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5 Best Portable Monitor Picks for Remote Work & Travel (2023)

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Are you looking for the best portable monitor for travel or home office use? Our guide takes an in-depth look at eight of the best portable monitors money can buy.

Identifying the best portable monitor for you simply comes down to your needs. Whether you’re shopping on a budget, or are a serious gamer and want 4k resolution, there is a portable monitor on the market that is right for you.

Best Portable Monitors

Top Pick

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With its compatibility, lightweight, slim frame, and up to 3.5 of cordless battery life, the ASUS ZenScreen Go is an excellent choice of monitor for remote workers, busy travelers, and anyone who finds themselves working from a place without access to a wall socket.

Quick Picks

Don’t have time to read through the article? That’s not a problem! Take a look at our quick picks to get you directly to the portable monitor that best fits your needs.

Best Overall Portable Monitor for Remote WorkASUS ZenScreen Go
Best Budget Portable MonitorAOC I1601FWUX
Best Portable Monitor for Gaming and StreamingNexiGo 144Hz Portable Gaming Monitor
Best 4k Portable MonitorArzopa Portable 4k Monitor
Best Touchscreen Portable MonitorASUS ZenScreen MB16AMT

Portable Monitor Considerations

best portable monitor

Things to know before buying a portable monitor

This section will cover jargon and areas relevant to portable monitors specifically.

If you’d like to learn more about the likes of screen size, aspect ratio, and dimensions, be sure to visit the ‘understanding the jargon’ section of our ultraportable laptops article.

Check your connectivity requirements

This is definitely the most important thing you need to know before buying a portable monitor.

If your computer of laptop doesn’t have the correct connectivity ports, your portable monitor can’t work.

Check all available ports on both your machine, and the monitor you’re looking at. While some may only have one type, such as USB C, many will have more than one type of connection.

If the ports are different, you could look into purchasing a connectivity adapter.

USB to USB C, for example, is a good example of this. As USB C is a relatively new connection, many older machines cannot support it.

The difference between LED and LCD display on a portable monitor

You’ll notice that on portable monitors, the display type will either be LED or LCD.

Both are liquid crystal displays, but whereas LCD displays use fluorescent lights to display the picture, LED displays use light-emitting diodes, hence the abbreviation.

Unless you’re keen to nerd out on the technology, don’t overly worry about what that means. The important things to note are the pros and cons of using LED or LCD.

In short, LED produces a better picture quality than LCD. This is for two reasons. The first is the use of RGB (red, blue, and green) colored lights, which produce a sharper image.

And the second is the fact light-emitting nodes can be dimmed, there are fewer issues with light glare.

However, it is worth noting that the difference between the two is far more noticeable on large, high-res televisions, where picture quality is very much under the spotlight.

For a portable monitor, the difference is much less noticeable. Both LCD and LED provide a high level of picture quality.

As LED will often cost more, if you are going to use your portable monitor more-so for entertaining and gaming, it may be worth thinking about investing in an LED screen.

If your portable monitor is being used for work, and casually watching entertainment, both will provide you with a high-quality picture.

What is a portable monitor refresh rate?

Very simply, a monitor’s refresh rate is the number of times, per second, it can update the display with new images, information, graphics, and so forth.

Naturally, the higher the number (measured in Hz), the more seamless your picture quality will be, no matter how much motion.

All the portable monitors on this list have a Refresh Rate of 60Hz and above, which is more than acceptable for monitors of such size.

If you do invest heavily in your streaming or gaming monitors for a home or desktop setup, however, there are rates of 120Hx, 240Hz, and even higher, on the market.

How to connect a monitor to a laptop or device and understand connectivity

You’ll notice there is a wide range of connectivity ports on so many devices, and unfortunately, it is something you’re going to need to understand before you purchase a portable monitor.

To connect your device to the monitor, you’re going to either need a cable or an adapter and a cable.

Let’s say, for example, your laptop has a HDMI port, and your portable monitor has a HDMI port. All you need to connect the two together is a HDMI cable. Simple enough.

However, if your laptop has a HDMI port, but your portable monitor has a mini HDMI port, you would need an adapter.

This adapter would probably be called ‘HDMI to mini HDMI,’ and you would connect your HDMI cable to it.

The HDMI cable would plug into your laptop and the adapter into the mini HDMI cable on your portable monitor.

Before you purchase, it’s important to note down all the ways your device(s) can connect, by looking at the ports on their side or rim. Then, cross-reference this with the portable monitor you’re looking to buy.

Often, the monitors will come with cables included, but you will need to double-check this. If you have different ports, you’ll definitely need to invest in the right type of adapter.

Best Portable Monitors for Remote Work and Travel

If you’re ready to roll, let’s dive right in and look at 5 of the best portable monitor picks and the reasons why they would be a great purchase.

Best Overall Portable Monitor for Remote Work

1 – ASUS ZenScreen Go

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A portable monitor built for remote workers, ASUS ZenScreen Go excels when it comes to compatibility, giving you mirroring support for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 and above.

Complete with 2 USB C and mini HDMI ports, a headphone jack, and an auto-rotation sensor to switch between landscape and portrait orientation, this lightweight 15.6” monitor is designed for switching effortlessly between presentations, browsers, and tools.

Its built-in battery gives you up to 3.5 hours of use, making it great for presentations, coffee shop working, and remote work in a variety of places where there is no outlet available.

Best Budget Portable Monitor

2 – AOC I1601FWUX

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A sound choice if you’re shopping on a budget, the AOC I1601FWUX may not have the wow factor of some of the other monitors on the list, but if you need a reliable, effective monitor on a budget, it can be a trusted travel companion.

Its 1080HD 15.6” display is more than crisp enough for plenty of work and casual tasks, and it comes with a range of features, such as a blue light filter and anti-glare coating, to make it effective and comfortable to use.

Incredibly slim at 0.35inches and lightweight at just 1.8 lbs, this USB C connectivity monitor is ideal for traveling with.

Best Portable Monitor for Gaming and Streaming

3 – NexiGo 144Hz Portable Gaming Monitor

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For gamers on the go, NexiGo’s portable gaming monitor boasts a 144Hz display with flicker-free technology for a gorgeous, seamless-looking video playbook.

It has both HDMI and USB C connectivity and can be used with PC, Mac, mainstream consoles, and many more devices.

Best 4k Portable Monitor

4 – Arzopa Portable 4k Monitor

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Arzopa bring an immense amount of display power to the table for such an ultra-slim monitor (0.18inches) with their portable 4k monitor.

Ideal for anyone who works with 4k and high-resolution video, media, presentations, and displays, its mini HDMI and USB C ports mean it can be connected to a range of laptops, PCs, Macbooks, smartphones, and mainstream consoles, as well as plenty of other devices.

Best Touchscreen Portable Monitor

5 – ASUS ZenScreen MB16AMT

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Very sleek, lightweight, and complete with intuitive and accurate fingertip control, the ASUS ZenScreen touchscreen monitor can be used for work, browsing, and entertainment.

USB C and micro HDMI connectivity give you scope to use it with a range of laptops and devices, while the 15.6” 60Hz 16:9 ratio screen delivers a clear, flicker-free display.

Portable Monitor Summary

Portable monitors are an excellent way to maximize the productivity of your setup while being much lighter and cheaper than large screens and additional machines.

Remember to identify the reasons why you want an additional monitor. A copywriter using a screen for research isn’t going to need the firepower of someone who wants to use the screen for both work and video games.

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Author: Dale Johnson is a content writer and designer and a full-time digital nomad as of 2016. He travels with a carefully curated work setup and is well-versed in purchasing travel tech that is both portable and effective.

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