Should I Upgrade My Tablet or Buy a Portable Monitor?

wisdomtooth on 20/12/2024 - 06:28
Last edited 20/12/2024 - 08:33

I'm passing on the Lenovo M10 gen3 I got early last year at ALDI for $99 to the offspring, and am looking to replace it with an OLED one, since I mostly only use it for watching stuff in the dark at night, and the LCD backlight bleed is my only grievance with it (not the low powered Unisoc T610 chipset). To my surprise, there currently are not a whole lot of OLED tablet options out there, just the Samsung S's, the Lenovo's P11/P12 pro's and this year's two Honor's, all priced $700+. So I wonder… am I better off just buying a separate 13" OLED screen, i.e. portable monitor, for <$200 at AliEx, (or as little as $128) that is not programmed to be obsolete by not being upgradable to the latest OS?

UPDATE: Oh, wait, that may not work with my phone (Xiaomi POCO M5s)

Electrical & Electronics Computer Peripheral Portable Monitor Tablet

Comments

  • ihfree on 20/12/2024 - 08:36
    +3

    Depends how you use it.

    If you're holding it, I'd stick with a tablet.

    If not, there are probably minimal issues with a portable monitor. You'll also need a tv box of some sort and power adapters which could be annoying.

    • wisdomtooth on 20/12/2024 - 08:59

      If you're holding it, I'd stick with a tablet.

      Why? Heavy? The form factor seems just like a tablet.

      You'll also need a tv box of some sort

      I was planning on just connecting it to my phone, but looks like that's not gonna work.

      So I might connect it to my firestick (4K Max) instead.

      and power adapters which could be annoying.

      I generally use it next to a power source, in bed or on an armchair, and frequently have it connected, bc ofc I forgot to put it to charge in the morning, after dozing off at night (terrible habits, ikr!).

      I don't usually take it on the go — who does, when we already have a phone in the pocket? — but if I were to, I guess I'd connect it to a powerbank or the car battery.

      • ihfree on 20/12/2024 - 09:10
        +2

        Cables + streaming devices are a pain to deal with, IMO. Especially if you're dozing off.

        Portable monitors are generally not designed for holding and are also more fragile. I tried running my one off a power bank and didn't have any luck compared to a power adaptor.

  • neoleo on 20/12/2024 - 12:12
    +1

    I wonder if these would work for LCD backlight bleed:
    https://www.displayninja.com/what-is-backlight-bleed/

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/baztyq/backlight_…
    Read the comments

    • wisdomtooth on 20/12/2024 - 13:16

      Interesting! A lot of that is beyond my pay grade 😅

      Dismantle the display

      Definitely beyond my abilities. Most I could do was swap screens on a couple of phones, one dead, one cracked.

      But maybe I'm misdiagnosing it:

      If you have an IPS-panel display, make sure you are not mistaking backlight bleeding with IPS glow.

      What I mean is that I find it very hard to work out what's going on in dark scenes bc of the low contrast, plus the black strips above and below 16:9 video are too lit up and distracting from the image.

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