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Multiple monitors are nothing new, nor are touchscreens, or even displays powered and driven by a single USB cable. But when these three properties are combined and then capacitive multi-touch is thrown into the mix, well yes, that's new. Niche news-worthy new, even. So we snapped up the very first one we could get our hands on, a lightweight 10.1" unit from Mimo called the Magic Touch. Press on for our review to find out what niche applications this monitor is good and whether or not it's worth the price.
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Monitors Mimo Magic Touch 10" USB Monitor Review
Multiple monitors are nothing new, nor are touchscreens, or even displays powered and driven by a single USB cable. But when these three properties are combined and then capacitive multi-touch is thrown into the mix, well yes, that's new. Niche news-worthy new, even. So we snapped up the very first one we could get our hands on, a lightweight 10.1" unit from Mimo called the Magic Touch. Press on for our review to find out what niche applications this monitor is good and whether or not it's worth the price.
USB Monitor Design
When it comes to USB-driven monitors, there's typically two varieties of the sort. Some are designed for travel and feature a tablet-like cover that doubles as a stand, while others are more comfortable being placed on a desk and just left there. Despite the highly-portable 10" form factor, the Mimo falls into the latter category, lacking a carrying case of any sort apart from the original box and plastic wrap.
Remember back in the early days of computing when every product you ever bought came with a ring binder instruction manual, some drivers and other random niceties? Mimo sure doesn't. The Magic Touch display was quite a surprise in that nothing was included in the packaging other than the monitor essentials and a small leaflet that walks through how to set up the Tablet PC Settings in Windows 7, but nary a word on how to install the required USB display drivers.
At the heart of Mimo's Magic Touch is a vibrant 1024x600 LCD panel that does wonders for making images pop out with vivid color. The backlighting on the 10.1" display is also fairly evenly distributed and helps to achieve an overall more cheerful effect than what I'm accustomed to with my everyday Hanns-G monitor. It could be that this is just an illusion generated by somewhat over-saturated colors from the poor 300:1 contrast ratio, but it's an illusion I can most certainly live with. The low contrast ratio also leads to some unfortunate color banding as visible in this gradient test, but to be honest it was hardly noticeable in everyday use including watching movies with dark scenery. Mimo doesn't specify what LCD type the Magic Touch is using, but based on the average viewing angles I'm going to assume it's a typical TN panel. Horizontal angles fare much better than vertical angles, but that's why the stand allows for tilting. Between the viewing angles and glossy screen I'd strongly advise against using the Magic Touch in a Car PC environment, but for desktop use it works just fine. 2D performance on the Magic Touch is excellent, supporting all the nuances of Windows 7's Aero transparency effects and even the nagging dialog boxes from Windows UAC. Text is uniformly sharp, but there are a few noticeable compression artifacts I noticed when mousing over buttons in Firefox, iTunes and Winamp. Thankfully these artifacts were all minor and lasted for only a split second, and it's possible they might someday disappear entirely as DisplayLink continues to refine their drivers.
Because DisplayLink uses adaptive compression that hooks into your existing graphics card for the heavy lifting, video on the Magic Touch looks sharp and very fluid. With the default picture-perfect settings, the DisplayLinkManager.exe process consumed about 15% CPU time on average when tested on a Core 2 Duo E8400 clocked at 3.0GHz. There was the occasional stutter or tear when watching movies whilst surfing the web on another monitor, but nothing serious or immersion-breaking. An "Optimize for Video" setting is also present in DisplayLink drivers that sacrifices video quality (blockiness) in exchange for smoother framerates and lower CPU usage, but I never found myself needing to use this outside of 3D gaming.
Speaking of gaming, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how well the DisplayLink drivers and compression could handle a small number of titles I threw at it. With "Optimize for Video" turned on I was able to successfully play Unreal Tournament '99, Team Fortress 2, Dead Space 2 and Serious Sam HD in fullscreen mode at a surprisingly playable framerate, albeit with less than readable small text. Project64 v1.6 with Super Mario 64 behaved exceptionally well even without DisplayLink's video optimization setting, but required AA/AF to be turned off. Other titles such as Quake Live, UT2004 and Morrowind could only be played in windowed mode, while still other titles like Skyrim or Psychonauts refused to run in either mode on the display. The bottom line is that the Magic Touch can't be counted on for gaming, but it makes for a good bonus feature when it works.
When it comes to USB-driven monitors, there's typically two varieties of the sort. Some are designed for travel and feature a tablet-like cover that doubles as a stand, while others are more comfortable being placed on a desk and just left there. Despite the highly-portable 10" form factor, the Mimo falls into the latter category, lacking a carrying case of any sort apart from the original box and plastic wrap.
Remember back in the early days of computing when every product you ever bought came with a ring binder instruction manual, some drivers and other random niceties? Mimo sure doesn't. The Magic Touch display was quite a surprise in that nothing was included in the packaging other than the monitor essentials and a small leaflet that walks through how to set up the Tablet PC Settings in Windows 7, but nary a word on how to install the required USB display drivers.
At the heart of Mimo's Magic Touch is a vibrant 1024x600 LCD panel that does wonders for making images pop out with vivid color. The backlighting on the 10.1" display is also fairly evenly distributed and helps to achieve an overall more cheerful effect than what I'm accustomed to with my everyday Hanns-G monitor. It could be that this is just an illusion generated by somewhat over-saturated colors from the poor 300:1 contrast ratio, but it's an illusion I can most certainly live with. The low contrast ratio also leads to some unfortunate color banding as visible in this gradient test, but to be honest it was hardly noticeable in everyday use including watching movies with dark scenery. Mimo doesn't specify what LCD type the Magic Touch is using, but based on the average viewing angles I'm going to assume it's a typical TN panel. Horizontal angles fare much better than vertical angles, but that's why the stand allows for tilting. Between the viewing angles and glossy screen I'd strongly advise against using the Magic Touch in a Car PC environment, but for desktop use it works just fine. 2D performance on the Magic Touch is excellent, supporting all the nuances of Windows 7's Aero transparency effects and even the nagging dialog boxes from Windows UAC. Text is uniformly sharp, but there are a few noticeable compression artifacts I noticed when mousing over buttons in Firefox, iTunes and Winamp. Thankfully these artifacts were all minor and lasted for only a split second, and it's possible they might someday disappear entirely as DisplayLink continues to refine their drivers.
Because DisplayLink uses adaptive compression that hooks into your existing graphics card for the heavy lifting, video on the Magic Touch looks sharp and very fluid. With the default picture-perfect settings, the DisplayLinkManager.exe process consumed about 15% CPU time on average when tested on a Core 2 Duo E8400 clocked at 3.0GHz. There was the occasional stutter or tear when watching movies whilst surfing the web on another monitor, but nothing serious or immersion-breaking. An "Optimize for Video" setting is also present in DisplayLink drivers that sacrifices video quality (blockiness) in exchange for smoother framerates and lower CPU usage, but I never found myself needing to use this outside of 3D gaming.
Speaking of gaming, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how well the DisplayLink drivers and compression could handle a small number of titles I threw at it. With "Optimize for Video" turned on I was able to successfully play Unreal Tournament '99, Team Fortress 2, Dead Space 2 and Serious Sam HD in fullscreen mode at a surprisingly playable framerate, albeit with less than readable small text. Project64 v1.6 with Super Mario 64 behaved exceptionally well even without DisplayLink's video optimization setting, but required AA/AF to be turned off. Other titles such as Quake Live, UT2004 and Morrowind could only be played in windowed mode, while still other titles like Skyrim or Psychonauts refused to run in either mode on the display. The bottom line is that the Magic Touch can't be counted on for gaming, but it makes for a good bonus feature when it works.
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