The Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display connects to MacBook or iPad to add more screen space, but that’s only the start: it’s also a hub with a pair of high-speed USB-C ports available for external drives, a keyboard, etc.
As a person who regularly works outside of the office with an iPad Pro, I’m more than qualified to test this accessory for road warriors who are perpetually short of USB-C ports. Here’s why I love it.
Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display review
Apple’s beautifully slim computers never have room for enough USB-C ports. And that’s especially true for those who have a MacBook Air with its two ports or iPad Pro and iPad Air with only one.
A terrific use for one of those ports is an external monitor. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any accessory that’ll increase your productivity as much. But that’s one less USB-C you can use for something else.
Not with the Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display, though. It adds to your available ports, not subtracts from them.
Table of contents:
- Nice-looking 1080P display
- Monitor and USB-C hub, too
- Truly portable display with built-in stand
- Plugable video
- Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display final thoughts
- Pricing
Nice-looking 1080P display
Photo: Plugable
The heart of the Plugable’s new accessory is a 1920-by-1080-pixel Full HD IPS display. This runs at a 60Hz refresh rate, with a maximum brightness of 300 nits.
For its price, Plugable’s offering looks quite good. 1080P is a fine resolution for email, documents, spreadsheets, websites and social media. That’s what I used it for, both when working at a coffee shop and outside. Outdoors is more of a challenge: 300 nits isn’t bright enough for direct sun, but it’s fine for working in the shade.
Convenient buttons on the right edge adjust the brightness level. I recommend setting it at the right level for your conditions when powering the screen from your Mac or iPad. Leaving the backlight at 100% if it’s not needed is an unnecessary battery drain.
Color quality is decent — certainly far better than portable monitors offered years ago. It’s good enough that I even watched a few TV shows on the display.
Plugable doesn’t give the color gamut for the display. I was about to do some research when it occurred to me that if you know what “color gamut” means, this probably isn’t the screen for you. As I said, it’s fine for general use, but not a serious option for graphics professionals.
But many graphics professionals saw the 1080P resolution and stopped reading anyway. You can get a really gorgeous 4K portable monitor — the espresso 17 Pro is a brilliant example — but it costs five times more than this Plugable one.
Still, this more affordable monitor passes my basic test: I can look back and forth between it and a high-quality Apple screen without the quality difference bothering me. I can see the difference — colors aren’t as rich, and the external monitor is 60 Hz — but it doesn’t affect getting work done.
Monitor and USB-C hub, too
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
There are three ports on the right edge of the Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display. One of these is to connect the screen to your computer. That can be a Mac, iPad or even a recent iPhone. Connecting is as easy as plugging in the bundled 39-inch cable.
The other two USB ports are available for other uses. Before I did any research, I pessimistically expected this built-in USB-C hub to be slow. Boy, was I wrong. The ports actually offer data transfers at up to 1.25 GBps thanks to USB 3.2 Gen 2.
For a real-world test, I transferred a 1GB file from my computer to an SSD via the hub built into the screen. It took about 2 seconds. It went so quickly I upped the challenge: a 10GB file. That took about 35 seconds. That’s fast enough to make moving around full-length films happen quickly.
If you choose to devote one of the USB-C ports to powering your computer, it can send up to 85 W to a Mac.
Note that there’s no HDMI port. But given that USB-C is ubiquitous, especially on Apple devices, HDMI is unnecessary.
Truly portable display with built-in stand
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
You want your monitor to be as large as possible, but not when you carry it around. The Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display is a good compromise.
The screen bezels are fairly modest so the whole package ends up at 14.2 inches by 8.5 inches by 0.4 inches. That makes it about the same width as a 16-inch MacBook Pro — the two fit in the same-size bag. The weight is 1.9 pounds.
A flip cover protects the all-important LCD. It’s easily removable, though.
The cover does double-duty as a stand, folding into a triangle that supports Plugable’s accessory at about 20 degrees past vertical. It holds up the screen securely enough that I had no problems in my weeks of testing.
I should mention that the back of the accessory and cover are all black plastic. The look is unremarkable. But it’s certainly not rugged: nothing that’s mostly a 15.6-inch LCD panel can be.
Plugable video
Plugable created a video showing off the features of this display/hub combo device:
Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display final thoughts
This is the first display Plugable has ever offered, and I think they knocked it out of the park. It’s the only portable screen I’m aware of that’s also a USB-C hub, and this bonus feature works faster than I anticipated.
The screen quality is what I expected — good if not great. It’s certainly up to getting work done, as long as you’re not a graphic designer.
★★★★☆
Pricing
Plugable 15.6” USB-C Portable Display launched in September and is ready to be ordered now.
Buy it from: Amazon
It costs $199.95, and there’s currently a 5% off coupon for a bit of extra savings.
Plugable provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See our reviews policy, and check out more in-depth reviews of Apple-related items.
