The following product was provided by QQH for review.
Over the last week, I spent my time with QQH’s 15.6″ Portable Monitor. This monitor is slim and barely has weight to it, but it not only gave me a lot more screen space to work with using my 14″ Asus ROG but also served as a fantastic portable for my consoles as I travel about.
If you’re looking for a well-priced screen to take around, look no further than this little kit.
Port-ed
The QQH monitor came in well packaged and with everything you need to get started using the device. The monitor itself feels nice to hold and very light, featuring a smooth plastic finish and a stand that pops out diagonally in one direction. The ports are all on the right side and this is what we have to work with:
- 2 USB-C ports, one to provide power only and the other to accept display and power. Two cables, one USB-C end-to-end as well as a USB Type A to USB-C are included with a separate power adapter.
- One Mini HDMI port. One HDMI to Mini HDMI cable is included.
- One AUX port.
- A scroll wheel that allows you to access the menu and volume settings. The power button for the device is right below this.
Note that, depending on the connections from your device to this monitor, cables might get crisscrossed quite a bit, especially if you prefer to have the monitor connected on your right side instead of your left. I do wish some of the ports were scattered on both sides of the device, but outside of taking up more space I didn’t run into issues getting my laptops and consoles connected to this monitor. The higher end model, the Z12, does split these ports up so it might be worth looking into if you need the extra real estate.
This monitor has the unique ability to receive power through one of its ports as well as a video input. Said port is the top-most USB-C one and I took advantage of that through my gaming laptop. Naturally, if you use the Mini HDMI conversion cable you will need a secondary power source. Good news is that you can power the monitor directly from the very device your connected to, provided it can output enough amp. The Series S, for example, will have no trouble powering the monitor while outputting video to it. One thing to note is that the topmost port is the one that is dual power and input capable—I don’t think the marking does a good job of signifying this.
But otherwise the QQH monitor is really nice to bring around, but I do feel a bit nervous about just shoving it into my bookbag. For the sake of this review, at first I did just that, jamming it into the space between my thick ASUS ROG and the laptop carrying portion of my bag, but after a day I relented and found a laptop bag I wasn’t using to carry it around along with its wires. The housing of the devices does creak on certain sides, but I also fully expected this due as you’re more or less carrying around a slim LCD.
Image and Colour
So, the QQH is nice as it is portable. It’s image quality impresses too, especially for the price point. This portable monitor is a 60Hz, 1080p IPS LCD that is HDR capable. Out of the box the screen looks good enough, though I would tweak the sharpness a bit—the Xbox consoles have a great little tool buried in system settings that’ll help you tweak the SDR output, but ultimately it isn’t necessary. Now you can simply choose to keep the monitor HDR ready and adjust the colour output on your connected device, which is what I did. When HDR mode is on, you cannot access the monitor’s internal image settings, so keep that in mind. That being said, I also couldn’t get HDR to work with the included Mini HDMI conversion cable but only through a direct USB-C connection.
And I have to say, I’m impressed. The device seems to output roughly 550nits of brightness, faring a lot better than many of those low-end television sets you could pick up at Black Friday for extra cheap. Note that in direct sunlight, you’ll have a hard time seeing this screen so it’s best for indoor activities. The device does have a built in “low blue light” mode but since the Xbox and my PCs have night light built in, I didn’t see a need to play with it.
Other than that, this monitor has been a great companion to my work. While I did play games on it via consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox Series S, I often found myself using it as a secondary monitor for writing and copying notes. Even better, it’s a great way to get some grinding done in the phone games I play like Uma Musume and Granblue Fantasy.
Now one thing I do recommend having is a pair of headphones and ideally, a way to directly connect said headphones to the device that you are using. Part of the reason is that the speakers are not very good. To the point that I thought the tinny sounds the monitor was making was my headphones failing. There is an AUX port to connect a pair of headphones but the monitor doesn’t have enough drive to output audio to your headset’s best capabilities. It’ll do the job, but if you can connect the headphones to your device directly, that’s the best way to go.
But other than that, the QQH Portable Monitor is a great monitor for the price. As of this writing, you can grab it for $79.99 USD, and honestly even at full price, it’s a good deal. If you’re the kind of person that gets work done a lot outside the house and needs more real estate, this monitor is a no-brainer. Same with taking consoles and other HDMI-capable devices—it’s a much better idea to grab the QQH monitor than to lug around a giant set.
You can purchase the QQH Z1-9 Monitor here at Amazon.com.
