I think of this time of year, the time after the end of summer and before Christmas, as “Gadget Season.” Gadgets of all types, trying to catch our attention, with some so useless that you wonder who would ever buy such a thing. Of course, not all gadgets are useless and many of them have displays attached to them.
For this Display Daily, I’ll review some gadgets with displays I saw at the recent Pepcom event, all planned to be available in time for the Christmas selling season.
Lenovo demonstrated its ThinkVision M14 portable external monitor (bottom) attached to a Lenovo laptop (top) at the recent Pepcom. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
One of the most useful looking gadgets I saw at the recent Pepcom press event was the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 monitor. This is a 14” FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS LCD panel intended for use as an external monitor when the owner is traveling. Its only interfaces are two USB-C with DP1.2 Alt Mode inputs, one on either side of the unit. There are two so you can connect the unit to your laptop easily whether the ThinkVision monitor is to the left or right of the computer.
The unit has no battery – both the power and the video content come from the host computer over the USB-C connection. This makes the ThinkVision both thin (4.4mm /0.17″) and lightweight (570g /1.26lbs) and, therefore, easy to travel with – just put it in your laptop bag with the stand folded over to protect the screen. For power, the unit can also be connected to an external power supply through the USB-C port is not used for video input. At Pepcom, Lenovo was demonstrating the unit by just repeating the image on the main screen of the host laptop. Like any Windows 10 external monitor, it can also show different content than the main laptop screen.
The Lenovo ThinkVision M14 can be used for one-on-one or one-on-many presentations. (Credit: Lenovo)
Lenovo suggests a couple of uses for this monitor, such as giving a presentation at a coffee shop without revealing your main screen to the viewer. Another suggested use was for presentations to groups too large for all of them to conveniently see the main computer screen. I’d like to suggest a third use. Travelers who, like me, are accustomed to a dual-monitor setup at home can replicate that experience while working away from home. The Lenovo ThinkVision M14 was first announced at MWC last February in Barcelona. It shipped in Europe in June for €299 and is scheduled to ship in the US in November for $249.
Matt Brennesholtz playing with the Mirage MR HMD at Pepcom (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
Lenovo showed another not so useful and not so new display gadget at Pepcom, the Mirage Mixed Reality (MR) HMD. This smartphone-based, see-through HMD is strictly for gamers. It comes bundled with two hand controllers, a “tracking beacon” and games based on Marvel characters, all for $249. According to the Lenovo rep at Pepcom, the hardware is identical to the unit introduced about two years ago. Then, however, the bundled games were based on Star Wars. Still, it was cool to point your controllers at someone at Pepcom and see the virtual laser beams blow them away. Virtually, of course. I’m sure if I could have found a virtual villain from the Marvel Universe among the real people at Pepcom, I could have seen them blow up, dissolve, disintegrate or get transported to another universe.
OnePlus Pro 7 Phone with its pop-up selfie camera (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
OnePlus was also at Pepcom showing off their 7 Pro phone. In this phone, the 6.67”, QHD+ (3120 by 1440 pixels), 19.5:9, 90HZ, AMOLED display covers the entire surface of the phone, leaving no room for a selfie camera. Not to worry, it has a selfie camera anyway. It pops up when activated and retracts when not in use. According to the company, the pop-up camera is “Built to last, you could take over 150 selfies every day for 5.5 years without wearing down the camera unit.” Anyone who takes more than 301,000 selfies deserves to have the camera wear out.
The screen is pretty good, too. Dr. Ray Soneira at DisplayMate has given it an A+ rating and you can’t get any better than that. With 100,000:1 contrast and HDR10+ compatibility, you can watch HDR content and actually benefit from the HDR, at least if you are in a totally dark room. Of course, if you want some other phone, DisplayMate has also given the AMOLED screens in the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and the iPhone 11 Pro Max phones an A+ rating. Still, that puts OnePlus in pretty exalted company.
If you want a 5G phone, OnePlus and T-Mobile announced on October 7th after Pepcom that the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G for the T-Mobile network. This phone isn’t 5G mmWave, it works on T-Mobile’s 5G 600MHz band. This is a relatively low frequency band for cell phone operation. This low frequency gives the signals a relatively long range, making it ideal for rural areas. So if you are a farmer or rancher and you want a phone with a screen with an A+ rating, this phone might be for you. T-Mobile says the phone will be available for customers on October 18th.
The TCLPLEX phone at Pepcom with the selfie camera visible in the display in the upper left corner. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
TCL was there showing their first TCL-branded phone, the TCLPlex. Other phones on display at Pepcom in the TCL booth had the Alcatel brand on them. Strictly speaking, this isn’t a gadget, it is a perfectly functional Android smartphone. It has FHD+ (1080 x 2340) resolution and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio in its 6.53” display, for a 395PPI resolution. While the display covers most of the phone, 90% according to TCL, the selfie camera does not pop up like the camera in the OnePlus Pro 7 phone. Instead it looks through a hole in the display and is visible in the photo I took. In other words, this phone does not have a super-display like the OnePlus, Samsung or iPhone, just a perfectly functional LCD display.
The TCL rep at Pepcom, Brad Molen, Sr. Manager of Communications for North America, said the phone will be soft-launched in October in four European countries; Portugal, Spain, Germany and Turkey, at a €329 price point. He said TCL expects to launch a TCL-branded phone in the US in 2020, although it might not be this phone. He added that TCL wants to establish a reputation for high-quality phones at an affordable price, not a reputation as a maker of super-smartphones that no one can afford.
ViewSonic M1 Mini at Pepcom and the label accompanying it. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
ViewSonic showed a projector at Pepcom that, at $149, is low enough priced to fall into the Gadget category. (Other ViewSonic sources give it an estimated street price of $169.) This is cheap enough that you wouldn’t feel too bad about putting it under the Christmas tree, playing with it a couple of times and then letting it gather dust. The projector has not shown up on the ViewSonic website yet and full details are lacking but its DLP imager has a resolution of WVGA (854 x 480) and 50 ANSI Lumens, which ViewSonic says are equivalent to 120 LED lumens.
The only interfaces are HDMI 1.4 with HDCP 1.4 and USB 2.0. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the projector is the weight: 0.55 pounds (250g). The other two members of the M1 family, the M1 and the M1+ both weigh in at 1.7 pounds (0.8Kg). They also have higher brightness, better connectivity and are more expensive, $326.99 and $337.99 respectively.
BTW, while I didn’t see it at Pepcom, I saw a press release with the title “Sennheiser Offers Up To 100 Hours of Uninterrupted Gaming With New Wireless Gaming Headset, GSP 370.” I was slightly relieved when I realized this was an audio headset, not an HMD. Still, “100 hours of uninterrupted gaming?” Is marathon gaming, like marathon dancing in the 1930s, a trend I missed? I know I’ve missed a lot of other trends. -M. Brennesholtz
