The Lenovo ThinkVision M14t ($449) packs in all the goodies that made the ThinkVision M14 a PCMag Editors’ Choice award winner—above-average brightness for a portable monitor, a built-in stand, and a 14-inch 1080p screen with great color coverage—while adding 10-point touch capability. Well-heeled users may find it worth the investment to add touch sensitivity to an already winning monitor design, although most users will be happy with one of several capable and considerably less expensive alternatives from Asus, ViewSonic, and even Lenovo itself.
It’s an Easy Touch
With a matte-black frame, the ThinkVision M14t blends in well with recent black Lenovo ThinkPads that pack USB Type-C ports supporting video output. The 14-inch in-plane switching (IPS) panel has 1080p (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) native resolution, for a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio. Its 157-pixel-per-inch (ppi) pixel density promises a sharp image given the resolution and screen size, and that was borne out in my testing (and by my eyes).
Typical of IPS panels, the ThinkVision M14t offers broad viewing angles (rated at 178 degrees for both vertical and horizontal). This was borne out in our experiential testing, where colors remained true even at extreme off-center angles.
The ThinkVision M14t’s defining characteristic is its screen’s 10-point touch-sensitive surface. It can be used with the included stylus (it supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity) and can also be controlled by finger-based gestures. I found the screen to be very responsive, both when using my fingers and when poking and sketching with the stylus.
The screen connects to the base with a pair of hinges, which allows for smooth movement and an adjustment range from minus 5 to 90 degrees. This makes it, along with Lenovo’s earlier ThinkVision M14, one of the few portable monitors to have a built-in, adjustable stand, rather than a folding case/screen cover that doubles as a stand. When the screen is at right angles to the base, you can even rotate it into portrait mode, and the base will prop it upright. An added convenience is an adjustable riser at the front of the base that lets you fine tune the height and set the screen at the same level as your laptop’s screen.
In addition to supporting the screen, the ThinkVision M14t’s base houses the display’s ports and buttons. On the right side are the power button and a USB Type-C port, flanking the notch for a Kensington cable lock. On the left side is a second USB Type-C port, plus left and right arrow buttons, and a button that launches the onscreen display (OSD). From the OSD, you can control brightness and contrast, switch touch support between Windows and Android/Chrome, switch the low-blue-light setting on and off, and enable or disable auto rotation of the image when you rotate the panel. Under an advanced settings menu, you can change the screen’s display mode (sRGB, Bluish, Neutral, and Reddish) and the language.
That is the extent of the ThinkVision M14t’s onscreen display (OSD) controls. The HP EliteDisplay S14 has a wider selection of OSD controls, with four buttons letting you change settings such as brightness, contrast, and color mode. (Selections for the latter include Low Blue Light, Night, Reading, HP Enhance+, Multimedia, and Photo.) The ViewSonic TD1655 and the Asus ZenScreen Touch (MB16AMT), both rival touch-enabled portable monitors, incorporate mini-joystick controllers for navigating their OSDs.
The ThinkVision M14t comes with a USB Type-C cable, as well as an L-shaped USB-C-to-USB-C connector. You can connect to a laptop using either the right or left USB-C port on the panel, depending on which side of the laptop you want the display to be placed. You can even connect to an Android smartphone, provided that it has a USB Type-C port. The USB-C ports support DisplayPort over USB-C, as well as USB PD (power delivery).
This allows for two modes of use. You can show video and other content over the USB connection from a laptop with a compatible USB-C port, and simultaneously power the ThinkVision M14t from the laptop through the same USB-C connection. Alternately, you can plug an optional 65-watt AC power adapter into one of the M14t’s USB-C ports to power the monitor; this will let you also charge the laptop when it is connected to the M14t’s other USB-C port. Much as we like USB-C, we would like to see at least one other connection type; a lot of portable monitors add a mini-HDMI port, with a cable to connect to the HDMI port on a computer or video source.
Lenovo backs the M14t with a three-year warranty. Most monitor warranties are for three years, although some are for four, and a few are for a mere year.
Testing the ThinkVision M14t: Bright and Vivid
I did our color and brightness testing for the ThinkVision M14t using a Klein K10-A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ CalMAN 5 software. Lenovo rates the display’s luminance (brightness per unit area) at 300 candelas per meter squared (nits), and it came up just short of that (261 nits) in my testing.
Still, this is brighter than most portable monitors. Their measured brightness tends to cluster in the 180-to-200-nit range. Exceptions are the ThinkVision M14 (280 nits), the ViewSonic VG1655 (245 nits), and the ViewSonic TD1655 (219 nits).
Meanwhile, I measured the ThinkVision M14t’s contrast ratio at 722:1. That is a smidge better than its 700:1 ViewSonic rating. (Click here to see how we test monitors.)
One really impressive thing about the ThinkVision M14t, which we also saw in the original M14, is its color-gamut coverage, which is unusually good for a portable monitor. Lenovo states that the M14t covers 72 percent of the NTSC color space, a gamut designed for analog TV that is still often used as a point of comparison: 72 percent NTSC is approximately 100 percent of the sRGB space. In my testing, the M14t covered 97.9 percent of the sRGB space, a tad more than the M14’s 97 percent.
In the chromaticity chart below, the area within the triangle represents the sRGB color space, and my data points (the circles) are for the most part evenly placed around it, with the purple and red points indicating a slight expansion of the gamut in those areas…
The vast majority of mobile monitors cover only between 60 and 72 percent of the sRGB space, making them fine for workaday tasks but a poor choice for use with photos and videos. In looking at some of our test photos and clips on the M14t, colors were bright and looked true.
A Tale of Three Touch-Screen Panels
Like the ViewSonic TD1655 and the Asus ZenScreen Touch (MB16AMT)—both Editors’ Choice-award-winning models—the Lenovo ThinkVision M14t is a portable monitor with multi-touch capabilities. Of the three, the M14t is the most expensive, and has the smallest screen—14 inches, compared with 15.6 inches for the other two. It lacks a mini-joystick controller, found on both the ZenScreen Touch and the TD1655, as well as the ZenScreen Touch’s built-in battery.
Otherwise, the M14t has much to recommend it. It has the best stand of the three. The ZenScreen Touch’s stand is an origami-style foldable board that doubles as a protective cover for the monitor; with it, the monitor can only be propped up at two specific angles. (The Touch does have one neat trick; you can prop it up by inserting the stylus in a hole in the monitor’s lower right corner. Of course, you can’t use the stylus while it’s so positioned.). The ViewSonic TD1655 has a built-in stand that folds out from the back. It allows about a 45-degree tilt range, while the M14t can be tilted more than 90 degrees, from facing slightly toward you to lying near-flat.
Best of all, the ThinkVision M14t’s color accuracy is right up there with that of the ThinkVision M14. It’s considerably better than what we have tested on any other general-purpose mobile monitor.
If touch sensitivity and color accuracy are paramount, you can’t do better than the Lenovo ThinkVision M14t, although you’ll pay a substantial premium for it. Otherwise, any of the Editors’ Choice-awarded mobile monitors that we’ve discussed here are more than sufficient alternatives. Although their color quality is pedestrian, the Asus ZenScreen Touch and the ViewSonic TD1655 are each good touch-screen monitors (and the ViewSonic is very cost-effective). And if you don’t need the touch-screen capability in your portable monitor, the older ThinkVision M14 will give you good brightness and color quality, as well as a superb stand, for considerably less money than the M14t.
