and then plug that into HDMI. And you might be saying, hmm, that MacBook Pro doesn't have HDMI
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You are absolutely correct. So, let's get this plugged in. And that looks like the right
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orientation. So, that's plugged in, and now I need an adapter. And this is obviously not a
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standard use case because you wouldn't do this with HDMI and the adapter when you could just
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use USB-C. But once you have this HDMI, it does give you a lot of options because you can plug
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it into, for example, a Blu-ray player. So, I'm going to now plug this into my computer
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And if everything works correctly, now I think I need to turn this on. Then
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it's very dramatic. Let's see if this all hooks up correctly. And there we go. So, now
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this signal is via HDMI. So, it's just the same. It looks just as crisp, just as good
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But the downside is I do have to use this power adapter, which is behind
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And I have to have that second wire. So, I would say that it is by far the biggest win if you can
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use it with USB-C. But it does also come with a USB-3 to USB-C adapter too. Not exactly sure when
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you'd use that. And I have found experimentally that if you look at this and you say, no way
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I'm not carrying this around, you can use a smaller adapter as long as it pushes out enough
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wattage. So, experimentally verify. ViewSonic might say, use this or you're going to get
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whatever results you get. But I have found that other adapters work fine. And if you do pass
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through, if you happen to have, for some reason, a setup like this, you can plug USB-C into the
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second port and plug that into your computer and use that to charge. So, when I did that, as you
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can see, it gave me 55 watts of charge, which is actually a decent amount of power for my MacBook
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to bring its battery back up to full. But again, I'm just not sure in what situation I would be
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having the use of USB-C for charging, but not be able to use USB-C for pushing the video signal
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So, it's just offering you a lot of possibilities. And I also want to point out that the screen cover
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is included and it does come off. So, if you prefer having it just not on there at all
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then you can do it like this. And that's really all I have. It's just a really, really nice
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display. I've looked at other displays in this form, the sort of portable monitors, and they
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tend to have kind of B-grade screens and you end up really having to compromise on the quality of
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the screen to get a small portable device. This doesn't have that limitation. This is a beautiful
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screen and ViewSonic has done such a great job with the engineering. It is at 14 inches by 8.8
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inches by 6 tenths of an inch, 28 ounces. There is no reason this wouldn't be a beautiful addition
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to your setup, whether you're working on the kitchen table or whether you're working in your
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office or whether you're on the road and you just want to have a second display when you're sitting
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at that desk in the hotel and you just want to be more productive or just watch a football game
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while you're actually using your computer. All of these situations, it's really a nice setup. I'm
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really impressed with it. I probably will never use the HDMI because that USB-C that then lets me
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avoid having to use this clunker is just an absolute win. And in fact, let's go ahead and
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get back to that situation. So I'm going to unplug and then we'll plug back in. And in a matter of a
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moment or two, we'll be back to where we were with the display running. And again, it's just this one
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cable. How nice is that? So before we talk about the price, and you might be surprised, it's actually
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quite reasonably priced. Before we get there, I'm going to ask if you can subscribe to my channel
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and give me some feedback. What should I have done? What are you appreciative that I did in terms of
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demos and explanations? And if you know the use case where you might use the USB-C to USB-C
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or where you would be using HDMI as input and want to be able to charge a USB-C device
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then leave those in the comments because I'm curious what exactly those setups would look like
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All right, this is the ViewSonic VG1655 15.6 inch portable monitor, and it is $184.99 at
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viewsonic.com. But shop around online, I found places that had it for more. And I also found a
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couple places that had it for a little bit less. So if you can't get it at ViewSonic, maybe it's
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out of stock or something, then it's definitely worth exploring some of your other options
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And with that, I think I am going to get back to the soccer game I was watching
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which means I'll catch you in my next video. you
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