Lepow 15.6-Inch

amazon Lepow 15.6-Inch reviews

The 15.6-inch Lepow monitor is one of the good big-screen portable monitors we’ve tested, thanks to its 1080p native resolution and more input selection than you’ll find on most screen briefcases. But despite its good pixel count and spacious screen, its colors look dull (a common problem with recent mobile screens). That makes it best for productivity use only, though casual video or photo use is fine. If you shop carefully, you can get it at a great price.

An offer I can’t refuse

Over the past year, we’ve increased our coverage of mobile displays. We have come across some good-to-excellent displays, such as the HP EliteDisplay S14 and the Lenovo ThinkVision M14. But for every laptop sub-display from such well-known brands and major players like Asus and AOC, you can find more from obscure vendors like GeChic, Elecrow, Eyoyo, and Lepow.

Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, Lepow is a global operation with a presence in the United States. A quick look at the Lepow website might give you the impression that it’s a nighttime activity — the text on the About page is a purely Latin copy of “Lorem ipsum” and the Contact Us page includes the address 115 Main Street, USA, and email address hello@website.com. (The site contains the disclaimer “For Development Purposes Only.”) Fortunately, Amazon customers rate the screen 4.5 stars on average, and the user manual provides plenty of information, including support contact information.

Let’s start!

The Lepow screen measures 0.3 x 14.4 x 8.7 inches as a matte black slab with rounded corners and weighs 0.8 kg. The bezels are relatively thin for a mobile screen: 6.35 mm at the top, 1 cm on each side, and 2 cm at the bottom. On the left edge of the device are a mini-HDMI port, a USB-C port, and a 3.5mm audio-out jack.

On the right edge is the power button, a wheel for on-screen navigation (OSD), and another USB-C port, this one for powering the display. There is also a speaker grille on each side.

Lepow comes with a protective case, matte black on one side and gray on the other, a foldable stand. Unlike the HP EliteDisplay S14 and AOC I1601FWUX, whose cover only protects the display panel, the Lepow cover folds around the display to cover both the front and back.

Like similar stands we’ve come across, one edge contains a magnetic stripe that latches onto and lifts behind the top of the display, while the bottom edge of the display snaps into one of two notches to give you control slightly for the tilt angle of the screen. There is no height adjustment.

The stand only supports landscape mode, unlike the AOC I1601FWUX, which can also keep the screen in portrait mode when you rotate it manually. However, you can prop the screen up against a surface vertically or lay it flat in front of you. The included user guide shows you how to rotate the image on the screen to portrait mode in Windows to match the physical rotation of the screen.

Connection selection

While the AOC I1601FWUX and HP EliteDisplay S14 have a single USB Type-C port, and the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 has a pair, the 15.6-inch Lepow includes two USB-C ports and one mini-HDMI port. While one of the devices previously supported video input (using DisplayPort over USB, allowing data, video, and power transfer), the other only supported powering the monitor when the host device cannot handle the electrical load. Lepow comes with a USB-Type-C-to-A cord and an AC adapter for this purpose. Lepow can also be powered from a laptop. I mostly run it connected via a USB Type-C cable to my Dell XPS 13 ultraportable, with the Lepow display use power from that laptop.

The selection of ports allows you to connect the monitor to Sony PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox One, or Nintendo Switch, and even to some smartphones, in addition to a laptop or desktop computer.

Look at the OSD

You can access your device’s on-screen display (OSD) by using the wheel above (also known as the scroll key), which is essentially a small button on small gear. You can press the button in (to open the OSD or select a menu option) or rotate the wheel up or down (to navigate between menu items or adjust values ​​such as Brightness or contrast). While not as easy as the mini-joystick controls of many desktop monitors, the wheel proved a bit usable with a little practice. I prefer it to the multi-button control systems still found on many mobile and desktop screens.

The first menu selection, labeled Brightness, allows you to control Brightness, contrast, black levels, and sharpness in a range of 0 to 100. (Note that when you turn on Lepow, the Brightness of it defaults to 30%, so unless you plan to be away from a power source other than your laptop for a long time, you may want to turn it on.) Next is the Picture menu. The first item, called Eco, lets you choose from six picture modes: Standard, Game, Movie, Text, RTS, and FPS. The second, DCR, allows you to enable or disable dynamic contrast ratio. The third, Aspect, lets you choose between a 16:9 widescreen ratio or the classic 4:3 aspect ratio.

From the Color Temperature menu, you can choose from Cool, Warm User Modes and allow you to set individual red, green, and blue values. There are three OSD Setup menus, which allow selecting a language, mute or adjust speaker volume, select the port (USB-C or HDMI) for the signal source, enable light low, enable/disable high dynamic range (HDR) mode.

Check color and Brightness.

As usual, I performed our brightness and color tests in standard mode using a Klein K10-A colorimeter, a Murideo Six-G signal generator, an X-Rite i1Basic Pro color profiler 2, and Portrait Displays CalMAN 5 software. Lepow rates the 15.6-inch Mobile Display’s Brightness at 300 nits (candelas per meter squared), a very bright rating for a mobile display, but I only measured 169 nits.

The Lepow is the first portable monitor I’ve reviewed with an HDR mode. Labeled 2,084, this setting is essentially the HDR10 standard used in nearly all HDR displays. I went into the display menu of Windows 10 and checked the Windows HD Color settings. Still, they showed no indication that Lepow can support HD gaming or video, which is unusual since most monitors HDR support we tested over possible HDMI connection. That makes me suspicious of an HDR simulation — that is, various tweaks to color, contrast, and Brightness designed to simulate real HDR. However, I ran the display through our tests again with the HDR setting turned on, and it showed an increase in Brightness to 196 nits. I measured its contrast ratio to be 1,146:1, slightly larger than its 1,000:1 rating.

A color gamut is put together.

In our color testing, Lepow covered only 65.4 percent of the sRGB color space. The triangles represent colors, including sRGB — essentially, all colors can be created by mixing different percentages of red, green, and blue. The white boxes show the location of the data points for a full sRGB display. Things didn’t get any better when I ran the test a second time but in HDR mode.

Some of our test spots — the black circles — are in the triangle, which shows that this monitor can display about two-thirds of the sRGB colors, especially towards the spectrum’s red/purple/blue side. The blue circle is slightly outside the triangle, which means Lepow covers a small blue and green band outside the sRGB spectrum.

Most desktop monitors exceed 90% of their sRGB coverage, as do some mobile monitors – the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 wowed us with 97%. Most recent portable monitors have been tested closer to Lepow; AOC covers only 61.4% of sRGB. The HP EliteDisplay S14 and the Hori Portable Gaming Monitor Pro, although we didn’t measure their color gamuts as a percentage, show the same pattern, with the color space folded on the red/purple side of the spectrum and the blue dots outside of the triangle and towards the green. Making me suspect that all these panels except Lenovo’s come from the same source.

Subjectively, I tested Lepow at home, in a coffee shop, and the office by viewing our usual selection of photos, video clips, and web pages, as well as working with office documents. Same results on both USB-C and HDMI connections. As expected, based on our color testing, the reds and purples are generally muted.

That makes the monitor suitable for business or casual use but a bad choice for those who love videophiles or photo editing.

HDR: Seeing red

I also tested the HDR feature with both photos and videos over both USB-C and HDMI connections. It certainly has effects, increases contrast, and boosts colors, but to the point where it seems garish at times. That can give you an edge in the game — it’s harder for enemies to hide from you. The reds are dramatically oversaturated, so much so that, when looking at a photo of me sitting in a Game of Thrones Iron Throne spoof at an event I attended, I find myself wondering when Westeros has acquired a red king.

As mentioned, Lepow is one of the few portable monitors with built-in speakers. Audio from the two 1-watt speakers was clear but weak, so I switched the audio output back to my laptop with its louder speakers. Own Lepow will be of most use for those connecting from a video source without speakers, such as a game monitor. There is a 3.5mm audio-out jack for connecting to supported headphones or speakers. Either would be a better bet.

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