The recently released ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor is a superb example of how easy it is to expand your screen footprint while still enjoying outstanding quality. Today’s laptops typically have wide-gamut displays with wonderfully high resolution, but sometimes a larger or extended display is in order.

With the advent of USB Type-C, a single cable can easily carry enough current to power an external display, as well as the audio and video signals. In the past, many external displays were more of a hassle as they required an external power supply – usually a power brick of some kind - and either a USB cable for video, or DisplayPort cable. Fortunately, that’s not so anymore! A single thin lightweight cable is all that’s needed, making these displays very portable. They are also an ideal mate for a laptop with its limited screen real estate.

The ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor is a great way to grow your display space. At 15.6-inches, weighing barely over two pounds (2.2 lbs.), and less than half an inch thick (.20”) it’s easily portable. With a bright 400 NITs it’s bright enough for almost any use, although for color critical color work, we ran it throttled down to 120 candelas for photo editing. It’s a first-rate color correct entry into an expanded desktop. It has a beautiful OLED screen and an extra USB-Type C port, with which I was conveniently able to charge my cell phone on a long Amtrak journey. The wide color gamut (it’s part of their Color Pro line) and even illumination, made working in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic on my Apple M1 MacBook Pro 14-inch, and M1 Apple Studio a joy. It lit up instantly upon connection, required no additional software, and was easily controllable through its onscreen menus, and whether being used for color critical work, or binge-watching BritBox and Acorn crime thrillers it performed perfectly.

As a OLED display, it has jet black blacks, which wouldn’t matter if the display wasn’t able to support a wide color calibrated gamut. It also has a really useful and adjustable stand, that folds flat against the back of the display for portable use. The calibration data is stored in the unit’s LUT, so holds the data on the road. At 1920×1080 resolution, 60 Hz refresh rate, and 1 ms Gray-to-Gray (GtG) response time, it’s great for use for editing and fast enough for gaming. The stand allows it to have adjustable height as well as tilt, so we found it useful on the road, in the office, and studio.

The design of the ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor is clean and efficient. It’s impressively simple to use, nothing to think about, just plug it in and away you go. It comes in stylish matte black, with a matching pivoting matte black stand, so it blends into any environment and isn’t distracting in an editing environment. It has two built-in 1W (x2) speakers, which in a pinch can spread the audio.

ViewSonic is represented by the irrepressible PR whiz Joey Lee, and during CES we were talking about the void in the industry left by NECs departure from high end color critical displays and she said not to worry, check out ViewSonic’s Color Pro line! Integrated into the stand are dual USB-C ports for video support and 2-way charging. There’s also a micro-HDMI input for additional video support, and a single 3.5mm audio jack, that allows you to use headphones, and external speakers. A tripod mount is built into the stand, allowing you to use as a preview screen or teleprompter. An included cover allows you to keep your display protected while in transit. It ships with a USB-Type C power supply, but on most computers with a Type C port, you won’t need it. I was happy to find that cables were included, since many companies don’t seem to provide cables these days.

While ViewSonic does have Windows software to control the display, we found that using its OSD (On Screen Display) which included the following was easiest: Input Select, Color Mode, ViewMode, Audio Adjust, Setup Menu. Under the Color Mode you have a choice of DCI-P3, sRGB, REC709, DICOM-SIM, and User set. For ViewMode, the presets areCAD/CAM, Video Edit, Animation, Photographer, FPS 1, FPS 2, RTS, and MOBA. We used the Photographermode for our testing. You can adjust the Gamma, and Color Temperature, and Sharpness, as well as a Blue Light Filter. It has standard features like Sleep, Auto Power, OSD timeout.  According to ViewSonic, it can display 100% sRGB, and 99% of Adobe RGB.

The build quality is first-rate – an alumnium frame with plastic bezel, it had no gaps, or blemishes, just tight tolerances. At 1080P, it’s not a 4K display, but to be fair, we had no need for it to be. Even when streaming high-res movies, the resolution at a viewing distance of 10-14 inches was perfect, and when I compared it to my higher-resolution Apple display, on my M1 MacBook Pro I actually preferred the ViewSonic’s OLED display for its richer imaging and deeper blacks. As mentioned earlier, while it’s rated for over 400 cd/m2, because we are primarily interested in editing photographs, our reference displays from NEC are actually calibrated to run at 120 cd/m2, so rarely do we ever crank a display that bright. For office use in a bright environment, there are times that extra luminosity is handy, but not for serious image editing, and as a Pantone Validated display, Graphic Designers can be assured of accurate color modeling.

In short, we love the ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor. It’s simple to use, has a wonderfully sharp, vivid, and color correct OLED panel. It’s articulated stand makes it usable in an office setting, or on the road. The fit and finish are first rate and precise, and there wasn’t a single time that we felt it was lacking. The ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor comes Highly Recommended.

A Mac Edition Radio Holiday Gift Pick!

Harris Fogel and Nancy Burlan, posted 11/24/2024

For more information on the ViewSonic VP16-OLED Thin Portable Monitor visit: https://www.viewsonic.com/us/vp16-oled.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqnWhFC63HL3IiXAtq9Bis7xVC1aaH2bBovrkMLhJlDBGeW26xu#productTab.download