A Portable Monitor with a Laptop Is More Useful Than I Expected: aigo 14 Unboxing

Introduction

I've found that portable monitors are a perfect match for laptops

Using just a laptop's single screen feels too awkward

Add a portable monitor over the laptop keyboard, and it's like having a foldable-screen laptop 😄

The ways you can use it get a lot more interesting: as a preview while editing video, to test results while coding, to look up guides while gaming…

That said, I started looking at portable monitors back in October this year and came up with the following buying criteria:

• On a screen this small, you can barely tell 1080p, 2K, and 4K apart, so 1080p is fine for resolution
• Anything too big is out. A portable monitor has to be portable—if it doesn't even fit in a backpack, what's portable about it? So 16-inch is a pass
• Considering the laptop sizes I use most (Jige 14x, MacBook Air 15-inch), I went with 14-inch so it would work with both
• For brightness, it has to be 350 nits or more, otherwise you can't see anything once the lighting gets bright
• Refresh rate doesn't really matter—I'm not using it for gaming, 60 Hz is enough

That narrowed the field a lot.

There are plenty of portable monitors on the market, but most are no-name brands. I picked a few that looked decent. aigo and Sculptor both have a three-year warranty, which seemed a bit more trustworthy.

In the end, following a recommendation from some Bilibili rec video, I bought the aigo 14 for 276 yuan—pretty high value for money.

Looking at the price now (2025-11-19), it's already 300 yuan 🤣

This article is a self-funded purchase, not a sponsored post!

Specs

• Resolution: 1920*1200
• Refresh rate: 60Hz
• Panel: IPS
• Weight: 0.46kg
• Brightness: 400 nits

Packaging

There's a layer of plastic wrap on the outside of the box

The back

The color scheme looks pretty nice—reminds me of a OnePlus phone I bought before

Laid flat

This slogan

Unboxing

Right when you open it, there's the manual and a WeCom QR code card

The packaging protection is pretty decent

Accessories

It comes with two cables

One HDMI to mini HDMI

And one Type-C cable

The Screen

There's a film of unclear purpose stuck on this portable monitor

The Stand

There's a stand on the back

But this stand isn't great to use—it's very flimsy, and you have to pry hard to open it. I was worried I'd accidentally snap it

The stand can open up to 90 degrees at most

Ports and Buttons

On the right side of the portable monitor are the buttons and the headphone jack

The plastic shell feels a bit off in quality and looks cheap

But it is very light

On the left are a mini HDMI and two Type-C ports

Real-world Use

This portable monitor supports Type-C single-cable connection, and the connecting experience is decent

MacBook

The MacBook couldn't automatically detect the aspect ratio. After connecting, it started at 1920x1080, and the image was stretched and distorted

The actual resolution of this display is 1920x1200

After I manually changed it to 1920x1200, it felt much better

But without choosing a HiDPI resolution, it still looks fairly blurry on a Mac

This portable monitor's best pairing is not a MacBook

For a Mac, I'd still recommend pairing it with a 4K display

Let's look at the colors

I don't have professional testing gear, so I put the MacBook Air screen next to the portable monitor and took a photo

At least it looks pretty good

Here's another comparison

(The one at the bottom left is another portable monitor, unrelated to this article)

Paired with the Jige 14x

I have to say this portable monitor and the Jige 14x are a perfect match

They have the same 16:10 aspect ratio (except the Jige 14x's resolution is 2880x1800)

The size is just right too—both are 14 inches. Lay it over the keyboard, and it's like I have a dual-screen laptop 😄

Here's another comparison

(The one at the bottom left is another portable monitor, unrelated to this article)

Other Notes

The OSD (On-Screen Display) also feels very dated

Oh right, this portable monitor also has speakers, but they're even quieter than the Jige 14x's, and the sound quality is even worse. Feels like they'd have been better off skipping the speakers and putting the cost into improving the stand or the shell 🤣

Issues

This portable monitor supports DDC/CI, meaning you can adjust the display's brightness and contrast directly from the computer, which is great in itself

For adjusting monitor brightness from your computer, see: Using Twinkle Tray to quickly adjust the brightness of multiple monitors

But something's wrong with the controller board: brightness adjustment from 0-70% is all ok, but at 71% it suddenly becomes the darkest. Effectively the brightness adjustment range is only 0-70%, and from 71% on it wraps back to 1% 😂

Wrap-up

I later bought a few other portable monitors, but looking back, this aigo 14 is still the more well-rounded one

You won't get a perfect product at this price. If you can live with the small flaws, it's still pretty good

I'd still skip the no-name brands—I'm afraid they'd break before long