ViewSonic VX1654 16" Black 2024

Featherweight 144Hz gaming on the go, but the color quality is so bad it's basically a monochrome experience with a fast refresh. Buy it for the portability alone, and learn to live with the visual downgrade.

The ViewSonic VX1654 is the most portable gaming monitor we've ever tested, hands down. At just 700 grams and barely thicker than a pencil, it slips into a bag like a thin notebook. The 144Hz refresh and FreeSync are legit for on-the-go gaming, but the panel itself is a letdown—we're talking colors so washed out they land in the bottom 1% of all monitors we've measured. If you need a featherweight screen that pushes high frame rates, this is your unicorn. If you care at all about image quality, keep scrolling.

We didn't expect miracles from a portable panel, but the color performance genuinely surprised us—and not in a good way. With a 6-bit+FRC panel and just 250 nits brightness, colors look flat and dull even indoors. Our database puts it dead last for color, and the overall display score is a weak 21st percentile. That said, the 144Hz refresh rate does its job. Motion is reasonably smooth, and FreeSync kept things tear-free while gaming on a cramped airplane tray. It's a monitor that sacrifices everything for speed and portability, and it shows.

At $170–$254, you're paying for the ultra-compact design and 144Hz. That's fair if you must have a high-refresh portable screen—most competitors in this size are stuck at 60Hz. But for the same money you can grab a far superior desktop monitor, so don't buy this unless portability is your absolute top demand.

Stacked against traditional gaming monitors like the LG UltraGear 27G810A-B or ASUS ROG Strix XG32UCG, the VX1654 looks laughably bad on paper. Those are big, bright, color-accurate beasts built for desktops—total overkill to compare to a 16-inch portable. The real fight is with other travel monitors, and there the ViewSonic wins on refresh rate and build, but loses on picture quality to something like a higher-res, brighter Lepow or ASUS ZenScreen. If you're choosing between this and a desktop monitor, ask yourself: do you actually need to game in a coffee shop? If not, go bigger and better.

Any creative professional or photo editor should run the other way. The color accuracy is a disaster—one of the worst we've ever logged. If you need a portable screen for design work, grab an ASUS ProArt or a high-brightness ZenScreen instead. Even casual gamers who care about how their games look will be happier with a bulkier 15.6-inch portable OLED that actually delivers colors and contrast.

Buy this if you travel constantly and refuse to game below 100fps. The VX1654 is a niche champ—unmatched portability and that buttery 144Hz make it a killer companion for a gaming laptop. But for everyone else, skip it. The dull, inaccurate colors and dim screen are a constant reminder that you sacrificed image quality for inches and ounces. Only the most dedicated mobile gamers should bite.