If you fall in this category (or if you don’t need a touchscreen), then you may save a few bucks choosing something else. Most prospective customers will find a 4K monitor overkill for their needs. You want a smaller form factor: 14-inch is compact enough to be carried around easily, some users will prefer a 15.6 or 16-inch form factor that offers more real estate. You want 4K and touchscreen: That’s the very essence of the GMK Xpanel and if your use cases do not tick both cases, then there are cheaper alternatives worth looking into.

Should I buy the GMK Xpanel 4K portable monitor? Shoving all the ports there proved to be a good idea as it - in theory - makes the display a bit more stable, as it moves the centre of gravity nearer to the bottom. The kickstand is a treat to use as it opens up to 90 degrees, while being firm but flexible. Because it uses IPS technology, its viewing angles are excellent with well-reproduced, natural colors the display however is extremely glossy and the fact that by default, the brightness is not set to high, doesn’t help at all. With a pixel density of almost 315ppi, it surpasses Apple’s Retina Display - which is considered as the benchmark for sharpness on screens - by a wide margin, giving it a crisp display spread over more than 8.3 million pixels. We also tried the GMK 4K with the still popular Samsung Galaxy Note 9 (opens in new tab) and GMK has an ever growing list of smartphones that are compatible with the portable monitor. What that means is that you probably will not be able to use it with a long USB cable unless you use the extra power adaptor. Note that some will require external power supply as well because of power requirements and that you are expected to use the bundled cable - we tried with a third party Thunderbolt 3 cable and it didn’t work. We tested the display using the Dell Latitude 7490 business laptop (opens in new tab) which comes with one Thunderbolt 3 port but you will be able to plug it - with optional adaptors - into a surprising number of products including digital cameras and gaming consoles.

It has a claimed response time of 5ms, a 350cd/m2 brightness and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. The GMK display supports HDR, Freesync, 100% sRGB coverage and 10-point touch.