The Best Portable Monitors for 2025

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Portable monitors that you pair with a laptop are nothing new, but in the past few years, they have exploded in number. (Most display makers now have several in their product lines.) Whether you want to add a second display to give small-group presentations, view two programs full-screen side by side, or touch up designs with a stylus, you can find a mobile monitor ready to serve. That's where PCMag comes in: We've tested for the best portable monitors for a wide variety of uses. Our top overall pick for most people is the ViewSonic VG1655, but one of our other picks below—backed by our detailed testing methodology and collective decades of review experience—could be a better fit for your specific budget and needs. We stand behind them all. Read on for the best portable monitors on the market, followed by our detailed shopping advice.

You could lug around some smaller desktop displays on the road in a pinch, but "true" portable monitors are those specifically sold as such. Even those range quite a bit in size: from 3.5 inches to 22 inches. Portable displays run the gamut from personal, business, and general-purpose models to panels for artists and gamers.

The sweet spot for use with a laptop, though, and our focus here, is screens between 12 and 17 inches. Many users match their portable display with the screen size of their laptop. But you'll also see a handful of models on the market at 10 inches (primarily for use with gaming consoles) and at 7 inches (for use with the Raspberry Pi).

Many portable displays, especially toward the budget end, use a stand consisting of a thin but stiff plastic board, with several grooves or creases on which it folds. At one end is a magnetic strip, which adheres to the back of the monitor at its top. Folding the sheet in the middle, with the angle pointing away from the user, props up the monitor. The bottom of the monitor inserts into a groove, securing it and tilting the device upward. (Some portable displays have several grooves, and you can alter the monitor's tilt angle by placing the base in a different one.)

These foldable stands, often referred to as origami-style stands, can double as protective covers for the display when it's not in use. Some protect just the front of the monitor, while others are larger wraparound covers that sandwich the entire monitor.

Another common stand design, particularly on higher-end models, consists of a rigid, flat base, containing the ports, to which the screen is attached via hinges. You can set the screen at any angle you like simply by tilting it. Also, a few designs use the laptop itself as the support, fastening to its back or its side and sliding or swinging out for use.

Although most mobile monitors lack the height, pivot, or swivel adjustability of their desktop counterparts, they are small and light enough that they are easy to adjust manually. Some monitors can be pivoted by hand, though not all stands can support a monitor in portrait mode. In those cases, you could always prop the monitor against a wall or other surface. Most portable monitors can automatically correct the image so it is always right side up, whether you're in landscape or portrait mode. (Even in those without such automatic image rotation, you can change the orientation in Windows display settings.)

The Best Portable Monitor for a Laptop: How to Evaluate the Screen

When we evaluate mobile monitor panels, the main factors we consider are the screen size and aspect ratio, the native resolution, the brightness range, the technology the panel uses, and the maker's claims for color-gamut coverage.

Many users prefer to use a mobile monitor that has the same screen size and native resolution as the laptop screen they are using it with. That said, I have found these panels to be forgiving and have had no trouble running portable displays that are slightly larger than my laptop's own screen. As long as you don't mismatch the mobile monitor's and laptop's screen aspect ratio (which, until the last few years, was almost always a 16:9 widescreen ratio but is now increasingly often 16:10), you are unlikely to experience much trouble in matching them up.

The native resolution on panels suitable for use with a laptop ranges from 1,366 by 768 pixels (too coarse for modern laptops) up to 3,840 by 2,160 pixels (UHD, aka 4K). Most recent laptop-appropriate screens sport a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (aka 1080p, or "full HD"), but a few go higher.

Mobile monitors tend to be dimmer, at their maximum brightness levels, than their desktop counterparts. What is commonly called brightness is actually luminance, or brightness per unit area. Portable monitors tend to cluster around 180 nits (also expressed as "candelas per meter squared") in our testing, even though many are rated between 230 and 300 nits, which is acceptable for typical use. The recent arrival of portable OLED panels has given a huge boost to monitor luminance, with the brightest we have tested measuring more than 550 nits.

Monitors that make use of in-plane switching (IPS) technology are generally preferred for general use over vertical alignment (VA) and twisted-nematic (TN) panels due to their wider off-axis viewing angles and good color accuracy. Many recent mobile monitors are IPS, but there's a catch, especially if such displays were made before 2022. When we test a panel for its color gamut, we first test the sRGB color space, the default color space for the web and many other applications. This color space comprises essentially all the colors that can be made by mixing red, green, and blue. Most desktop monitors cover at least 95% of sRGB, and we have seen portable monitors attain similar coverage.

However, until a few years ago, most mobile IPS monitors we reviewed showed much more limited overall color coverage (60% to 72% of sRGB) and very similar color profiles—indicating poor red and purple coverage and slightly enhanced blue-greens. Because of their nearly identical "color signatures," these core panels likely came from the same or similar sources, although they are on monitors made by various manufacturers.

These measured results were borne out in our experiential testing, where red and purple areas tended to look dull and washed out in photos and videos. Although screens with this issue are fine for most business and productivity use, they are subpar for videophiles or photo enthusiasts. In our monitor reviews, we include a chromaticity chart that maps our readings against the ideal readings for the color space being tested, and we provide an analysis of the panel's color coverage. Most recent portable IPS monitors have shown much better color-gamut coverage, but we occasionally review one with the same poor color profile.

The few portable OLED panels we've reviewed have extraordinarily high contrast due to their ability to display true blacks by turning off groups of pixels. They have contrast ratios in the neighborhood of 100,000:1, while VA panels have contrast ratios of about 3,000:1, IPS Black screens 2,000:1, and standard IPS around 1,000:1. Even those lower ratios are still fine for many artists and gamers, however.

What Ports Should I Look for in a Portable Monitor?

As I alluded to earlier, the mobile-monitor world is undergoing a convergence of power and connectivity thanks to USB Type-C connectivity. Many USB-C ports support both DisplayPort over USB and USB power delivery, letting both data/video and power flow through the port from a computer over a single USB cable. Most new mobile monitors have at least one USB-C port, and some connect solely via USB-C. While this simplicity has appeal, be sure your laptop's USB-C port supports data, video, and power transfer, because some early-generation USB-C ports don't. (Thunderbolt ports should also work fine; their functionality encompasses all that of USB-C.)

A few mobile monitors use traditional power adapters. This is particularly true of models that work with sketch pens and are intended for artists; they are, in effect, interactive monitors. In a common configuration with older panels that don't support DisplayPort over USB and USB power delivery, the display draws power through an adapter, while two cables connect to the computer. One is HDMI, to handle transfer of the image displayed on the device, and the other is USB (through a USB-A port), to record the user's pen motions when drawing on the interactive display. HDMI (usually in the form of mini-HDMI) is also a common port (the most common other than USB-C) on more conventional portable displays.

A few older portable display models draw their power from a laptop over a separate USB 3.0 connection, but USB-C has made this kind of connection passé.

Portable Monitor Software and the On-Screen Display

Nearly all portable displays are plug-and-play and require no software to operate. Any utilities offered will be for specific functions, such as enabling the screen image to remain upright when you switch between landscape and portrait orientation. Sometimes, the display may have a utility that lets you change monitor settings from your computer screen rather than through the secondary panel's on-screen display (OSD) controls.

The OSD is the monitor's menu system, governing user-controllable settings such as brightness, contrast, color levels, picture mode, and aspect ratio. It is often arranged in several submenus. Although a few models include several buttons to navigate the OSD, a single button or switch to control it is more common.

In general, audio is not a consideration with mobile monitors, as these devices tend to lack built-in speakers or audio jacks. The few portable displays (often gaming models) that do include speakers, in our experience, have weak ones and are most valuable when paired with a portable gaming console or a smartphone. When the monitor is connected to a laptop, you can always switch from the display's speakers to your laptop's speakers by clicking (in Windows) the speaker icon in the taskbar and changing to your laptop's audio.

Ready to Buy the Right Portable Monitor for You?

Whatever your needs or budget, there's a model out there that fits; the key thing is to consider the primary display panel you'll be using alongside it, and that the two match up well. Check out our product picks above, as well as our detailed spec list, for the best current portable displays we've tested. We update this story regularly, but for the latest monitor reviews we've posted, also see our overall best monitor guide.