AOC I1601FWUX USB

You need not be limited by your laptop's single small screen if you're drafting a proposal in your hotel room or presenting to a small group anymore: The age of the truly mobile monitor is here. You can boost your screen area with a portable display such as the AOC I1601FWUX USB-C Portable Monitor ($199.99), a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that weighs less than two pounds and rests on a sturdy, foldable stand. Note that I1601FWUX is best for business use rather than entertainment, because its colors are on the dull side. Also, it connects via USB-C only, and your laptop's USB-C port needs to support the DisplayPort-over-USB protocol. But if your laptop fits the profile, it's a sleek second-screen solution, requiring just that single cable connection for signal and power.

Design-wise, the I1601FWUX is a handsome device with an aluminum back and sides, rounded corners, and glossy black bezels framing its 15.6-inch in-plane switching (IPS) panel. The monitor measures 9.2 by 14.9 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.8 pounds. Like most of the portable monitors we have reviewed over the past year—including the Lepow 15.6-inch USB-C Portable Monitor and two 14-inch monitors, the HP EliteDisplay S14 and the Lenovo ThinkVision M14, the latter a PCMag Editors' Choice—the screen is 1080p (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution.

The I1601FWUX's protective cover doubles as a foldable stand that has magnetized edges to which the panel adheres. By adjusting the position where the magnetized strip meets the back of the monitor, you can adjust the tilt, from 5 degrees beyond vertical (away from you) to 20 degrees toward you.

It doesn't support swivel adjustment (which you can do easily enough by hand), and you can't adjust its height, but you can pivot from landscape to portrait (or back) simply by removing the I1601FWUX from the stand, rotating it 90 degrees, and reattaching it to the stand.

Although the stand is no substitute for the kind you'd get with a non-portable desktop monitor, it's decent compared with some similar mobile-monitor stands I have encountered. Above all, it is sturdy—it didn't collapse once, unlike some other portable-monitor stands I've tried.

AOC took a minimalist approach to connections and controls on the I1601FWUX. On the left edge of the monitor, near the bottom, are a power button—which doubles as an onscreen display (OSD) control—and a USB-C port.

Pressing and quickly releasing the power/OSD button when the monitor is on takes you to the six-item menu (Brightness, Contrast, Overdrive, Low Blue Light, Language, and Exit). Overdrive is an interesting addition; it lets you speed up the pixel-response time, though it seems an unnecessary feature for a display of this kind. You toggle through the menu items by pressing and releasing the button, then releasing when it reaches the item you want. You alter its settings once again by pressing the button. It's not the easiest way of getting around, but it gets the job done.

For navigation, you may also want to try i-Menu, one of several utilities—along with one for power saving, and one for screen-splitting between windows, which may not be all that useful for a 15-inch monitor—that comes on disc with the monitor and is also downloadable from the AOC site. With i-Menu, you can control brightness, contrast, and other settings, as well as pivot the image onscreen 90 or 180 degrees, from your computer in software rather than by messing with the power/OSD button.

As mentioned earlier, this AOC panel has just one video input: a USB Type-C connector. In this case, the USB-C interface supports DisplayPort over USB, which lets the monitor draw power—and receive a video signal—from a computer over a USB-C connection.

For its versatility in reducing cable clutter and offering "alternate modes" such as DisplayPort over USB and Thunderbolt 3, USB-C connectivity has become very popular. (Thunderbolt 3, incidentally, counts DisplayPort over USB as a subset of its functionality, while supporting greater data-throughput speeds.) We see USB-C in many new laptops, and in some cases—such as my Dell XPS 13, which has three USB-C ports—the only USB ports on a laptop are USB-C. Many new laptops that have USB-C ports should support DisplayPort over USB on at least one of them, but the same may not be true of models more than a year old. You'll want to check; having a USB-C port doesn't necessarily mean it supports a DisplayPort signal over it. Some of these ports are just for transferring data.

Case in point: When it came time to do the I1601FWUX's color and brightness testing, I was unable to get our testbed PC to recognize the panel when I connected a cable between them. After some troubleshooting, trying various hubs to connect the monitor, laptop, and signal generator, I checked the laptop's USB-C port to find that it supports data transfer only, not DisplayPort over USB. To test the monitor, we had to install our test software on another laptop. So, before you buy this monitor, be sure that the computer you will be pairing it with supports DisplayPort over USB-C.

I did our luminance and color testing in standard mode using a Klein K10-A(Opens in a new window) colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G(Opens in a new window) signal generator, an X-Rite i1Basic Pro 2(Opens in a new window) color profiler, and Portrait Displays CalMAN 5(Opens in a new window) software. AOC rates the I1601FWUX's maximum brightness at 220 nits (candelas per meter squared); in our testing, it fell a bit short of that, coming in at 182 nits, which is still a decent brightness setting for a portable monitor.

In our color testing, the I1601FWUX covered just 61.4 percent of the sRGB color space (see the chromaticity chart above). The triangle represents the colors that comprise sRGB—essentially, all the colors that can be made by mixing different percentages of red, green, and blue. The white boxes show where the data points would be for a monitor that covers the full sRGB space.

Several of our test points—the black circles—are well within the triangle, indicating that this panel can display less than two-thirds of the sRGB colors, especially toward the red/purple/blue part of the spectrum. Notice, though, that the blue circle is slightly outside of the triangle—it's a small consolation that this panel does cover a small range of colors toward the blue-green beyond the sRGB spectrum.

The chromaticity chart's overall pattern strongly resembled that of the Lepow 15.6-inch USB-C Portable Monitor, also a 15.6-inch 1080p IPS panel, which had the same blue point outside the sRGB space and a curtailed color gamut toward the purple. The Lepow did a tad better than the AOC, covering 65.4 percent of sRGB, but then we seldom see desktop monitors that cover less than 90 percent of sRGB. These kinds of mobile panels are generally for productivity use, not Photoshop finery.

We have reviewed two other portable IPS panels with 1080p resolution since December 2018. The HP EliteDisplay S14 showed the same general color pattern in its chromaticity chart as the I1601FWUX and the Lepow. (At the time we reviewed it, we were not able to measure its percentage of color coverage.) In contrast, the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 displayed a much wider color gamut (97 percent of the sRGB color space), and it rendered vivid colors in my viewing of photos, videos, and web pages.

I did most of my testing of the I1601FWUX using my late-model Dell XPS 13. I used the monitor to view office documents, surf the web, and view our selected set of photos and video clips. The test results from the previous section were borne out in viewing color images. The colors often lacked punch; this was most noticeable in reds (which looked orange) and purples (which looked washed out). This would not be a good choice for photo editing. There were similar color issues in video; also, in one clip, the monitor amplified an artifact—a sky crisscrossed by a series of regular, faint curved lines—that was clearly from the original video but barely visible on my laptop screen.

All in all, I'd rate this monitor as good for business documents and web surfing, and passable (though not ideal) for casual photo viewing and light video watching.

See How We Test Monitors

AOC provides a three-year warranty for the I1601FWUX, which is typical of monitor warranties.

Mobile monitors need to be light, and this AOC model fits the bill. The I1601FWUX has a good match of screen size (15.6 inches) and native resolution (1080p), while tipping the scales at less than two pounds. And provided your laptop has a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort over USB, you'll appreciate this panel's one-cable convenience. (Otherwise, look for a model with HDMI input.)

The AOC's limited color gamut and often slightly muted colors, though, make it best for business use. It can fill in for entertainment use in a pinch, if you're not too picky. The Lenovo ThinkVision M14, in contrast, covers nearly the full sRGB color gamut and is our current top pick as a portable monitor for business or personal use.

The I1601FWUX, however, does give you some extra screen room, and it may well just come down to the screen size of the laptop you intend to pair your portable panel with. A 15.6-inch laptop screen may look better next to another 15.6-inch screen for parallellism; ditto with two 14-inch panels. For basic productivity use, that may be a bigger deciding factor than the subtleties of color reproduction.

The lightweight AOC I1601FWUX USB-C Portable Monitor is for USB-C laptops that support DisplayPort over USB. It has a roomy 15.6-inch screen with 1080p resolution, but it's best for business use due to its limited color gamut.

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.

Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!

See How We Test MonitorsLab Report

News