When you're at your desk, you get the benefit of two or more monitors, but when you hit the road with your laptop, chances are that you're stuck with just one screen. A portable, USB-powered monitor is the best solution to this problem, and Lenovo's ThinkVision M14 is the best of these we've seen.
When we wrote our Lenovo ThinkVision M14 review, we praised the 14-inch, 1080p display for its sharp, colorful images and sleek design. However, the real star of the show is a built-in kickstand, which keeps it steady on your desk and allows you to position it at a wide variety of angles or even in portrait mode. Leading competitors like the Asus ZenScreen MB16AC don't have kickstands, instead forcing you to prop them up with flimsy, annoying origami-style cases that take up a ton of desk space and flop over easily.
Normally, the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 costs well over $200, but as part of the holiday tech deals season, right now Lenovo has it on sale for $193 if you use coupon code THINK10. That's the lowest price we've seen.
The ThinkVision M14 connects to your computer via a single USB Type-C connection, which carries both the power it needs to run and the video signal. It requires you to have a Type-C port that outputs video over USB-C's alternative mode.
In our tests, the M14 was capable of reproducing 98 percent of the sRGB gamut, about 30 percent more than Asus's ZenScreen MB16AC. Lenovo's monitor hit a solid, for a USB screen, 244-nit maximum brightness. Overall, this screen provides the best image quality and, just as important, build quality we've seen from a portable monitor.
