AOC E1659FWU And GeChic On-Lap 1502I: Portable Monitors, To Go

Setting Up The AOC E1659FWI And GeChic On-Lap 1502I

AOC E1659FWU

AOC’s portable monitor is super-simple to operate, and can be quickly and easily hooked up to any PC desktop or laptop. It’s compatible with Windows versions as far back as XP, and no matter what flavor you’re running, there are only a couple of steps involved.

Everything happens through a USB cable; there are no other inputs. This includes power as well as video. The second-generation standard is supported with some limitations, especially when it comes to the throughput needed for playing back DVDs on the screen. A USB 3.0 cable is included, and the E1659FWU works best when you attached it to a USB 3.0 port.

Regardless of your Windows version, you need to install drivers from the included CD before connecting the monitor. After agreeing to the license terms, the install takes a minute or so. Then you should re-boot. Once you’re back up and the monitor is connected, it automatically sets itself to extend mode. Since your desktop resolution is probably higher than 1366x768, you'll probably want to specify which area of your main display will act as the transition area. If you open your display control dialog box and change the monitor configuration to duplicate (as we had to for some of our tests), your main screen will be forced to the E1659FWU's lower 1366x768 resolution.

Once you have it up and running, you’re done. There is no OSD available. The only adjustments are brightness and contrast, which can be accessed through a system tray icon. The sliders themselves are controlled with your mouse pointer. There are no buttons to manipulate on the panel.

GeChic On-Lap 1502I

Installing the On-Lap 1502I is a matter of connecting the USB port to either a computer or power outlet, and hooking up a VGA or HDMI video signal source. The screen automatically comes up in Windows 7 or 8 in an extended desktop configuration. The touchscreen functions work right out of the box with no additional driver installation. Windows 7 only supports touch for basic mouse operations. In Windows 8, it’s 10-point multi-touch-compatible.

Since GeChic includes calibration controls, we dialed the On-Lap in for our tests. The Brightness control, as in most monitors, modulates the backlight rather than actually changing the black level. Our only caution is to leave it set above 12. Any lower and visible flickering results. That shouldn't be a problem though, since you have to set the screen to at least 21 if you want more than 50 cd/m². The RGB sliders allowed us to generate decent grayscale numbers, which you’ll see on page six.

Moving on to the benchmarks, we were able to test both panels exactly like their desktop counterparts.