Explorer Q Travel Workstation

I'm preparing for my next trip (Italy in May!) and I spent some time doing some research on portable monitors. I was looking specifically for something very bright and portable. I have an old Cocopar monitor (It's a brand from amazon), which was dim and had the annoying habit of resetting its settings every time I turn it on so I wanted an upgrade. I hope you benefit from my search! :)

I narrowed my search to this one and the Asus ZenScreen MB16QHG. Asus is obviously the more established player her. This was Asus's only model that advertised 500 nits, so I ordered this Volgia and the MB16QHG.

The monitors were very different. The Asus was much heavier, at 2.7lbs. It has bigger bezels, and a hinge part that can be used to stand the monitor up but also increases the weight. It also makes it bulkier. The Volgia was 1.6lbs for comparison, significantly lighter.

Software-wise, the Asus seems superior. There's a handy knob to navigate the settings, and there are more features than the Volgia -- things like blue light filtering, which the Volgia doesn't offer. The one big advantage of the Volgia was how easy it was to adjust brightness in particular -- it takes much fewer clicks due to the little wheel it has.

Things got interesting when it came to power management. The biggest downside of the Asus was that it wouldn't let me push the brightness of the monitor to 100% when I just plug it into my computer with a USB-C cable without a separate power connection. It capped the brightness to 60%, and sometimes to 30%! In order to reach full brightness, you need to plug it in with the included adapter into a wall socket.

The Volgia was much more liberal, it allows you to reach 100% no matter what. *however*, sometimes when I plug the Volgia into my computer, I see it restart once or twice before it activates. Once, I needed to unplug and plug it back in before it stabilized. At lower brightness this didn't happen, so it must be trying to draw too much power or something.

This happened on my Macbook air, but not on my Dell, so it may depend on the computer.

Despite this, I ended up returning the Asus and keeping the Volgia, because being able to reach 100% all the time made the Volgia much brighter for how I intend to use it. That it's much lighter as well is a strong plus!

I bought the Explorer Q monitor because of the many pictures of it being used outside where it is bright, and that is very much exactly how I wanted to use it, so I figured why not :)

This monitor has a good quality matte screen, and can go very bright. I liked how easy it was to change brightness! My friend has different kind which has brightness hidden deep within settings but obvious that here this is priority, it only takes one click. This is important.

The wall socket adapter included was useless for me, as it is only supporting US socket :). Should include international options for international product! Thankfully plugging in with usb directly into laptop is all that is needed.

Overall I am happy with my purchase, this is good product. I use it often, when visiting friends with very bright rooms.

This monitor is amazing! I've started working from cafes again since getting this, I was getting tired of paying for coworking spaces lol. This is easy to carry around and the accessories that raise the monitor really help keep me focused

This monitor is SMALLER than my laptop. It's fine, but not something I can comfortably use. The text is too tiny.

The picture is great, but the best part of this monitor is how SMALL it is! I didn't know they made them this thin, I mounted this on a wall in my van and use this as a monitor/tiny tv.

Nice little portable monitor for the price, I use it to work more comfortably from a cafe. Very thin, so it fits in my backpacks laptop pocket even with the laptop in there!