Customer Ratings & Reviews

I used to travel a lot, almost 50% of my work was away from home. Spending evenings in a hotel room catching up on work emails, doing reports and Teams calls on a 14" business laptop was challenging at times. Looking back I wish I had one of these back then. it would have made my life so much easier. While not the greatest available it is a value with the features and price point. With a 16" IPS display, 1900 x 1200 resolution at 60Hz is more than good enough for any road warrior that needs extra screen space. I will say that at full brightness you get a bit of a wash out of color but for what it is I have no complaints. 6ms response time is okay for school and business, maybe not so much for gaming, plenty good enough for watching videos. No setup required, just plug in the supplied HDMI cable (mini to regular with mini attached to the Acer) and the USB-C cable to get power from your laptop. If your laptop has display via USB-C then you only need to connect that cable and leave the HDMI cable in you bag. It does have built in speakers but I'll leave it at that. I wouldn't recommend using them as the quality isn't that great and the driving device most like has better audio output. Not a major down It has a kickstand that allows you to adjust the viewing angle and with the kickstand out you can access the controls and input ports. There are two screw holes in the back that will allow a VESA mount but in that mode you need to pivot the kickstand all the way up out of the way so you can still access controls and inputs. This monitor also supports input from tablets and smart phones that support video via USB-C. I connected my iPhone 16 Pro Max and the monitor jumped to life. Unfortunately no touch screen but if you are on the road with only a tablet you can watch movies or other videos. My only wish is that it had a hard screen cover/stand rather than the kickstand. I see those on other monitors but at a higher price so invest in decent laptop sleeve or maybe a zippered hard sleeve. I'm reluctant to toss this into my backpack without some kind of screen protection. Heck even a homemade protector out of cardboard :) 4 stars due to the poor audio from the built in speakers and no screen protector. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but gets the job done for a decent $110.

The Acer PM161W is the first new portable display that I've used in a few years. This thing is a huge improvement from the last model I used regularly for work. Rather than relying on DisplayLink, it supports USB-C alt mode and has a mini HDMI input for backup. #Unboxing and first impressions# The Acer PM161W is a simple product that only includes a ~5 foot long USB-C cable and the monitor itself. It is clearly value oriented without any frills, although even at this low price I was kind of surprised that it didn't include a cover or carrying case. The PM161W is extremely thin, however, so finding a case should be extremely easy should I need one in the future. #Using the display# I have two immediate use cases for a portable display, so I put the PM161W to the test right away. First, I need a monitor that I can carry and use as an extra display when hoteling at the office. Second, I wanted a portable display that we could use on the road for my kids to play Nintendo Switch in the back seat on long trips. For the 'normal' use case at the office, the PM161W is a great display. It's 1200p, so slightly more vertical resolution than a standard 16:9 display. It's not incredibly bright, but bright enough that it works without causing eye strain. The viewing angles are excellent. Also, I could not find this listed anywhere, but the PM161W does support pass through charging. This is excellent news! Finally, I could not test the FreeSync capability as I don't have an AMD laptop to connect to it at present. It does not support VESA adaptive sync, I guess. For the second use case (using it as a monitor for backseat gaming), the PM161W is a great solution depending on lighting conditions. It works with the Switch without a dock! Running the PM161W and a Switch powered by USB-C required about 12W of power. Using it with USB-C power for the display and a mini-hdmi device uses about 3-5W for the PM161W only. #Final thoughts# I'd recommend the PM161W to anyone who wants a simple to use portable display that has very good image quality for the money. It can easily support a variety of uses.

I've had a little experience with other portable monitors, and was concerned this might fall into the pitfalls of others. That being, they seem to typically use similar components, and poor quality screen. This one does not seem to fall into that group. This has a better picture than the screen on some laptops! It gets bright enough that in a well-lit room it's still easy to see, but outdoors you may still struggle a little bit. It has 2 USB-C ports, and one mini-HDMI port. Mini-HDMI isn't a very common interface, and usually only seen on portable monitors like this. Helpfully, they've included a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable (and also a USB-C cable). Unhelpfully, it's a short 2-feet. If you need to use HDMI with this, you may want to find a mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter, so you can use any HDMI cable. But, HDMI is not required, as it supports using either USB-C port as a display in (and simultaneously power). You could also use one USB-C for power, and one for display. So it is very flexible for display and power options. It has 3.5mm audio jack, power and menu buttons on the edge side opposite the USB-C and HDMI inputs. The buttons and menu are a bit clunky to use, but still usable. The buttons did not seem to control the volume of the built-in speakers, and I had to go into the menu to adjust it. That was a bit annoying, but almost a moot point since the built-in speakers are not very good, so I wouldn't try using the speakers on this monitor unless you really have to. Otherwise, this is very thin and light, adding to its portability, and really wouldn't be a huge burden to add to a laptop bag. The major downside is they don't include any kind of screen cover, so if you have it flopping around in your bag, the screen could get scratched up. I don't even know where I would store this to keep it safe. Maybe find a very low-profile laptop pouch/sleeve that this can fit in. Only other feature I wish this had is touch, but that's more of a personal preference.

It does exactly what it's meant to do. I bought it to be a second screen for system maintenance of a custom built arcade machine.

Great quality however there isn't a cover for the screen. Using a makeshift cover so the screen doesn't get scratched in my bag.

It broke in my carry on with padding 2 days after I bought it

“Brand new” but arrived with 3 different spots of magenta streaked dead pixels. Unbelievable.